The Third Dispensation (1841)

AUTHOR: Lane, Charles

PUBLICATION: London: J. Davey, 1841. Rpt. Amos Bronson Alcott, compiler. Papers on Human Culture. [S.l. : s.n.] 1885. 1-24.
https://archive.org/details/papersonhumancul00alco

While Lane does not explicitly advocate for ethical veganism, this stance is implicit in this short tract. He opposes the economic principles of use and profit maximization in the production and distribution of food, highlighting instead his fundamental project to establish associations based on the rule of love.

KEYWORDS: food, land usage, environmentalism, economy, education, "Association," spiritual unity

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Originally published as the introduction to the English translation of Réalisation d'une commune sociétaire d'après la théorie de Charles Fourier (1840) by Belgian Fourierist and women's activist Zoé de Gamond, “The Third Dispensation” is a political tract advocating for the creation of Associations in order to overcome the contradictions between ideal and actual (or theoretical and practical) unity. Association, the titular third dispensation and the only one with a claim to be truly “universal” (2), would then supersede “family union, or connexion by tribes,” the first dispensation, and “national alliances,” the second dispensation (1-2). In order for such Association to be successful, individual, internal unity has to be established first, that is, one has to submit and attune oneself to this “Unity” or “One” in order to attain the “unitary spirit” (3, 16). External and internal (actual and ideal, practical and theoretical) elements of unity have to be synthesized and harmonized. This is a perpetual task and process: “Again and again, perhaps, must blundering practice and disconnected theory be carried on, before the human mind is rendered conscious of deeper facts than are now currently admitted” (5). Again, the power of synthesis to which humans must turn is Spirit or the “universe-love-will,” as Spirit is operative in both the external, physical and the internal, mental worlds (7). The latter is much better accommodated, notably by means of literature, “but the practical examples are every where wanting” (7). “Phalanstery” or “true Harmonic Association” satisfies this want (8). As civilization did away with barbarism, so “the harmonic, the divine” will have to do away with civilization. This extends to civilization's most basic forms of sustenance, the production and distribution of food:

The very air of cities is scented by the odours from culinary compounds; and the firing of food for large masses, contaminates the atmosphere to a degree which renders it unfit for animal as for vegetable respiration. The human frame pines and perishes in large towns quite as much, though not quite so obviously, as the trees. The imbibition of his food when cooked, is even more fatal to man than its manufacturing processes (11-12).

For Lane, “the grossness of civilized food is as fatal to progress in the harmonic nature, as cannibalism was to man's advancement in civilization” (12). What is needed is “proper diet, harmonious alternation of rest and activity” (12). Lane insists on this because, as he says, “[i]f the lowest conditions are disharmonic, the lowest nature must be disharmonic; and man's lowest nature cannot be unharmonized, without the whole instrument vibrating out of tune” (13). In this sense, a proper diet is truly fundamental to Lane's vision of universal association. Decrying the bad air of cities and big towns, he complements his dietary argument with what today we would call an environmentalist argument:

The spirit cannot delightfully create the higher sensibilities in such a thickening of the aeriform substances, any more than it can truthfully promote the growth of the intelligent organs in animal grossness. Pure air must be furnished, before pure thoughts and pure sentiments can pervade the inner being (13).

Ultimately, Lane's argument targets civilization at large, including explicit attacks on fashion, architecture, economy, and education (13-14) which, according to Lane, are all reduced to “commodities” (16), their use-value (19-20), subject to the “disuniting commercial spirit” (21). The universal harmony or new spirit to be established, Lane concludes, is actively preempted by civilization as it is: “This spirit wants a food which the present cannot give, a garment which it cannot make, a dwelling which it cannot build, an education which it cannot furnish, a societary state which it is not” (15). As a consequence, the way we organize agriculture, architecture, business, and so on – the way we live – has to change fundamentally: “The treatment of man, it is then evident, must undergo an entire revision” (16), Lane writes. The necessary source of this revision is the One or Spirit rather than the current state of affairs. Accordingly, it is everyone's duty to attune oneself to Spirit. “[U]pon the people themselves devolves the responsibility of improvement. It is at the fireside that reform must commence” (22), as Lane states, explicitly clarifying “that the fireside at which his reform is to commence is within himself” (22). In Lane's dialectic, such attunement, improvement, or reform, in turn, needs conducive conditions: “There being, at the base of every human soul, not excluding even the dullest, an intuition of the Common Good, or Uniter, all that seems demanded for its spontaneous expansion are the suitable conditions” (17). In other words, conditions (through education) need to be established that are capable of “nourishing the life within” (18), thus “initiating the unal, intelligent, and physical union of mankind” (21). This condition is love. Hence, Associations have to be established according to the rule of love:

Every man is to love every man: every faculty in man is to be enlovened towards every other faculty; love is the universal bond within and without; all internal as well as external disciplines are attractivities, because they are the co-workers with love. Love, or Attractiveness, Attraction is the new grand central principle on which the great planet, man, revolves in orbicular harmony among other planets, and in diurnal harmony on its own axis. (23)

Love, then, is the very power of synthesis, “the third and reconciling nature” (24).

 

Last updated on February 9th, 2024

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