iety, which he has
brought forward; he has given a close and cogent chain of reasoning,
supported by a formidable array of historical facts, and shown how it is
that the evils have arisen--how they bear upon the condition of the great
bulk of the people, how they degrade their character, how their habits
corrupt their morals and destroy their happiness; and how irremediable,
under the prevailing ideas of the influential classes in society, these
evils have become. The social injustice and political delusions which,
history has now clearly ascertained, were the causes of the ruin of the
Roman empire, he sees re-appearing amidst us under different names, but in
still more aggravated forms, and with more hopeless influences on society.
All this he traces mainly to the ruinous pursuit of wealth, which has
seized alike upon our philosophers, our statesmen, and our practical men;
which has too fatally verified the saying of Scripture, that "the love of
money is the root of all evil;" and converted the noble science of
political economy, the end of which is "ut homines feliciter vivant," into
the degrading handmaid of wealth.

So strongly is he impressed with this idea, and so convinced of the
ruinous direction which the social sciences are taking, under the combined
influence of philosophic error and monied ambition, that he thinks it
indispensable, that language should mark the lasting and indelible crisis
of distinction between the philosophy of general happiness and the means
by which national wealth may be augmented. The first he calls "Economie
Politique," or "Les Sciences Sociales;" the last "_Chrematistique_," or
the art of accumulating riches in a state.[4] It is in the conversion of
political economy, or the science of making men happy, which of course can
only be done by rendering them orderly, moral, and religious, into
Chrematistique, or the mere pursuit of the means by which we may augment
the sum of national riches, that the unobserved source of by far the
greatest social evils of the present day is to be found. These evils are
greater than either the slavery of the Romans or the bondage of serfs in
modern times; for they have induced the ruinous effects of both these
degrading systems, without the alleviating and counteracting advantages
with which either was attended. And the way in which this effect flows
from the social doctrines of modern times, is this.

An augmentation of production is generally considere