TO THE YOUTH OF FRANCE.

Love of study, and lack of fixed opinions,—a mind free from

prejudice, a heart devoid of hate, zeal for the propagation

of truth,—ardent sympathies, disinterestedness, devotion,

candour,—enthusiasm for all that is good and fair, simple and great,

honest and religious,—such are the precious attributes of youth. It

is for this reason that I dedicate my work to you. And the seed must

have in it no principle of life if it fail to take root in a soil so

generous.

I had thought to offer you a picture, and all I have given you

is a sketch; but you will pardon me; for who, in times like the

present,[12] can sit down to finish a grave and important work?

My hope is that some one among you, on seeing it, will be led to

exclaim, with the great artist, ‹Anch’ io son pittore!› and, seizing

the pencil, impart to my rude canvas colour and flesh, light and

shade, sentiment and life.

You may think the title of the work somewhat ambitious; and assuredly

I make no pretension to reveal the designs of Providence in the

social order, and to explain the mechanism of all the forces with

which God has endowed man for the realization of progress. All

that I have aimed at is to put you on the right track, and make

you acquainted with the truth, that ‹all legitimate interests are

in harmony›. That is the predominant idea of my work, and it is

impossible not to recognise its importance.

For some time it has been the fashion to laugh at what has been

called the ‹social problem›: and no doubt some of the solutions which

have been proposed afford but too much ground for raillery. But in

the problem itself there is nothing laughable. It is the ghost of

Banquo at the feast of Macbeth—and no dumb ghost either; for in

formidable accents it calls out to terror-stricken society—a solution

or death! [p034]

Now this solution, you will at once see, must be different according

as men’s interests are held to be naturally harmonious or naturally

antagonistic.

In the one case, we must seek for the solution in Liberty—in the

other, in Constraint. In the one case, we have only to be passive—in

the other, we must necessarily offer opposition.

But Liberty assumes only one shape. Once convinced that each of

the molecules which compose a fluid possesses in itself the force

by which the general level is produced, we conclude that there is

no surer or simpler way of seeing that level realized than not to

interfere with it. All, then, who set out with this fundamental

principle, that ‹men’s interests are harmonious›, will agree as

to the practical solution of the social problem,—to abstain from

displacing or thwarting those interests.

Constraint, on the other hand, may assume a thousand shapes,

according to the views which we take of it, and which are infinitely

varied. Those schools which set out with, the principle, that ‹men’s

interests are antagonistic›, have done nothing yet towards the

solution of the problem, unless it be that they have thrust aside

Liberty. Among the infinite forms of Constraint, they have still to

choose the one which they consider good, if indeed any of them be so.

And then, as a crowning difficulty, they have to obtain universal

acceptance, among men who are free agents, for the particular form of

Constraint to which they have awarded the preference.

But, on this hypothesis, if human interests are, by their very

nature, urged into fatal collision, and if this shock can be avoided

only by the accidental invention of an artificial social order, the

destiny of the human race becomes very hazardous, and we ask in

terror,

1st, If any man is to be found who has discovered a satisfactory form

of Constraint?

2d, Can this man bring to his way of thinking the innumerable schools

who give the preference to other forms?

3d, Will mankind give in to that particular form which, by

hypothesis, runs counter to all individual interests?

4th, Assuming that men will allow themselves to be rigged out in this

new attire, what will happen if another inventor presents himself,

with a coat of a different and improved cut? Are we to persevere in a

vicious organization, knowing it to be vicious; or must we resolve to

change that organization every morning according as the caprices of

fashion and the fertility of inventors’ brains may dictate? [p035]

5th, Would not all the inventors whose plans have been rejected

unite together against the particular organization which had been

selected, and would not their success in disturbing society be in

exact proportion to the degree in which that particular form of

organization ran counter to all existing interests?

6th, And, last of all, it may be asked, Does there exist any human

force capable of overcoming an antagonism which we presuppose to be

itself the very essence of human force?

I might multiply such questions ‹ad infinitum›, and propose, for

example, this difficulty:

If individual interest is opposed to the general interest, where are

we to place the active principle of Constraint? Where is the fulcrum

of the lever to be placed? Beyond the limits of human society? It

must be so if we are to escape the consequences of your law. If we

are to intrust some men with arbitrary power, prove first of all that

these men are formed of a different clay from other mortals; that

they in their turn will not be acted upon by the fatal principle of

self-interest; and that, placed in a situation which excludes the

idea of any curb, any effective opposition, their judgments will be

exempt from error, their hands from rapacity, and their hearts from

covetousness.

The radical difference between the various Socialist schools (I

mean here, those which seek the solution of the social problem in

an artificial organization) and the Economist school, does not

consist in certain views of detail or of governmental combination. We

encounter that difference at the starting point, in the preliminary

and pressing question—Are human interests, when left to themselves,

antagonistic or harmonious?

It is evident that the Socialists have set out in quest of an

artificial organization only because they judge the natural

organization of society bad or insufficient; and they have judged

the latter bad and insufficient, only because they think they see in

men’s interests a radical antagonism, for otherwise they would not

have had recourse to Constraint. It is not necessary to constrain

into harmony what is in itself harmonious.

Thus they have discovered antagonism everywhere:

Between the proprietor and the ‹prolétaire›;[13]

Between capital and labour;

Between the masses and the ‹bourgeoisie›;

Between agriculture and manufactures;

Between the rustic and the burgess;

Between the native and the foreigner;

Between the producer and the consumer;

Between civilisation and organization;

In a word,

Between Liberty and Harmony.

And this explains why it happens that, although a certain kind of

sentimental philanthropy finds a place in their hearts, gall and

bitterness flow continually from their lips. Each reserves all his

love for the new state of society he has dreamt of; but as regards

the society in which we actually live and move, it cannot, in their

opinion, be too soon crushed and overthrown, to make room for the New

Jerusalem they are to rear upon its ruins.

I have said that the ‹Economist› school, setting out with the natural

harmony of interests, is the advocate of Liberty.

And yet I must allow that if Economists in general stand up for

Liberty, it is unfortunately not equally true that their principles

establish solidly the foundation on which they build—the harmony of

interests.

Before proceeding further, and to forewarn you against the

conclusions which will no doubt be drawn from this avowal, I must

say a word on the situations which Socialism and Political Economy

respectively occupy.

It would be folly in me to assert that Socialism has never lighted

upon a truth, and that Political Economy has never fallen into an

error.

What separates, radically and profoundly, the two schools is their

difference of methods. The one school, like the astrologer and the

alchemist, proceeds on hypothesis; the other, like the astronomer and

the chemist, proceeds on observation.

Two astronomers, observing the same fact, may not be able to arrive

at the same result.

In spite of this transient disagreement, they feel themselves

united by the common process which sooner or later will cause

that disagreement to disappear. They recognise each other as of

the same communion. But between the astronomer, who observes, and

the astrologer, who imagines, the gulf is impassable, although

accidentally they may sometimes approximate.

The same thing holds of Political Economy and Socialism.

The Economists observe man, the laws of his organization, and the

social relations which result from those laws. The Socialists conjure

up an imaginary society, and then create a human heart to suit that

society. [p037]

Now, if philosophy never errs, philosophers often do. I deny not that

Economists may make false observations; I will add, that they must

necessarily begin by doing so.

But, then, what happens? If men’s interests are harmonious, it

follows that every incorrect observation will lead logically to

antagonism. What, then, are the Socialist tactics? They gather from

the works of Economists certain incorrect observations, follow

them out to their consequences, and show those consequences to be

disastrous. Thus far they are right. Then they set to work upon the

observer, whom we may assume to be Malthus or Ricardo. Still they

have right on their side. But they do not stop there. They turn

against the science of Political Economy itself, accusing it of being

heartless, and leading to evil. Here they do violence to reason

and justice, inasmuch as science is not responsible for incorrect

observation. At length they proceed another step. They lay the blame

on society itself:—they threaten to overthrow it for the purpose

of reconstructing the edifice:—and why? Because, say they, it is

proved by science that society as now constituted is urged onwards

to destruction. In this they outrage good sense—for either science

is not mistaken, and then why attack it?—or it is mistaken, and in

that case they should leave society in repose, since society is not

menaced.

But these tactics, illogical as they are, have not been the less

fatal to economic science, especially when the cultivators of that

science have had the misfortune, from a chivalrous and not unnatural

feeling, to render themselves liable, ‹singuli in solidum›, for their

predecessors and for one another. Science is a queen whose gait

should be frank and free:—the atmosphere of the ‹coterie› stifles her.

I have already said that in Political Economy every erroneous

proposition must lead ultimately to antagonism. On the other hand,

it is impossible that the voluminous works of even the most eminent

economists should not include some erroneous propositions. It is

ours to mark and to rectify them in the interest of science and of

society. If we persist in maintaining them for the honour of the

fraternity, we shall not only expose ourselves, which is of little

consequence, but we shall expose truth itself, which is a serious

affair, to the attacks of Socialism.

To return: the conclusion of the Economists is for Liberty. But

in order that this conclusion should take hold of men’s minds and

hearts, it must be solidly based on this fundamental principle, that

interests, left to themselves, tend to harmonious combinations, and

to the progressive preponderance of the general good. [p038]

Now many Economists, some of them writers of authority, have advanced

propositions, which, step by step, lead logically to ‹absolute evil›,

necessary injustice, fatal and progressive inequality, and inevitable

pauperism, etc.

Thus, there are very few of them who, so far as I know, have not

attributed ‹value› to natural agents, to the gifts which God has

vouchsafed ‹gratuitously› to His creatures. The word ‹value› implies

that we do not give away the portion of it which we possess except

for an equivalent consideration. Here, then, we have men, especially

proprietors of land, bartering for effective labour the gifts of God,

and receiving recompense for utilities in the creation of which their

labour has had no share—an evident, but a necessary, injustice, say

these writers.

Then comes the famous theory of Ricardo, which may be summed up in a

few words: The price of the necessaries of life depends on the labour

required to produce them on the least productive land in cultivation.

Then the increase of population obliges us to have recourse to soils

of lower and lower fertility. Consequently mankind at large (all

except the landowners) are forced to give a larger and larger amount

of labour for the same amount of subsistence; or, what comes to the

same thing, to receive a less and less amount of subsistence for

the same amount of labour,—whilst the landowners see their rentals

swelling by every new descent to soils of an inferior quality.

Conclusion: Progressive opulence of men of leisure—progressive

poverty of men of labour; in other words, fatal inequality.

Finally, we have the still more celebrated theory of Malthus, that

population has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the means

of subsistence, and that at every given moment of the life of man.

Now, men cannot be happy, or live in peace, if they have not the

means of support; and there are but two obstacles to this increase

of population which is always threatening us, namely, a diminished

number of births, or an increase of mortality in all its dreadful

forms. Moral restraint, to be efficacious, must be universal, and

no one expects that. There remains, then, only the repressive

obstacles—vice, poverty, war, pestilence, famine; in other words,

pauperism and death.

I forbear to mention other systems of a less general bearing,

which tend in the same way to bring us to a dead-stand. Monsieur

de Tocqueville, for example, and many others, tell us, if we admit

the right of primogeniture, we arrive at the most concentrated

aristocracy—if we do not admit it, we arrive at ruin and sterility.

[p039]

And it is worthy of remark, that these four melancholy theories do

not in the least decree run foul of each other. If they did, we might

console ourselves with the reflection that they are alike false,

since they refute each other. But no,—they are in unison, and make

part of one and the same general theory, which, supported by numerous

and specious facts, would seem to explain the spasmodic state of

modern society, and, fortified by the assent of many masters in the

science, presents itself with frightful authority to the mind of the

confused and discouraged inquirer.

We have still to discover how the authors of this melancholy theory

have been able to lay down, as their principle, the ‹harmony of

interests›, and, as their conclusion, Liberty.

For if mankind are indeed urged on by the laws of Value towards

Injustice,—by the laws of Rent towards Inequality,—by the laws of

Population towards Poverty,—by the laws of Inheritance towards

Sterility,—we can no longer affirm that God has made the moral as

He has made the natural world—a harmonious work; we must bow the

head and confess that it has pleased Him to base it on revolting and

irremediable dissonance.

You must not suppose, young men, that the Socialists have refuted

and repudiated what, in order to wound no one’s susceptibilities,

I shall call the theory of dissonances. No; let them say as they

will, they have assumed the truth of that theory, and it is just

because they have assumed its truth that they propose to substitute

Constraint for Liberty, artificial for natural organization, their

own inventions for the work of God. They say to their opponents (and

in this, perhaps, they are more consistent than the latter),—if, as

you have told us, human interests when left to themselves tend to

harmonious combination, we cannot do better than welcome and magnify

Liberty as you do. But you have demonstrated unanswerably that those

interests, if allowed to develop themselves freely, urge mankind

towards injustice, inequality, pauperism, and sterility. Your theory,

then, provokes reaction precisely because it is true. We desire to

break up the existing fabric of society just because it is subject to

the fatal laws which you have described; we wish to make trial of our

own powers, seeing that the power of God has miscarried.

Thus they are agreed as regards the premises, and differ only on the

conclusion.

The Economists to whom I have alluded say that ‹the great

providential laws urge on society to evil›; but that we must take

care not to disturb the action of those laws, because such action

is happily impeded by the secondary laws which retard the final

[p040] catastrophe; and arbitrary intervention can only enfeeble the

embankment, without stopping the fatal rising of the flood.

The Socialists say that ‹the great providential laws urge on society

to evil›; we must therefore abolish them, and select others from our

inexhaustible storehouse.

The Catholics say that ‹the great providential laws urge on society

to evil›; we must therefore escape from them by renouncing worldly

interests, and taking refuge in abnegation, sacrifice, asceticism,

and resignation.

It is in the midst of this tumult, of these cries of anguish and

distress, of these exhortations to subversion, or to resignation and

despair, that I endeavour to obtain a hearing for this assertion, in

presence of which, if it be correct, all difference of opinion must

disappear—‹it is not true that the great providential laws urge on

society to evil›.

It is with reference to the conclusions to be deduced from their

common premises that the various schools are divided and combat each

other. I deny those premises, and I ask, Is not that the best way of

putting an end to these disputes?

The leading idea of this work, the harmony of interests, is ‹simple›.

Is simplicity not the touchstone of truth? The laws of light,

of sound, of motion, appear to us to be all the truer for being

simple—Why should it be otherwise with the law of interests?

This idea is ‹conciliatory›. What is more fitted to reconcile parties

than to demonstrate the harmony of the various branches of industry:

the harmony of classes, of nations, even of doctrines?

It is ‹consoling›, seeing that it points out what is false in those

systems which adopt, as their conclusion, progressive evil.

It is ‹religious›, for it assures us that it is not only the

celestial but the social mechanism which reveals the wisdom of God,

and declares His glory.

It is ‹practical›, for one can scarcely conceive anything more easily

reduced to practice than this,—to allow men to labour, to exchange,

to learn, to associate, to act and react on each other,—for,

according to the laws of Providence, nothing can result from their

intelligent spontaneity but order, harmony, progress, good, and

better still; better ‹ad infinitum›.

Bravo, you will say; here we have the optimism of the Economists

with a vengeance! These Economists are so much the slaves of their

own systems that they shut their eyes to facts for fear of seeing

them. In the face of all the poverty, all the injustice, all the

oppressions which desolate humanity, they coolly deny the existence

of evil. The smell of revolutionary gunpowder does not [p041] reach

their blunted senses—the pavement of the barricades has no voice

for them; and were society to crumble to pieces before their eyes,

they would still keep repeating, “All is for the best in the best of

worlds.”

No indeed,—we do not think that all is for the best; but I have faith

in the wisdom of the laws of Providence, and for the same reason I

have faith in Liberty.

The question is, Have we Liberty?

The question is, Do these laws act in their plenitude, or is their

action not profoundly troubled by the countervailing action of human

institutions?

Deny evil! deny suffering! Who can? We must forget that our subject

is man. We must forget that we are ourselves men. The laws of

Providence may be regarded as harmonious without their necessarily

excluding evil. Enough that evil has its explanation and its mission,

that it checks and limits itself, that it destroys itself by its

own action, and that each suffering prevents a greater suffering by

repressing the cause of suffering.

Society has for its element man, who is a ‹free› agent; and

since man is free, he may choose,—since he may choose, he may be

mistaken,—since he may be mistaken, he may suffer.

I go further. I say he must be mistaken and suffer—for he begins his

journey in ignorance, and for ignorance there are endless and unknown

roads, all of which, except one, lead to error.

Now, every Error engenders suffering; but either suffering reacts

upon the man who errs, and then it brings Responsibility into

play,—or, if it affects others who are free from error, it sets in

motion the marvellous reactionary machinery of Solidarity.

The action of these laws, combined with the faculty which has been

vouchsafed to us of connecting effects with their causes, must bring

us back, by means of this very suffering, into the way of what is

good and true.

Thus, not only do we not deny the existence of evil, but we

acknowledge that it has a mission in the social, as it has in the

material world.

But, in order that it should fulfil this mission, we must not stretch

Solidarity artificially, so as to destroy Responsibility,—in other

words, we must respect Liberty.

Should human institutions step in to oppose in this respect the

divine laws, evil would not the less flow from error, only it would

shift its position. It would strike those whom it ought not to

strike. It would be no longer a warning and a monitor. It would no

longer have the tendency to diminish and die away by its own [p042]

proper action. Its action would be continued, and increase, as would

happen in the physiological world if the imprudences and excesses of

the men of one hemisphere were felt in their unhappy effects only by

the inhabitants of the opposite hemisphere.

Now this is precisely the tendency not only of most of our

governmental institutions, but likewise, and above all, of those

which we seek to establish as remedies for the evils which we

suffer. Under the philanthropical pretext of developing among men

a factitious Solidarity, we render Responsibility more and more

inert and inefficacious. By an improper application of the public

force, we alter the relation of labour to its remuneration, we

disturb the laws of industry and of exchange, we offer violence to

the natural development of education, we give a wrong direction to

capital and labour, we twist and invert men’s ideas, we inflame

absurd pretensions, we dazzle with chimerical hopes, we occasion a

strange loss of human power, we change the centres of population, we

render experience itself useless,—in a word, we give to all interests

artificial foundations, we set them by the ears, and then we exclaim

that—Interests are antagonistic: Liberty has done all the evil,—let

us denounce and stifle Liberty.

And yet, as this sacred word has still power to stir men’s hearts

and make them palpitate, we despoil Liberty of its ‹prestige› by

depriving it of its name, and it is under the title of ‹Competition›

that the unhappy victim is led to the sacrificial altar, amid the

applause of a mob stretching forth their hands to receive the

shackles of servitude.

It is not enough, then, to exhibit, in their majestic harmony, the

natural laws of the social order; we must also explain the disturbing

causes which paralyze their action; and this is what I have

endeavoured to do in the second part of this work.

I have striven to avoid controversy; and, in doing so, I have no

doubt lost an opportunity of giving to the principles which I desire

to disseminate the stability which results from a thorough and

searching discussion. And yet, might not the attention of the reader,

seduced by digressions, have been diverted from the argument taken as

a whole? If I exhibit the edifice as it stands, what matters it in

what light it has been regarded by others, even by those who first

taught me to look at it?

And now I would appeal with confidence to men of all schools, who

prefer truth, justice, and the public good to their own systems.

Economists! like you, I am the advocate of «Liberty»; and if I

succeed in shaking some of those premises which sadden your generous

hearts, perhaps you will see in this an additional incentive to love

and to serve our sacred cause. [p043]

Socialists! you have faith in «Association». I conjure you,

after having read this book, to say whether society as it is now

constituted, apart from its abuses and shackles, that is to say,

under the condition of Liberty, is not the most beautiful, the most

complete, the most durable, the most universal, the most equitable,

of all Associations.

‹Egalitaires!› you admit but one principle, the «Mutuality of

Services». Let human transactions be free, and I assert that they

are not and cannot be anything else than a reciprocal exchange of

‹services›,—services always diminishing in ‹value›, always increasing

in ‹utility›.

Communists! you desire that men, become brothers, should enjoy in

common the goods which Providence has lavished on them. My aim is to

demonstrate that society as it exists has only to acquire freedom

in order to realize and surpass your wishes and your hopes. For all

things are common to all, on the single condition that each man takes

the trouble to gather what God has given, which is very natural; or

remunerate freely those who take that trouble for him, which is very

just.

Christians of all communions! unless you stand alone in casting doubt

on the divine wisdom, manifested in the most magnificent of all God’s

works which have come within the range of our knowledge, you will

find in this book no expression which can shock the severest morals,

or the most mysterious dogmas of your faith.

Proprietors! whatever be the extent of your possessions, if I

establish that your rights, now so much contested, are limited, like

those of the most ordinary workman, to the receiving of services in

exchange for real and substantial services which have been actually

rendered by you, or by your forefathers, those rights will henceforth

repose on a basis which cannot lie shaken.

‹Prolétaires!› men who live by wages! I undertake to demonstrate that

you obtain the fruits of the land of which you are not the owners

with less pain and effort than if you were obliged to raise those

fruits by your own direct labour,—with less than if that land had

been given to you in its primitive state, and before being prepared

for cultivation by labour.

Capitalists and labourers! I believe myself in a position to

establish the law that, in proportion as capital is accumulated,

the ‹absolute› share of the total product falling to the capitalist

increases, and his ‹proportional› share is diminished; while both

the ‹absolute› and ‹relative› share of the product falling to the

labourer is augmented,—the reverse effects being produced when

capital is lessened or dissipated.[14] If this law be established,

the obvious deduction is, [p044] a harmony of interests between

labourers and those who employ them.

Disciples of Malthus! sincere and calumniated philanthropists, whose

only fault has been in warning mankind against the effects of a law

which you believe to be fatal, I shall have to submit to you another

law more reassuring:—“‹Cæteris paribus›, increasing density of

population is equivalent to increasing facility of production.” And

if it be so, I am certain it will not be you who will grieve to see a

stumbling-block removed from the threshold of our favourite science.

Men of spoliation! you who, by force or fraud, by law or in spite of

law, batten on the people’s substance; you, who live by the errors

you propagate, by the ignorance you cherish, by the wars you light

up, by the trammels with which you hamper trade; you who tax labour

after having rendered it unproductive, making it lose a sheaf for

every handful you yourselves pluck from it; you who cause yourselves

to be paid for creating obstacles, in order to get afterwards paid

for partially removing those obstacles; incarnations of egotism

in its worst sense; parasitical excrescences of a vicious policy,

prepare for the sharpest and most unsparing criticism. To you alone

I make no appeal, for the design of this book is to sacrifice

you, or rather to sacrifice your unjust pretensions. In vain we

cherish conciliation. There are two principles which can never be

reconciled—Liberty and Constraint.

If the laws of Providence are harmonious, it is when they act with

freedom, without which there is no harmony. Whenever, then, we remark

an absence of harmony, we may be sure that it proceeds from an

absence of liberty, an absence of justice. Oppressors, spoliators,

contemners of justice, you can have no part in the universal harmony,

for it is you who disturb it.

Do I mean to say that the effect of this work may be to enfeeble

power, to shake its stability, to diminish its authority? My design

is just the opposite. But let me not be misunderstood.

It is the business of political science to distinguish between what

ought and what ought not to fall under State control; and in making

this important distinction we must not forget that the State always

acts through the intervention of Force. The services which it renders

us, and the services which it exacts from us in return, are alike

imposed upon us under the name of contributions. [p045]

The question then comes back to this: What are the things which

men have a right to impose upon each other ‹by force›? Now, I know

but one thing in this situation, and that is ‹Justice›. I have no

right to ‹force› any one whatever to be religious, charitable, well

educated, or industrious; but I have a right to ‹force› him to be

‹just›,—this is a case of legitimate defence.

Now, individuals in the aggregate can possess no right which did

not pre-exist in individuals as such. If, then, the employment of

individual force is justified only by legitimate defence, the fact

that the action of government is always manifested by Force should

lead us to conclude that it is essentially limited to the maintenance

of order, security, and justice.

All action of governments beyond this limit is a usurpation upon

conscience, upon intelligence, upon industry; in a word, upon human

liberty.

This being granted, we ought to set ourselves unceasingly and without

compunction to emancipate the entire domain of private enterprise

from the encroachments of power. Without this we shall not have

gained Freedom, or the free play of those laws of harmony which God

has provided for the development and progress of the human race.

Will Power by this means be enfeebled? Will it have lost in stability

because it has lost in extent? Will it have less authority because

it has fewer functions to discharge? Will it attract to itself less

respect because it calls forth fewer complaints? Will it be more

the sport of factions, when it has reduced those enormous budgets

and that coveted influence which are the baits and allurements

of faction? Will it encounter greater danger when it has less

responsibility?

To me it seems evident, that to confine public force to its one,

essential, undisputed, beneficent mission,—a mission desired and

accepted by all,—would be the surest way of securing to it respect

and universal support. In that case, I see not whence could

proceed systematic opposition, parliamentary struggles, street

insurrections, revolutions, sudden changes of fortune, factions,

illusions, the pretensions of all to govern under all forms, those

dangerous and absurd systems which teach the people to look to

government for everything, that compromising diplomacy, those wars

which are always in perspective, or armed truces which are nearly

as fatal, those crushing taxes which it is impossible to levy on

any equitable principle, that absorbing and unnatural mixing up of

politics with everything, those great artificial displacements of

capital and labour, which are the source of fruitless heartburnings,

fluctuations, stoppages, and commercial crises. All these causes of

trouble, of [p046] irritation, of disaffection, of covetousness,

and of disorder, and a thousand others, would no longer have any

foundation, and the depositaries of power, instead of disturbing,

would contribute to the universal harmony,—a harmony which does not

indeed exclude evil, but which leaves less and less room for those

ills which are inseparable from the ignorance and perversity of our

feeble nature, and whose mission it is to prevent or chastise that

ignorance and perversity.

Young men! in these days in which a grievous Scepticism would seem

to be at once the effect and the punishment of the anarchy of ideas

which prevails, I shall esteem myself happy if this work, as you

proceed in its perusal, should bring to your lips the consoling

words, «I believe»,—words of a sweet-smelling savour, which are at

once a refuge and a force, which are said to remove mountains, and

stand at the head of the Christian’s creed—I believe. “I believe,

not with a blind and submissive faith, for we are not concerned here

with the mysteries of revelation, but with a rational and scientific

faith, befitting things which are left to man’s investigation.—I

believe that He who has arranged the material universe has not

withheld His regards from the arrangements of the social world.—I

believe that He has combined, and caused to move in harmony, free

agents as well as inert molecules.—I believe that His overruling

Providence shines forth as strikingly, if not more so, in the laws

to which He has subjected men’s interests and men’s wills, as in the

laws which He has imposed on weight and velocity.—I believe that

everything in human society, even what is apparently injurious, is

the cause of improvement and of progress.—I believe that Evil tends

to Good, and calls it forth, whilst Good cannot tend to Evil; whence

it follows that Good must in the end predominate.—I believe that the

invincible social tendency is a constant approximation of men towards

a common moral, intellectual, and physical level, with, at the same

time, a progressive and indefinite elevation of that level.—I believe

that all that is necessary to the gradual and peaceful development

of humanity is that its tendencies should not be disturbed, but have

the liberty of their movements restored.—I believe these things, not

because I desire them, not because they satisfy my heart, but because

my judgment accords to them a deliberate assent.”

Ah! whenever you come to pronounce these words, «I believe», you will

be anxious to propagate your creed, and the social problem will soon

be resolved, for, let them say what they will, it is not of difficult

solution. Men’s interests are harmonious,—the solution, then, lies

entirely in this one word—«Liberty». [p047]

HARMONIES

OF

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

I.

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL ORGANIZATION.[15]

Is it quite certain that the mechanism of society, like the mechanism

of the heavenly bodies, or that of the human frame, is subject to

general laws? Does it form a harmoniously ‹organized› whole? Or

rather, do we not remark in it the absence of all ‹organization›? Is

not an ‹organization› the very thing which all men of heart and of

the future, all advanced publicists, all the pioneers of thought,

are in search of at the present day? Is society anything else than

a multitude of individuals placed in juxtaposition, acting without

concert, and given up to the movements of an anarchical liberty? Are

our countless masses, after having with difficulty recovered their

liberties one after the other, not now awaiting the advent of some

great genius to arrange them into a harmonious whole? Having pulled

down all, must we not now set about laying the foundation of a new

edifice.

And yet, it may be asked, have these questions any other meaning than

this: Can society dispense with written laws, rules, and repressive

measures? Is every man to make an unlimited use of his faculties,

even when in so doing he strikes at the liberties of [p048] another,

or inflicts injury on society at large? In a word, must we recognise

in the maxim, ‹laissez faire, laissez passer›, the absolute formula

of political economy? If that were the question, no one could

hesitate about the solution. The economists do not say that a man may

kill, sack, burn, and that society has only to be quiescent,—‹laisser

faire›. They say that even in the absence of all law, society

would resist such acts; and that consequently such resistance is a

general law of humanity. They say that civil and penal laws must

regulate, and not counteract, those general laws the existence of

which ‹they presuppose›. There is a wide difference between a social

organization, founded on the general laws of human nature, and an

artificial organization, invented, imagined,—which takes no account

of these laws, or repudiates and despises them,—such an organization,

in short, as many modern schools would impose upon us.

For, if there be general laws which act independently of written

laws, and of which the latter can only regulate the action, we must

study these ‹general laws›. They can be made the object of a science,

and Political Economy exists. If, on the other hand, society is a

human invention, if men are regarded only as inert matter, to which a

great genius, like Rousseau, must impart sentiment and will, movement

and life, then there is no such science as Political Economy.

There are only an indefinite number of possible and contingent

arrangements, and the fate of nations must depend upon the ‹Founder›

to whom chance shall have committed their destinies.

In order to prove that society is subject to general laws, no

elaborate dissertation is necessary. All I shall do is to notice

certain facts, which, although trite, are not the less important.

Rousseau has said, ‹Il faut beaucoup de philosophie pour observer

les faits qui sont trop près de nous›—“Much philosophy is needed to

observe accurately things which are too near us.” And such are the

social phenomena in the midst of which we live and move. Habit has

so familiarized us with these phenomena that we cease to observe

them, unless something striking and exceptional forces them on our

attention.

Let us take, by way of illustration, a man in the humble walks of

life—a village carpenter, for instance,—and observe the various

services he renders to society, and receives from it; we shall not

fail to be struck with the enormous disproportion which is apparent.

This man employs his day’s labour in planing boards, and making

tables and chests of drawers. He complains of his condition; yet in

truth what does he receive from society in exchange for his work?

[p049]

First of all, on getting up in the morning, he dresses himself; and

he has himself personally made none of the numerous articles of

which his clothing consists. Now, in order to put at his disposal

this clothing, simple as it is, an enormous amount of labour,

industry, and locomotion, and many ingenious inventions, must have

been employed. Americans must have produced cotton, Indians indigo,

Frenchmen wool and flax, Brazilians hides; and all these materials

must have been transported to various towns where they have been

worked up, spun, woven, dyed, etc.

Then he breakfasts. In order to procure him the bread which he eats

every morning, land must have been cleared, enclosed, laboured,

manured, sown; the fruits of the soil must have been preserved

with care from pillage, and security must have reigned among an

innumerable multitude of people; the wheat must have been cut down,

ground into flour, kneaded, and prepared; iron, steel, wood, stone,

must have been converted by industry into instruments of labour; some

men must have employed animal force, others water power, etc.; all

matters, of which each, taken singly, presupposes a mass of labour,

whether we have regard to space or time, of incalculable amount.

In the course of the day this man will have occasion to use sugar,

oil, and various other materials and utensils.

He sends his son to school, there to receive an education, which,

although limited, nevertheless implies anterior study and research,

and an extent of knowledge which startles the imagination.

He goes out. He finds the street paved and lighted.

A neighbour goes to law with him. He finds advocates to plead his

cause, judges to maintain his rights, officers of justice to put the

sentence in execution; all which implies acquired knowledge, and,

consequently, intelligence and means of subsistence.

He goes to church. It is a stupendous monument, and the book which

he carries thither is a monument perhaps still more stupendous, of

human intelligence. He is taught morals, he has his mind enlightened,

his soul elevated; and in order to this we must suppose that another

man had previously frequented schools and libraries, consulted all

the sources of human learning, and while so employed had been able to

live without occupying himself directly with the wants of the body.

If our artizan undertakes a journey, he finds that, in order to save

him time and exertion, other men have removed and levelled the soil,

filled up valleys, hewed down mountains, united the banks of rivers,

diminished friction, placed wheeled carriages on blocks [p050] of

sandstone or bands of iron, and brought the force of animals and the

power of steam into subjection to human wants.

It is impossible not to be struck with the measureless disproportion

which exists between the enjoyments which this man derives from

society and what he could obtain by his own unassisted exertions. I

venture to say that in a single day he consumes more than he could

himself produce in ten centuries.

What renders the phenomenon still more strange is, that all other men

are in the same situation. Every individual member of society has

absorbed millions of times more than he could himself produce; yet

there is no mutual robbery. And, if we regard things more nearly,

we perceive that the carpenter has paid, in services, for all the

services which others have rendered to him. If we bring the matter

to a strict reckoning, we shall be convinced that he has received

nothing which he has not paid for by means of his modest industry;

and that every one who, at whatever interval of time or space, has

been employed in his service has received, or will receive, his

remuneration.

The social mechanism, then, must be very ingenious and very powerful,

since it leads to this singular result, that each man, even he whose

lot is cast in the humblest condition, has more enjoyment in one day

than he could himself produce in many ages.

Nor is this all. The mechanism of society will appear still more

ingenious, if the reader will be pleased to turn his regards upon

himself.

I suppose him a plain student. What is his business in Paris? How

does he live? It cannot be disputed that society places at his

disposal food, clothing, lodging, amusements, books, means of

instruction, a multitude of things, in short, which would take a

long time not only to produce, but even to explain how they were

produced. And what services has this student rendered to society

in return for all these things which have exacted so much labour,

toil, fatigue, physical and intellectual effort, so many inventions,

transactions, and conveyances hither and thither? None at all. He is

only preparing to render services. Why, then, have so many millions

of men abandoned to him the fruits of their positive, effective,

and productive labour? Here is the explanation:—The father of this

student, who was a lawyer, perhaps, or a physician, or a merchant,

had formerly rendered services—it may be to society in China,—and

had been remunerated, not by immediate services, but by a ‹title› to

demand services, at the time, in the place and under the form that

might be most suitable and convenient to him. [p051] It is of these

past and distant services that society is now acquitting itself, and

(astonishing as it seems) if we follow in thought the infinite range

of transactions which must have had place in order to this result

being effected, we shall see that every one has been remunerated

for his labour and services; and that these ‹titles› have passed

from hand to hand, sometimes divided into parts, sometimes grouped

together, until, in the consumption of this student, the entire

account has been squared and balanced. Is not this a very remarkable

phenomenon?

We should shut our eyes to the light of day, did we fail to perceive

that society could not present combinations so complicated, and in

which civil and penal laws have so little part, unless it obeyed

the laws of a mechanism wonderfully ingenious. The study of that

mechanism is the business of ‹Political Economy›.

Another thing worthy of observation is, that of the incalculable

number of transactions to which the student owed his daily

subsistence, there was not perhaps a millionth part which contributed

to it directly. The things of which he has now the enjoyment, and

which are innumerable, were produced by men the greater part of

whom have long since disappeared from the earth. And yet they were

remunerated as they expected to be, although he who now profits by

the fruits of their labours had done nothing for them. They knew him

not; they will never know him. He who reads this page, at the very

moment he is reading it, has the power, although perhaps he has no

consciousness of it, to put in motion men of every country, of all

races, I had almost said of all time—white, black, red, tawny—to

make bygone generations, and generations still unborn, contribute to

his present enjoyments; and he owes this extraordinary power to the

services which his father had formerly rendered to other men, who

apparently had nothing in common with those whose labour is now put

in requisition. Yet despite all differences of time and space, so

just and equitable a balance has been struck, that every one has been

remunerated, and has received exactly what he calculated he ought to

receive.

But, in truth, could all this have happened, and such phenomena been

witnessed, unless society had had a natural and wise ‹organization›,

which acts, as it were, unknown to us?

Much has been said in our day of inventing a new ‹organization›. Is

it quite certain, that any thinker, whatever genius we may attribute

to him, whatever power we may suppose him to possess, could imagine

and introduce an organization superior to that of which I have just

sketched some of the results? [p052]

But what would be thought of it if I described its machinery, its

springs, and its motive powers?

The machinery consists of men, that is to say, of beings capable of

learning, reflecting, reasoning, of being deceived and undeceived,

and consequently of contributing to the amelioration or deterioration

of the mechanism itself. They are capable of pleasure and pain; and

it is that which makes them not only the wheels but the springs of

the mechanism. They are also the motive power; for it is in them that

the active principle resides. More than that, they are themselves the

very end and object of the mechanism, since it is into individual

pains and enjoyments that the whole definitely resolves itself.

Now it has been remarked, and it is unhappily obvious enough, that

in the action, the development, and even the progress (by those who

acknowledge progress) of this powerful mechanism, many of the wheels

have been inevitably, fatally injured; and that, as regards a great

number of human beings, the sum of unmerited suffering surpasses by

much the sum of enjoyment.

This view of the subject has led many candid minds, many generous

hearts, to suspect the mechanism itself. They have repudiated it,

they have refused to study it, they have attacked, often with

passion, those who have investigated and explained its laws. They

have risen against the nature of things, and at length they have

proposed to ‹organize› society upon a new plan, in which injustice

and suffering and error shall have no place.

God forbid that I should set myself against intentions manifestly

pure and philanthropical! But I should desert my principles, and do

violence to the dictates of my own conscience, did I not declare that

these men are in my opinion upon a wrong path.

In the first place, they are reduced, by the very nature of their

propagandism, to the melancholy necessity of disowning the good which

society develops, of denying its progress, of imputing to it all

sufferings, of hunting after these with avidity, and exaggerating

them beyond measure.

When a man believes that he has discovered a social organization

different from that which results from the ordinary tendencies of

human nature, it is quite necessary, in order to obtain acceptance

for his invention, to paint the organization he wishes to abolish

in the most sombre colours. Thus the publicists to whom I am

alluding, after having proclaimed enthusiastically, and perhaps

with exaggeration, the perfectibility of man, fall into the strange

contradiction of maintaining that society is becoming more [p053]

and more deteriorated. According to them, men are a thousand times

more unhappy than they were in ancient times under the feudal

‹régime›, and the yoke of slavery. The world is become a hell. Were

it possible to conjure up the Paris of the tenth century, I venture

to think that such a thesis would be found untenable.

Then they are led to condemn the very mainspring of human action—I

mean a regard to ‹personal interest›, because it has brought about

such a state of things. Let us remark that man is so organized

as to seek for enjoyment and avoid suffering. From this source I

allow that all social evils take their rise—war, slavery, monopoly,

privilege; but from the same source springs all that is good, since

the satisfaction of wants and repugnance to suffering are the motives

of human action. The business then is to discover whether this

incitement to action, by its universality—from individual becoming

social—is not in itself a principle of progress.

At all events, do the inventors of new organizations not perceive

that this principle, inherent in the very nature of man, will follow

them into their systems, and that there it will make greater havoc

than in our natural organization, in which the interest and unjust

pretensions of one are at least restrained by the resistance of

all? These writers always make two inadmissible suppositions—the

first is, that society, such as they conceive it, will be directed

by infallible men denuded of this motive of self-interest; and,

secondly, that the masses will allow themselves to be directed by

these men.

Finally, these system-makers appear to give themselves no trouble

about the means of execution. How are they to establish their system?

How are they to induce all mankind at once to give up the principle

upon which they now act—the attraction of enjoyment, and the

repugnance to pain? It would be necessary, as Rousseau has said, ‹to

change the moral and physical constitution of man›.

In order to induce men at once to throw aside, as a worn-out garment,

the existing social order in which the human race has lived and been

developed from the beginning to our day, to adopt an organization of

human invention and become docile parts of another mechanism, there

are, it seems to me, only two means which can be employed—Force, or

Universal Consent.

The founder of the new system must have at his disposal a force

capable of overcoming all resistance, so that humanity shall be in

his hands only as so much melting wax to be moulded and [p054]

fashioned at his pleasure—or he must obtain by persuasion an assent

so complete, so exclusive, so blind even, as to render unnecessary

the employment of force.

I defy any one to point out to me a third means of establishing or

introducing into human practice a ‹Phalanstère›,[16] or any other

artificial social organization.

Now, if there be only two assumed means, and if we have demonstrated

that the one is as impracticable as the other, we have proved that

these system-makers are losing both their time and their trouble.

As regards the disposal of a material force which should subject

to them all the kings and peoples of the earth, this is what these

dotards, senile as they are, have never dreamt of. King Alphonsus

had presumption and folly enough to exclaim, that “If he had been

taken into God’s counsels, the planetary system should have been

better arranged.” But although he set his ‹wisdom› above that of the

Creator, he was not mad enough to wish to struggle with the ‹power›

of Omnipotence, and history does not tell us that he ever actually

tried to make the stars turn according to the laws of his invention.

Descartes likewise contented himself with constructing a tiny world

with dice and strings, knowing well that he was not ‹strong› enough

to remove the universe. We know no one but Xerxes who, in the

intoxication of his power, dared to say to the waves, “Thus far shall

ye come, and no farther.” The billows did not recede before Xerxes,

but Xerxes retreated before the billows; and without this humiliating

but wise precaution he would certainly have been drowned.

Force, then, is wanting to the organizers who would subject humanity

to their experiments. When they shall have gained over to their cause

the Russian autocrat, the shah of Persia, the khan of Tartary, and

all the other tyrants of the world, they will find that they still

want the power to distribute mankind into groups and classes, and

to annihilate the general laws of property, exchange, inheritance,

and family; for even in Russia, in Persia, and in Tartary, it is

necessary to a certain extent to consult the feelings, habits, and

prejudices of the people. Were the emperor of Russia to take it into

his head to set about ‹altering the moral and physical constitution

of his subjects›, it is probable that he would soon have a successor,

and that his successor would be better advised than to pursue the

experiment.

But since ‹force› is a means quite beyond the reach of our [p055]

numerous system-makers, no other resource remains to them but to

obtain ‹universal consent›.

There are two modes of obtaining this—namely, Persuasion and

Imposture.

Persuasion! but have we ever found two minds in perfect accord upon

all the points of a single science? How then are we to expect men

of various tongues, races, and manners, spread over the surface

of the globe, most of them unable to read, and destined to die

without having even heard the name of the ‹reformer›, to accept

with unanimity the universal science? What is it that you aim at?

At changing the whole system of labour, exchanges, and social

relations, domestic, civil, and religious; in a word, at altering

the whole physical and moral constitution of man; and you hope to

rally mankind, and bring them all under this new order of things, by

conviction!

Verily you undertake no light or easy duty.

When a man has got the length of saying to his fellows:

“For the last five thousand years there has been a misunderstanding

between God and man;

“From the days of Adam to our time, the human race have been upon

a wrong course—and, if only a little confidence is placed in me. I

shall soon bring them back to the right way;

“God desired mankind to pursue a different road altogether, but they

have taken their own way, and hence evil has been introduced into

the world. Let them turn round at my call, and take an opposite

direction, and universal happiness will then prevail.”

When a man sets out in this style it is much if he is believed by

five or six adepts; but between that and being believed by one

thousand millions of men the distance is great indeed.

And then, remember that the number of social inventions is as vast as

the domain of the imagination itself; that there is not a publicist

or writer on social economy who, after shutting himself up for a

few hours in his library, does not come forth with a ready-made

plan of artificial organization in his hand; that the inventions of

Fourier, Saint Simon, Owen, Cabet, Blanc, etc., have no resemblance

whatever to each other; that every day brings to light a new scheme;

and that people are entitled to have some little time given them

for reflection before they are called upon to reject the social

organization which God has vouchsafed them, and to make a definite

and irrevocable choice among so many newly invented systems. For what

would happen if, after having selected one of these plans, a better

should present itself! Can the institutions [p056] of property,

family, labour, exchange, be placed every day upon a new basis? Are

we to be forced to change the organization of society every morning?

“Thus, then,” says Rousseau, “the legislator being able to employ

effectively neither force nor persuasion, he is under the necessity

of having recourse to an authority of another kind, which carries us

along without violence, and persuades without convincing us.”

What is that authority? Imposture. Rousseau dares not give utterance

to the word, but, according to his invariable practice in such a

case, he places it behind the transparent veil of an eloquent tirade.

“This is the reason,” says he, “which in all ages has forced the

Fathers of nations to have recourse to the intervention of heaven,

and to give the credit of their own wisdom to the gods, in order

that the people, submitting to the laws of the state as to those ‹of

nature›, and acknowledging the same power in the formation of man

and of the commonwealth, should obey ‹freely› and bear willingly the

yoke of the public felicity. This ‹sublime› reason, which is above

the reach of vulgar souls, is that ‹whose decisions the legislator

puts into the mouth of the immortals›, in order to ‹carry along› by

divine authority those who cannot be moved by considerations of human

prudence. But it is not for every man to make ‹the gods› speak,” etc.

And in order that there may be no mistake, he cites Machiavel, and

allows him to complete the idea: “Mai non fu alcuno ordinatore de

leggi «STRAORDINARIE» in un popolo che non ricorresse a Dio.”

But why does Machiavel counsel us to have recourse to ‹God›, and

Rousseau to ‹the gods›, to the ‹immortals›? The reader can answer

that question for himself.

I do not indeed accuse the modern ‹Fathers of nations› of making

use of these unworthy deceptions. But when we place ourselves in

their point of view, we see that they readily allow themselves to

be hurried along by the desire of success. When an earnest and

philanthropical man is deeply convinced that he possesses a social

secret by means of which all his fellow-men may enjoy in this world

unlimited happiness,—when he sees clearly that he can practically

establish that idea neither by force nor by reasoning, and that

deception is his only resource, he is laid under a very strong

temptation. We know that the ministers of religion themselves, who

profess the greatest horror of untruth, have not rejected ‹pious

frauds›; and we see by the example of Rousseau [p057] (that

austere writer, who has inscribed at the head of all his works the

motto, ‹Vitam impendere vero›), that even a proud philosophy can

allow itself to be seduced by the attraction of a very different

maxim, namely, ‹The end justifies the means›. Why then should we be

surprised that modern ‹organisateurs› should think also “‹to place

their own wisdom to the credit of the gods, to put their decisions in

the mouths of the immortals, hurrying us along without violence and

persuading without convincing us›!”

We know that, after the example of Moses, Fourier has preceded his

Deuteronomy by a Genesis. Saint Simon and his disciples had gone

still farther in their apostolic senilities. Others, more discreet,

attached themselves to a latitudinarian faith, modified to suit their

views, under the name of ‹néochristianisme›; and every one must be

struck with the tone of mystic affectation which nearly all our

modern reformers have introduced into their sermons.

Efforts of this kind have served only to prove one thing, and it is

not unimportant—namely, that in our days the man is not always a

prophet who wishes to be one. In vain he proclaims himself a god; he

is believed by no one; neither by the public, nor by his compeers,

nor by himself.

Since I have spoken of Rousseau, I may be permitted to make here some

observations on that manufacturer of systems, inasmuch as they will

serve to point out the distinctions between artificial and natural

organization. This digression, besides, is not out of place, as the

‹Contrat Social› has again for some time been held forth as the

oracle of the future.

Rousseau was convinced that ‹isolation› was man’s ‹natural state›,

and, consequently, that ‹society› was a human invention. “‹The social

order›,” he says in the outset, “‹comes not from nature›, and is

therefore founded on convention.”

This philosopher, although a passionate lover of liberty, had a very

low opinion of men. He believed them to be quite incapable of forming

for themselves good institutions. The intervention of a founder, a

legislator, a father of nations, was therefore indispensable.

“A people subjected to laws,” says he, “should be the authors

of them. It belongs alone to those who associate to adjust the

conditions of their association; but how are they to regulate them?

By common consent, or by sudden inspiration? How should a blind

multitude, who frequently know not what they want, because they

rarely know what is good for them, accomplish of themselves an

enterprise so great and so difficult as the formation of a system

[p058] of laws? . . . Individuals perceive what is good, and reject

it—the public wishes for what is good, but cannot discover it:—all

are equally in want of guides. . . . Hence the necessity of a

legislator.”

That legislator, as we have already seen, “not being able to employ

force or reason, is under the necessity of having recourse to an

authority of another kind;” that is to say, in plain terms, to

deception.

It is impossible to give an idea of the immense height at which

Rousseau places his legislator above other men:

“Gods would be necessary in order to give laws to men. . . . He who

dares to found a nation must feel himself in a condition to change

human nature, so to speak, . . . to alter the constitution of man in

order to strengthen it. . . . He must take from man his own force, in

order to give him that which is foreign to him. . . . The lawgiver

is in all respects an extraordinary man in the state, . . . his

employment is a peculiar and superior function which has nothing in

common with ordinary government. . . . If it be true that a great

prince is a rare character, what must a great lawgiver be? The first

has only to follow the model which the other is to propose to him.

The one is the mechanician who invents the machine—the other merely

puts it together and sets it in motion.”

And what is the part assigned to human nature in all this? It is but

the base material of which the machine is composed.

In sober reality, is this anything else than pride elevated to

madness? Men are the materials of a machine, which the prince, the

ruling power, sets in motion. The lawgiver proposes the model.

The philosopher governs the lawgiver, placing himself thus at an

immeasurable distance above the vulgar herd, above the ruler, above

the lawgiver himself. He soars far above the human race, actuates it,

transforms it, moulds it, or rather he teaches the Fathers of nations

how they are to do all this.

But the founder of a nation must propose to himself a design. He has

his human material to set in motion, and he must direct its movements

to a definite result. As the people are deprived of the initiative,

and all depends upon the legislator, he must decide whether the

nation is to be commercial or agricultural, or a barbarous race

of hunters and fishers; but it is desirable at the same time that

the legislator should not himself be mistaken, and so do too much

violence to the nature of things.

Men in ‹agreeing› to enter into an association, or rather in

associating under the fiat of a lawgiver, have a precise and definite

design. “Thus,” says Rousseau, “the Hebrews, and, more recently, the

Arabs, had for their principal object religion; the [p059] Athenians,

letters; Carthage and Tyre, commerce; Rhodes, navigation; Sparta,

war; and Rome, virtue.”

What object is to determine us Frenchmen to leave the state of

isolation and of nature, in order to form a society? Or rather—as we

are only so much inert matter—the materials of a machine,—towards

what object shall our great founder direct us?

Following the ideas of Rousseau, there could be but little room for

learning, commerce, or navigation. War is a nobler object, and virtue

still more so. But there is another, the noblest of all: “The end of

every system of legislation is ‹liberty and equality›.”

But we must first of all discover what Rousseau understands by

liberty. To enjoy liberty, according to him, is not to be free,

but to ‹exercise the suffrage›, when we are “borne along without

violence, and persuaded without being convinced;” for then “we obey

with freedom, and bear willingly the yoke of the public felicity.”

“Among the Greeks,” he says, “all that the people had to do they did

for themselves, they were constantly assembled in the market-place;

they inhabited a genial climate; they were not avaricious; ‹slaves

did all their work; their grand concern was their liberty›.”

“The English people,” he remarks in another place, “believe

themselves free,—they are much mistaken. They are so only during the

election of their members of parliament; the moment the election is

over, they are slaves—they are nothing.”

The people, if they will be free, must, then, themselves perform all

duties in connexion with the public service, for it is in that that

liberty consists. They must be always voting and electing, always in

the market-place. Woe to him who takes it into his head to work for

his living! the moment a citizen begins to mind his own affairs, that

instant (to use Rousseau’s favourite phrase) ‹tout est perdu›—all is

over with him.

And yet the difficulty is by no means trifling. How are we to manage?

for, after all, before we can either practise virtue, or exercise

liberty, we must have the means of living.

We have already remarked the rhetorical veil under which Rousseau

conceals the word ‹Imposture›. We shall now see how, by another dash

of eloquence, he evades the conclusion of his whole work, which is

‹Slavery›.

“Your ungenial climate entails upon you additional wants. For six

months of the year you cannot frequent the market-place, your hoarse

voices cannot make themselves audible in the open air, and you fear

poverty more than slavery.”

“You see clearly that you cannot be free.” [p060]

“What! liberty maintain itself only by the aid of servitude? Very

likely!”

Had Rousseau stopt short at this dreadful word, the reader would have

been shocked. It was necessary therefore to have recourse to imposing

declamation, and Rousseau never fails in that.

“All things that are unnatural (it is society he is speaking of) are

inconvenient, and civil society more so than all the rest. There are

unfortunate situations in which one man cannot maintain his liberty

but at the expense of another, and where the citizen cannot be

entirely free unless the rigours of slavery are extreme. As for you,

modern people, you have no slavery, but you are yourselves slaves.

You purchase other men’s liberty with your own. In vain you boast of

this advantage. I see in it rather cowardice than humanity.”

I ask, does not this mean: Modern people, you would do infinitely

better not to be slaves, but to possess slaves?

I trust the reader will have the goodness to pardon this long

digression, which is by no means useless or inopportune. Rousseau

and his disciples of the Convention have been held up to us of late

as the apostles of human fraternity. Men for materials, a ruler

for mechanician, a father of nations for inventor, a philosopher

above them all—imposture for means, slavery for result,—is this the

fraternity which is promised us?

This work of Rousseau to which I have referred—the ‹Contrat

Social›—appears to me well fitted to exhibit the characteristics of

these artificial social organizations. The inventors of such systems

set out with the idea that society is a state contrary to nature,

and they seek to subject humanity to different combinations. They

forget that its motive power, its spring of action, is in itself.

They regard men as base materials, and aspire to impart to them

movement and will, sentiment and life; placing themselves at an

immeasurable height above the whole human race. These are features

common to all the inventors of social organizations. The inventions

are different—the inventors are alike.

Among the new arrangements which feeble mortals are invited to make

trial of, there is one which is presented to us in terms worthy of

attention. Its formula is: ‹Association voluntary and progressive›.

But ‹Political Economy› is founded exactly on the datum, that

‹society› is nothing else than ‹association› (such as the above three

words describe it)—association, very imperfect at first, because

man is imperfect; but improving as man improves, that is to say,

‹progressive›. [p061]

Is your object to effect a more intimate association between labour,

capital, and talent, insuring thereby to the members of the human

family a greater amount of material enjoyment—enjoyment more equally

distributed? If such associations are ‹voluntary›; if force and

constraint do not intervene; if the cost is defrayed by those who

enter these associations, without drawing upon those who refuse

to enter them, in what respect are they repugnant to Political

Economy? Is it not the business of Political Economy, as a science,

to examine the various forms in which men may unite their powers,

and divide their employments, with a view to greater and more widely

diffused prosperity? Does trade not frequently afford us examples

of two, three, or four persons uniting to form such associations?

Is ‹Métayage›[17] not a sort of informal association of capital

and labour? Have we not in recent times seen joint stock companies

formed which afford to the smallest capitals the opportunity of

taking part in the most extensive enterprizes? Have we not certain

manufactures in which it is sought to give the labourers an interest

in the profits? Does Political Economy condemn those efforts of men

to make their industry more productive and profitable? Does she

affirm anywhere that human nature has reached perfection? Quite the

contrary. I believe that there is no science which demonstrates more

clearly that society is still in its infancy.

But whatever hopes we may entertain as to the future, whatever

ideas we may conceive as to the measures that men may adopt for

the improvement of their mutual relations, and the diffusion of

happiness, knowledge, and morality, we must never forget that society

is an organization which has for its element a moral and intelligent

agent, endued with free will, and susceptible of improvement. If you

take away Liberty from man, he becomes nothing else than a rude and

wretched machine.

Liberty would seem not to be wanted in our days. In France, the

privileged land of fashion, freedom appears to be no longer in

repute. For myself, I say that he who rejects liberty has no faith

in human nature. Of late the distressing discovery seems to have

been made that liberty leads inevitably to monopoly.[18] This

monstrous union, this unnatural conjunction, does not exist; it is

the imaginary fruit of an error which the light of Political Economy

speedily [p062] dissipates. Freedom engender monopoly! Oppression

the offspring of liberty! To affirm this is to affirm that the

tendencies of human nature are radically bad—bad in themselves, in

their nature, in their essence. It is to affirm that the natural

bent of man is to deterioration; that the human mind is irresistibly

attracted towards error. To what end, then, our schools, our

studies, our inquiries, our discussions, unless to accelerate our

progress towards that fatal descent; since to teach men to judge, to

distinguish, to select, is only to teach them to commit suicide? And

if the tendencies of human nature are essentially perverse, where

are the organizers of new social systems to place the fulcrum of

that lever by which they hope to effect their changes? It must be

somewhere beyond the limits of the present domain of humanity. Do

they search for it in themselves—in their own minds and hearts? They

are not gods yet; they are men, and tending, consequently, along with

the whole human race, towards the fatal abyss. Shall they invoke the

intervention of the state? The state also is composed of men. They

must therefore prove that they form a distinct class, for whom the

general laws of society are not intended, since it is their province

to make these laws. Unless this be proved the difficulty is not

removed, it is not even diminished.

Let us not thus condemn human nature before studying its laws, its

forces, its energies, its tendencies. Newton, after he discovered

attraction, never pronounced the name of God without uncovering his

head. Yet the celestial mechanism is subject to laws of which it has

no consciousness; and the social world is as much superior to that

which called forth the admiration of Newton as mind is superior to

matter. How much more reason, then, have we to bow before Omniscience

when we behold the social mechanism, which universal intelligence no

less pervades (‹mens agitat molem›); and which presents, moreover,

this extraordinary phenomenon, that every atom of which it is

composed is an animated thinking being, endued with marvellous

energy, and with that principle of all morality, all dignity, all

progress, the exclusive attribute of man—«Liberty». [p063]

II.

WANTS, EFFORTS, SATISFACTIONS.[19]

What a profoundly afflicting spectacle France presents to us!

It would be difficult to say if anarchy has passed from ideas to

facts, or from facts to ideas, but it is certain that it pervades

all, and abounds everywhere.

The poor rise up against the rich, men without fortune or profession

against property; the populace against the bourgeoisie; labour

against capital; agriculture against manufactures; the country

against the town; the provinces against the metropolis; the denizen

against the stranger.

And theorists step in, and form a system of this antagonism. “It is

the ‹inevitable› result, they say, of the nature of things, that

is to say, of Liberty. Man is endued with ‹self-love›, and hence

comes all the evil; for since he is endued with self-love, he seeks

to better his own condition, and he can only do so by entailing

misery on his brethren. Let us hinder him, then, from following his

inclinations; let us stifle his liberty, change the human heart,

substitute other motives for those which God has placed there: let us

invent and constitute an artificial society!”

When they have got this length, an unlimited career opens itself to

their reason or imagination. If they are possessed of a disputatious

turn and a peevish temper, they enter with eagerness into an

analysis of Evil. They dissect it, they put it in the crucible,

they interrogate it, they remount to its causes, they pursue it

to its consequences; and, as by reason of our native imperfection

there is nothing in which Evil is not present, they asperse and

disparage everything. They exhibit to us Property, Family, Capital,

Labour, Competition, Liberty, Personal Interest, only in one of

their aspects, and always on the dark side, the side which injures

or [p064] destroys. Their lectures on the natural history of man

are, if I may use the expression, clinical lectures—the subject is

always on his deathbed. They impiously defy God to reconcile what is

said of His infinite goodness with the existence of evil. They stain

and sully everything; they disgust us with everything; they dispute

everything; and yet they obtain only a melancholy and dangerous

success with those classes whom suffering disposes but too much to

despair.

If, on the other hand, such theorists have a heart open to

benevolence, a mind which is pleased with illusions, they rush to the

region of chimeras. They dream of an Oceania, an Atlantis, a Salente,

a Spensonie, an Icarie, a Utopia, a Phalanstère,[20] and they

people these imaginary regions with a docile, loving, devoted race

who always avoid setting themselves up against the fancies of the

dreamer. He installs himself complacently in the seat of Providence.

He arranges, he disposes, he moulds men after his own fancy. Nothing

stops him. He never encounters deceit. He resembles the Roman

preacher, who, after having transformed his square cap into Rousseau,

refuted warmly the ‹Contrat Social›, and triumphantly reduced his

adversary to silence. It is thus that our Reformers dazzle those who

suffer by means of seductive pictures of ideal felicity, well fitted

to disgust them with the hard necessities of real life.

The theorist, however, rarely confines himself to such innocent

chimeras. The moment he aims at leading mankind, he finds the

people impatient of attempted transformations. Men resist, they get

angry. In order to gain them over, he harangues them not only on

the happiness they reject, but more especially on the evils from

which he professes to deliver them. He finds it impossible to make

too striking a picture. He is continually charging his palette and

deepening his colours. He hunts out the evils of existing society

with as much zeal as another employs in discovering the good. He sees

nothing but sufferings, rags, leanness, starvation, pain, oppression.

He is enraged that society has not a deeper sense of its misery. He

neglects no means of making it throw off its insensibility, and,

having begun with benevolence, he ends with misanthropy.[21]

God forbid that I should call in question the sincerity of any one.

But, in truth, I cannot explain to myself how these writers, [p065]

who see a radical antagonism in the natural order of things, can

ever taste a moment’s calm or repose. Discouragement and despair

would seem to be their unhappy portion. For, to sum up all, if

nature is mistaken in making ‹personal interest› the mainspring of

human society (and the mistake is manifest if it be admitted that

the interests of society are fatally antagonistic), how do they not

perceive that the evil is without remedy? Being men ourselves, and

being able to have recourse only to men, where can be our ‹point

d’appui› for changing the tendencies of human nature? Shall we invoke

the Police, the Magistracy, the State, the Legislature? That would

only be to invoke men, that is to say, beings subject to the common

infirmity. Shall we address ourselves to Universal Suffrage? That

would be to give the freest course to the universal tendency.

Only one expedient remains to these gentlemen. It is to hold

themselves out as discoverers, as prophets, made of different

clay from their fellow-men, and deriving their inspiration from a

different source. This is the reason, no doubt, why we find them so

frequently enveloping their systems and their councils in a mystic

phraseology. But if they are ambassadors of God, let them exhibit

their credentials. In effect, what they demand is sovereign power,

despotism the most absolute that ever existed. They not only wish to

govern our acts, but to revolutionize our thoughts. Do they hope that

mankind will believe them on their word, when they are not able to

agree among themselves?

But before even examining their projects of artificial societies, is

there not one point upon which it is necessary to assure ourselves,

namely, whether they are not mistaken in the very foundation of their

argument? Is it quite certain that «MEN’S INTERESTS ARE NATURALLY

ANTAGONISTIC»; that an irremediable cause of inequality is fatally

developed in the natural order of human society under the influence

of personal interest, and that Providence is manifestly in error

in ordaining that the progress of man should be towards ease and

competency?

This is what I propose to inquire into.

Taking man as it has pleased God to constitute him, capable of

foresight and experience, perfectible, endued with self-love, it

is true,—but self-love qualified by the sympathetic principle, and

at all events restrained and balanced by encountering an analogous

sentiment universally prevailing in the medium in which it acts,—I

proceed to inquire what social order must necessarily result from the

combination and free play of such elements.

If we find that this result is nothing else than a progressive

[p066] march towards prosperity, improvement, and equality,—a

sustained approximation of all classes towards the same physical,

intellectual, and moral level, accompanied by a constant elevation

of that level, the ways of God to man will be vindicated. We shall

learn with delight that there is no gap, no blank, in creation, and

that the social order, like everything else, attests the existence of

those ‹harmonic laws› before which Newton bowed his head, and which

elicited from the Psalmist the exclamation, “‹The heavens declare the

glory of God.›”

Rousseau has said, “If I were a prince or a legislator, I should not

lose my time in pointing out what was necessary to be done—I should

do it or hold my tongue.”

I am not a ‹prince›, but the confidence of my fellow-citizens has

made me a ‹legislator›. Perhaps they will tell me that this is the

time for me to act and not to write.

Let them pardon me. Whether it be truth itself which urges me on, or

that I am the dupe of an illusion. I have never ceased to feel the

want of concentrating those ideas which have hitherto failed to find

acceptance when presented in detached portions. I think I discover

in the play of the natural laws of society sublime and consoling

‹harmonies›. What I see, or think I see, ought I not to try to

exhibit to others, in order to rally round a sentiment of concord

and fraternity many unsettled minds, many imbittered hearts? If,

when the much-loved vessel of the state is beat by the tempest, I

sometimes appear to absent myself from my post, in order to collect

my scattered thoughts, it is because I feel my feeble hands unfitted

for the work. Is it, besides, to betray my mission, to reflect upon

the causes of the tempest itself, and endeavour to act upon these

causes? And then, what I find I cannot do to-day, who knows but it

may be given me to accomplish to-morrow?

I shall begin by establishing some Economical ideas. Availing myself

of the works of my predecessors, I shall endeavour to sum up the

science in one principle—true, simple, and prolific—of which we have

had a glimpse from the beginning, to which we are constantly drawing

nearer and nearer, and of which, perhaps, the time is now come to fix

the formula. By the light thus afforded, I shall afterwards essay

the solution of some yet disputed problems—Competition, Machinery,

Foreign trade, Luxury, Capital, Rent, etc. I shall note some of

the relations, or, I should rather say, the harmonies of Political

Economy, with the other moral and social sciences, glancing at

the important subjects indicated by the terms—Personal Interest,

Property, Community, Liberty, [p067] Equality, Responsibility,

Solidarity, Fraternity, Unity. Last of all, I shall invite attention

to the artificial obstacles which the pacific, regular, and

progressive development of human society encounters. From these two

ideas—Natural harmonic Laws—Artificial disturbing Causes—will be

deduced the solution of the Social Problem.

It is easy to see that there are two rocks ahead upon which this

undertaking may founder. In the middle of the vortex in which we are

carried along, if this work is abstruse, it will not be read; if it

obtains readers, the questions of which it treats will be but glanced

at. How are we to reconcile the exactions of the reader with the

requirements of science? To satisfy all conditions both in form and

substance, each word would require to be weighed, and have its proper

place assigned to it. It is thus that the crystal is formed drop by

drop in silence and obscurity. Retirement, quiet, time, freedom from

care—all are wanting to me—and I am forced to trust to the sagacity

of the public, and throw myself on its indulgence.

The subject of Political Economy is Man.

But it does not embrace the whole range of human affairs. The science

of morals has appropriated all that comes within the attractive

regions of Sympathy—the religious sentiment, paternal and maternal

tenderness, filial piety, love, friendship, patriotism, charity,

politeness. To Political Economy is left only the cold domain of

Personal interest. This is unjustly forgotten when Economical science

is reproached with wanting the charm and unction of morals. How can

it be otherwise? Dispute its right to existence as a science, but

don’t force it to counterfeit what it is not, and cannot be. If human

transactions which have wealth for their object are vast enough,

complicated enough, to afford materials for a special science, leave

to it its own attractions, such as they are, and don’t force it

to speak of men’s Interests in the language of Sentiment. For my

own part, I believe that little good has been effected of late in

exacting from writers on Political Economy a tone of enthusiastic

sentimentality which in their mouth can only be declamation. Of what

do they treat? Of transactions which take place between people who

know nothing of each other, who owe each other nothing but common

Justice, who seek to defend or advance certain interests. It has to

do with claims and pretensions which limit and restrain each other,

and with which disinterestedness and devotion have nothing to do.

Take a lyre, and chant such themes! As well might Lamartine sing his

odes with the aid of the logarithm tables. [p068]

Not that Political Economy is without its poetry. There is poetry

wherever order and harmony exist. But it is in the results, not in

the demonstrations. It is brought out, not created. Kepler did not

give himself out as a poet, and yet the laws which he discovered are

the true poetry of mind.

Thus, Political Economy regards man only in one aspect, and our first

care must be to study man in that point of view. This is the reason

why we cannot avoid going back to the primary phenomena of human

‹Sensibility› and ‹Activity›. Start not, gentle reader! We shall not

detain you long in those cloudy regions of metaphysics, and we shall

borrow from that science only such notions as are clear, simple, and,

if possible, incontestable.

The soul, or (to get rid of the spiritual question) man, is endued

with ‹Sensibility›. Let this sensibility be either in the soul or in

the body, man, as a ‹passive› being, always experiences ‹sensations›

either painful or agreeable. As an ‹active› being, he makes an effort

to drive away the one set of sensations and to multiply the other.

The result, which affects him again as a ‹passive› being, may be

called ‹Satisfaction›.

The general idea of ‹Sensibility› springs from other ideas which are

more precise: pain, want, desire, taste, appetite, on one side; and,

on the other, pleasure, enjoyment, competence.

Between these two extremes a middle term is interposed, and from the

general idea of ‹Activity› spring the more precise ideas of pain,

effort, fatigue, labour, production.

In analyzing ‹Sensibility› and ‹Activity› we encounter a word common

to both; the word ‹Pain›. To experience certain sensations is a

‹pain›, and we cannot put an end to it but by an effort, which is

also a ‹pain›. We ‹feel pains›; we ‹take pains›. This advertises us

that here below we have only a choice of evils.

In the aggregate of these phenomena all is ‹personal›, as well the

Sensation which precedes the effort, as the Satisfaction which

follows it.

We cannot doubt, then, that ‹Personal interest› is the great

mainspring of human nature. It must be perfectly understood, however,

that this term is here employed as the expression of a universal

fact, incontestable, and resulting from the organization of man,—and

not of a critical judgment on his conduct and actions, as if, instead

of it, we should employ the word ‹egotism›. Moral science would be

rendered impossible, if we were to pervert beforehand the terms of

which it is compelled to make use.

Human effort does not always come necessarily to place itself

between the sensation and the satisfaction. Sometimes the [p069]

satisfaction comes of its own accord. More frequently the effort is

exercised upon ‹materials›, by the intervention of ‹forces› which

nature has placed gratuitously at our disposal.

If we give the name of ‹Utility› to all which effects the

satisfaction of wants, there are, then, utilities of two kinds:—one,

vouchsafed to us gratuitously by Providence; the other (if I may use

the expression), requiring to be purchased by an ‹Effort›.

Thus the complete evolution embraces, or may embrace, these four

ideas:

Wants {Gratuitous Utility, Onerous Utility} Satisfaction.

Man is endued with progressive faculties. He compares, he foresees,

he learns, he reforms himself, by experience. If want is a ‹pain›,

effort is a ‹pain› also, and there is therefore no reason why he

should not seek to diminish the latter, when he can do so without

diminishing the satisfaction, which is his ultimate object. This

is the reason of his success when he comes to replace ‹onerous› by

‹gratuitous Utility›, which is the perpetual object of his search.

It follows from the ‹interested› nature of the human heart, that we

constantly seek to increase the proportion which our Satisfactions

bear to our Efforts; and it results from the intelligent nature of

our mind that we manage at each step to augment the proportion which

gratuitous bears to onerous Utility.

Every time a success of this nature is achieved, a part of our

efforts is, so to speak, rendered disposable, and we have the option

of either indulging ourselves with longer repose, or of working

for the satisfaction of new desires, if these are strong enough to

stimulate our activity.

Such is the principle of all economic progress; and it is easy to

see that it is the principle also of all deception; for progress

and error have both their root in that marvellous gift of God to

man—‹Free will›.

We are endued with the faculty of comparing, of judging, of choosing,

and of acting in consequence; which implies that we may form a right

or a wrong judgment, and make a good or a bad choice. It is never

useless to remind men of this when they talk of Liberty.

We never deceive ourselves, it is true, regarding the particular

nature of our sensations, and we discern with an infallible instinct

whether they are painful or agreeable. But how many various forms may

our errors take! We may be labouring under a mistake as to the cause,

and pursue with ardour, as likely to afford us enjoyment, what can

only indict pain upon us; or we may be [p070] mistaken as to the

chain of consequences, and be ignorant that an immediate satisfaction

will be followed by greater ulterior pain; or, again, we may mistake

the relative importance of our wants and our desires.

Not only may we thus give a false direction to our efforts through

ignorance, but also through a perverse will. “Man,” says M. Bonald,

“is an intelligence served by organs.” What! is there nothing else in

us? Have we no passions?

When we speak of harmony, then, we must not be understood to mean

that the natural arrangement of the social world is such that error

and vice have been excluded from it. To maintain that thesis in the

face of plain facts would be to carry the love of system to madness.

To have harmony without dissonance man must either be devoid of free

will or he must be infallible. All we say is this, that the great

social tendencies are harmonious, inasmuch as—all error leading

to deception and all vice to chastisement—the dissonances have a

continual tendency to disappear.

* * * * *

A first and vague notion of property may be deduced from these

premises. Since it is the individual who experiences the sensation,

the desire, the want,—since it is he who makes the ‹Effort›,—the

satisfaction must necessarily redound to him, for otherwise the

effort would be without cause or reason.

The same may be said of ‹Inheritance›. No theory, no declamation, is

required in order to make fathers love their children. People who sit

down to manufacture imaginary societies may think it strange, but

it is so;—a father makes as many ‹Efforts› for the ‹satisfaction›

of his children as for his own. Perhaps he makes more. If, then, an

unnatural law should interdict the transmission of property, not only

would that law violate property by the very act, but it would hinder

its formation by abandoning to inaction one-half at least of our

‹Efforts›.

We shall have occasion to return to the subjects of Personal

interest, Property, and Inheritance. Let us, in the first instance,

mark out the limits of the science with which we have more

immediately to do.

I am not one of those who think that a science, as such, has natural

and unalterable boundaries. In the domain of ideas, as in that of

facts, all things are bound up and linked together; truths run into

one another; and there is no science which, in order to be complete,

might not be made to include all. It has been said with reason that

to an infinite intelligence there is but a single verity. It is,

then, our weakness which obliges us to study separately a [p071]

certain order of phenomena, and the classifications which result from

it cannot escape a certain decree of arbitrariness.

The true merit is to explain accurately the facts, their causes,

and their consequences. It is also a merit, although a much less

and a purely relative one, to determine, not rigorously—for that is

impossible—but rationally, the order of the facts which we propose to

study.

I say this in order that it may not be supposed that I intend to

criticise my predecessors if I give to Political Economy limits

somewhat different from those which they have assigned to that

science.

Economists have of late been reproached with addicting themselves

too much to the study of ‹Wealth›. It has been wished that they had

found a place in their science for all that, directly or indirectly,

contributes to the happiness or sufferings of humanity. They have

even been supposed to deny everything which they did not profess to

teach—for example, the phenomena of sympathy, which is as natural

to the heart of man as the principle of self-interest. It is as

if they accused the mineralogist of denying the existence of the

animal kingdom. What! Wealth, the laws of its production, of its

distribution, of its consumption,—is not this a subject vast enough,

and important enough, to be made the object of a special science?

If the conclusions of the Economist were at variance with those of

morals and politics. I could conceive ground for the accusation. One

might say to him, “In limiting your science you are mistaken, for

it is not possible for two verities to run counter to each other.”

Perhaps one result of the work which I now submit to the public may

be, that the Science of Wealth will be found to be in perfect harmony

with all the other sciences.

Of the three terms comprehended in the human destinies—Sensation,

Effort, Satisfaction—the first and the last are always and

necessarily confounded in the same individuality. It is impossible to

imagine them separated. We can conceive a sensation unsatisfied, a

want unappeased, but it is quite impossible to suppose the ‹want› to

be in one man and the ‹satisfaction› to be in another.

If the same observation applied to the middle term, ‹Effort›, man

would be a being completely solitary. The Economic phenomena would

then manifest themselves in an isolated individual. There might be a

juxtaposition of persons, but there could be no society; there might

be a Personal, but not a Political, Economy.

But it is not so. It is very possible, and very often happens, that

the ‹wants› of one owe their ‹satisfaction› to the ‹efforts› of

[p072] another. This is a fact. If any one of us were to pass in

review all the satisfactions he enjoys, he would acknowledge that

he owes them chiefly to efforts which he has not himself made;

and in the same way, the labour which we undergo, each in his own

profession, goes almost always to satisfy the desires of others.

This tells us, that it is neither in the wants nor in the

satisfactions (phenomena essentially personal and intransmissible),

but in the nature of the mean term, ‹human Efforts›, that we must

search for the ‹social› principle—the origin of Political Economy.

It is in fact to this faculty, given to men, and to men alone,

among all creatures, to ‹work the one for the other›; it is this

transmission of efforts, this exchange of services, with all the

infinite and involved combinations to which it gives rise, through

time and through space, it is «THIS» precisely which constitutes

Economic Science, points out its origin, and determines its limits.