f the social contract, and
of a cure for all social evils by a return to a state of nature, had, as
we all know now, no more relation to fact than the dreams of an
illiterate drunkard; but they were not without value as a vague and
symbolical expression of certain evils from which the France of his day
was suffering. As a child, I was told a story of an old woman in
Devonshire who, describing what was apparently some form of dyspepsia,
said that "her inside had been coming up for a fortnight," and still
continued to do so, although during the last few days "she had swallowed
a pint of shot in order to keep her liver down." The old woman's
diagnosis of her own case was ridiculous; her treatment of it, if
continued, would have killed her; but both were suggestive, as
indications that something was really amiss. The reasoning of Rousseau,
who contended that the evils of the modern world were due to a departure
from primeval conditions which were perfect, and that a cure for them
must be sought in a return to the manner of life which prevailed among
the contemporaries of the mammoth, and the immediate descendants of the
pithekanthropos, was identical in kind with the reasoning of the old
woman. The reasoning of the socialists is identical in kind with both.
It consists of a poisonous prescription founded on a false diagnosis.
But just as the diagnosis, no matter how grotesque, which a patient
makes of his or of her own sufferings, and even the remedies which his
or her fancy suggests, often assist doctors to discover what the ailment
really is, so does socialism, alike in its diagnosis and its proposed
cure, call attention to the existence of ailments in the body politic,
and may even afford some clue to the treatment which the case requires,
though this will be widely different from what the sufferer fancies.

Such being the case, then, in order that a true treatment may be
adopted, the first thing to be done is to show the corporate patient
precisely how and why the socialistic diagnosis is erroneous, and the
proposed socialistic remedies incomparably worse than the disease. To
this preparatory work the present volume has been devoted. Let us
reconsider the outline of its general argument. As thoughtful socialists
to-day are themselves coming to admit, the augmented wealth distinctive
of the modern world is produced and sustained by the ability of the few,
not by the labour of the many. The ability of the few is thus produ