story of
humanity, what is there left to guide us in our "legislative"
investigations? Humanity is left us, man in general, human nature--of
which history is but the manifestation. Here then we have our criterion
definitely settled, a perfect legislation. The best of all possible
legislation is that which best harmonises with human nature. It may be,
of course, that even when we have such a criterion we may, for want of
"light" or of logic, fail to solve this problem of the best legislation.
_Errare humanum est_, but it seems incontrovertible that this problem
_can_ be solved, that we can, by taking our stand upon an exact
knowledge of human nature, find a perfect legislation, a perfect
organisation.

Such was, in the domain of social science, the point of view of the
French Materialists. Man is a sentient and reasonable being, they said;
he avoids painful sensations and seeks pleasurable ones. He has
sufficient intelligence to recognise what is useful to him as well as
what is harmful to him. Once you admit these axioms, and you can in your
investigations into the best legislation, arrive, with the help of
reflection and good intentions, at conclusions as well founded, as
exact, as incontrovertible as those derived from a mathematical
demonstration. Thus Condorcet undertook to construct deductively all
precepts of healthy morality by starting from the truth that man is a
sentient and reasonable being.

It is hardly necessary to say that in this Condorcet was mistaken. If
the "philosophers" in this branch of their investigations arrived at
conclusions of incontestable though very relative value, they
unconsciously owed this to the fact that they constantly abandoned their
abstract standpoint of human nature in general, and took up that of a
more or less idealised nature of a man of the Third Estate. This man
"felt" and "reasoned," after a fashion very clearly defined by his
social environment. It was his "nature" to believe firmly in bourgeois
property, representative government, freedom of trade (_laissez-faire,
laissez passer!_ the "nature" of this man was always crying out), and so
on. In reality, the French philosophers always kept in view the economic
and political requirements of the Third Estate; this was their real
criterion. But they applied it unconsciously, and only after much
wandering in the field of abstraction did they arrive at it. Their
conscious method always reduced itself to abstract considerations