What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of society than that of property?—­a law which so justly governs all our political reasonings, and determines the character of our political measures the most prospective—­a law which M. Comte has not failed himself to designate as fundamental.  And yet, by what right of demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress?  That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all regions of the earth conducted.  Standing where we do, and looking out as far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted.  Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the participated prosperity of the general body—­where the good of the whole should be felt as the interest of each. How such a principle is to be established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and establish such a principle—­this is what no scientific mind would venture to assert.  Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of activity, nor need it, nor can it, pass beyond that sphere.  We know that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we know this also, that at no time can its opposite principle be established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge.  Our convictions, therefore, for all practical purposes, can receive no confirmation.  If the far future is to be regulated by different principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness?

“The great Aristotle himself,” says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of his age—­“The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of ancient times, (la plus forte tete de toute l’antiquite,) could not conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards.”—­Vol. iv. p.38.  In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a fundamental law.