It is thus that an inventor will make a small machine before he makes
one of the regular size. Thus the chemist sacrifices some substances,
the agriculturist some seed and a corner of his field, to make trial of
an idea.
But, then, think of the immeasurable distance between the gardener and
his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and
his substances, between the agriculturist and his seed! The Socialist
thinks, in all sincerity, that there is the same distance between
himself and mankind.
It is not to be wondered at that the politicians of the nineteenth
century look upon society as an artificial production of the
legislator's genius. This idea, the result of a classical education, has
taken possession of all the thinkers and great writers of our country.
To all these persons, the relations between mankind and the legislator
appear to be the same as those which exist between the clay and the
potter.
Moreover, if they have consented to recognise in the heart of man a
principle of action, and in his intellect a principle of discernment,
they have looked upon this gift of God as a fatal one, and thought that
mankind, under these two impulses, tended fatally towards ruin. They
have taken it for granted, that if abandoned to their own inclinations,
men would only occupy themselves with religion to arrive at atheism,
with instruction to come to ignorance, and with labour and exchange to
be extinguished in misery.
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