n and the furnaces of which they caught
glimpses.

This tranquillity was not the least beautiful spectacle of this agitated
epoch.

These men left to political parties the question of rights, they
occupied themselves with the question of happiness.

The well-being of man, that was what they wanted to extract from
society.

They raised material questions, questions of agriculture, of industry,
of commerce, almost to the dignity of a religion. In civilization, such
as it has formed itself, a little by the command of God, a great deal by
the agency of man, interests combine, unite, and amalgamate in a
manner to form a veritable hard rock, in accordance with a dynamic law,
patiently studied by economists, those geologists of politics. These men
who grouped themselves under different appellations, but who may all be
designated by the generic title of socialists, endeavored to pierce that
rock and to cause it to spout forth the living waters of human felicity.

From the question of the scaffold to the question of war, their works
embraced everything. To the rights of man, as proclaimed by the French
Revolution, they added the rights of woman and the rights of the child.

The reader will not be surprised if, for various reasons, we do not
here treat in a thorough manner, from the theoretical point of view, the
questions raised by socialism. We confine ourselves to indicating them.

All the problems that the socialists proposed to themselves, cosmogonic
visions, revery and mysticism being cast aside, can be reduced to two
principal problems.

First problem: To produce wealth.

Second problem: To share it.

The first problem contains the question of work.

The second contains the question of salary.

In the first problem the employment of forces is in question.

In the second, the distribution of enjoyment.

From the proper employment of forces results public power.

From a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness.

By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must
be understood.

From these two things combined, the public power without, individual
happiness within, results social prosperity.

Social prosperity means the man happy, the citizen free, the nation
great.

England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth
admirably, she divides it badly. This solution which is complete on
one side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opule