o extend our observation to other planets peopled with similar but
variously developed inhabitants, in order scientifically to understand
such a race as ours.

What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of
society than that of property?--a law which so justly governs all our
political reasonings, and determines the character of our political
measures the most prospective--a law which M. Comte has not failed
himself to designate as fundamental. And yet, by what right of
demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so
that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress?
That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in
the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of
property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all
regions of the earth conducted. Standing where we do, and looking out as
far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the
basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it
must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in
man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a
quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we
should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our
proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted.
Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been
manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the
individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the
participated prosperity of the general body--where the good of the whole
should be felt as the interest of each. _How_ such a principle is to be
established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that
no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the
circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and
establish such a principle--this is what no scientific mind would
venture to assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of
activity, nor need it, nor _can_ it, pass beyond that sphere. We know
that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an
attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we
know this also, that _at no time_ can its opposite principle be
established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous
harmony in the soci