olution du commerce dans les diverses
races humaines_, Paris, 1897, especially pp. 264, 330, 354, 384,
etc.

[133] This condition has been well-described by various novelists,
among them Zola, in _Money_.

[134] For further details on this point, we refer the reader to our
_Evolution of General Ideas_ (chapter I).

[135] A general, a former professor in the War College, told me that
when he heard a great merchant tell of the quick and sure service of
his commercial information, the conception of the whole, and the
care in all the details of his operations, he could not keep from
exclaiming, "Why, that is war!"

[136] Leibniz.

[137] General Bonnal, _Les Maitres de la Guerre_, 1899, p. 137. "In
him (Napoleon)," says the writer, "there was something of the poet,
and one could explain all his acts by means of this singular
complex, a medley of imagination, passion, and calculation. The
dreams of an Ossian with the positive cast of mind of a
mathematician and the passions of a Corsican--such were the
heterogeneous elements that clashed in that powerful organization"
(p. 151).

[138] _Op. cit._, p. 6.

CHAPTER VII

THE UTOPIAN IMAGINATION[139]

When the human mind creates, it can use only two classes of ideas as
materials to embody its idea, viz.:

(1) Natural phenomena, the forces of the organic and inorganic worlds.
In its scientific form, seeking to explain, to know, it ends in the
hypothesis, a disinterested creation. In its industrial aspect, aiming
towards application and utilization, it ends in practical, interested
inventions.

(2) Human, i.e., psychic elements--instincts, passions, feelings,
ideas, and actions. Esthetic creation is the disinterested form, social
invention is the utilitarian form.

Consequently, we may say that invention in science resembles invention
in the fine arts, both being speculative; and that mechanical and
industrial invention approaches social invention through a common
tendency toward the practical. I shall not insist on this distinction,
which, to be definite, rests only on partial characters; I merely wish
to mention that invention, whose role in social, political and moral
evolution is large, must, in order to be a success, adopt certain
processes while neglecting others. This the Utopians do not do.

The development of human societies depends on a multitude of factors,
such as race, geographic and economic conditions, war, etc., which we
need neither enumer