or such society, where due
preparation did not exist. As we may confidently say, No mountain-top
can tower high enough, to catch the sunbeams at midnight; with equal
confidence we may say of many ideas now familiar as school-boy truths:
no intellect in ancient Greece or Rome soared high enough above the
mass to grasp them.

Part II.

Welfare as Dependent on Policy.

As generally at all points, so the materialism of the age particularly
appears, in that the political economists take _wealth_, defining their
science in the vulgar acceptation, rather than in the good old English
sense, _welfare_, _well-being_. If they occasionally venture a remark
of a more liberal bearing on the general subject of public welfare;
such is the exception to the general rule. Money, with its equivalents
and exchangeables, is their usual theme in treating of wealth; thought
the common use of the word economy might suggest a higher science. For
he does not exhaust our idea of a good economist, who manages to have
at command abundant materials for rendering home happy; while, for lack
of wisdom to turn such materials to account, that home may be less
happy than the next-door neighbor's, where want is hardly staved off.
We exact, for fulfilling that character, wisdom in using the material
means--provision for physical, intellectual, and moral training of the
household--the just apportionment between labor and recreation-the
true contentment, which frets not at present imperfection, while it
still presses on to that perfection conceived to be attainable. Our
writers on political economy would do well, to give the word as liberal
a latitude of sense, as it legitimately assumes, when used in its
primitive meaning of _household management_.

But, rather than attempt to raise a scientific term so much above its
received sense, I use another word, and say, Policy must begin with the
admission, that self-love is the mightiest mover of human conduct; and
not a self-love enlightened, deep, calculating, directed to the sources
of fullest contentment; but following the groveling estimate, that
riches, power, office, ease, being the object of envy or admiration,
are the chief goods of life.

Every business man admits, that his security for men's conduct must be
found in their self-interest. He admits thus much practically, so for
as his own business is concerned; the exceptions being so rare, as not
to justify neglect of the general rule