fresh
extension of its activities serves only to multiply its points of
contact with the outside world. When those points are reached, the
largest business, like the smallest, is out on the open sea of an
economic system immeasurably larger and more powerful than
itself. There it must meet--the better perhaps for its inherent
strength and accumulated knowledge--the impact of rude forces, which
it is powerless to control. Beneath the blasts of a trade depression,
or some other tendency of world-wide scope, the authority of the
mightiest industrial magnate, and equally of any Government, assumes
the same essential insignificance as the pride of a man humbled by
contact with the elemental powers of nature.

Sec.3. _The Existence of Order_. The parallel can be pursued further with
advantage. Just as in the world of natural phenomena, which for long
seemed to man so wayward and inexplicable, we have come gradually to
perceive an all-pervading uniformity and order; so there is manifest
in the economic world, uniformity, order, of a similar if less
majestic kind. Upon the cooperation of his fellowmen, man depends for
the very means of life: yet he takes this cooperation for granted,
with a complacent confidence and often with a naive unconsciousness,
as he takes the rising of to-morrow's sun. The reliability of this
unorganized cooperation has powerfully impressed the imagination of
many observers.

"On entering Paris which I had come to visit," exclaimed Bastiat some
seventy years ago, "I said to myself--Here are a million of human
beings who would all die in a short time if provisions of every kind
ceased to flow towards this great metropolis. Imagination is baffled
when it tries to appreciate the vast multiplicity of commodities which
must enter to-morrow through the barriers in order to preserve the
inhabitants from falling a prey to the convulsions of famine,
rebellion, and pillage. And yet all sleep at this moment, and their
peaceful slumbers are not disturbed for a single instant by the
prospect of such a frightful catastrophe. On the other hand, eighty
departments have been laboring to-day, without concert, without any
mutual understanding, for the provisioning of Paris."

The theme may well excite wonder. But wonder should always be watched
with a wary eye; for he is apt to bring in his train a hanger-on
called worship, who can do nothing but mischief here. It is a short
step from a passage like that quoted abov