True, being without a scientific guide, their institutions
are imperfect and arbitrary; yet these efforts show that man recognizes
the necessity of calculation and thought in one branch, at least, of
the social organism. He knows that to have a government, he must think,
plan and devise; but he does not know that the other branches of the
social organism are subject to the same conditions, and can only be
normally constituted by the exercise of conscious reason guided by
scientific principles. Construction and organization--the same in
principle in all departments of creation--can only be the work of mind,
conscious of its operations, planning with forethought; analyzing,
comparing and combining; adapting means to ends and calculating the
relations of cause and effect. Instinct cannot organize; Divine
Providence does not interfere to do the work of reason; no science is
revealed to man; no constructions or other means are furnished him by
nature.
"When the human mind shall rise to the conception of the possibility of
a scientific organization of society, it will at once undertake, as the
work of paramount importance, the elaboration of a system of exact
social science. First, however, the laws on which the science is to be
based must be discovered and combined into a system that will enable
the mind clearly to comprehend and apply them.
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