To-day advanced thinkers on social questions are
beginning to see the conquest of the industrial and commercial worlds
by the power of associated capital. To-day the new feudalism has more
than half entangled society in its meshes, and its complete
establishment stares us in the face. What perspicuity to have foreseen
so clearly what is now being realized! If prescience is a test of
science--if the foretelling of future events is a test of the laws that
govern them and from which they are deducible, then Fourier must have
discovered at least some of the laws which govern social evolution.
"A vague opinion prevails among men that society is moving onward to
its appointed state by what is variously termed the 'force of
circumstances,' 'the instinct of the race,' 'the general law of
progress,' 'Divine guidance.' These loose opinions are speculative
fancies adopted in the absence of real knowledge; whereas the fact is,
that society can only reach its true state by the conscious and
calculated efforts of human reason under the direction of an exact
social science. Men act on this principle when they try to organize any
part of the social system. When, from necessity, they are forced to
frame political institutions and organize governments, as they often
are after revolutions, they do so by conscious calculation and
reasoning.
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