Are you ill? There is no good nurse who does not tell you, at the first moment, the cause and cure of your malady.
"They are humors," affirms she; "you must be purged."
But what are humors? and are these humors?
She does not trouble herself about that. I involuntarily think of this good nurse when I hear all social evils explained by these common phrases: "It is the superabundance of products, the tyranny of capital, industrial plethora," and other idle stories of which we cannot even say: verba et voces prætereaque nihil: for they are also fatal mistakes.
From what precedes, two things result—
1st. That the social sciences must abound in sophistry much more than the other sciences, because in them each one consults his own judgment or instinct alone.
2d. That in these sciences sophistry is especially injurious, because it misleads public opinion where opinion is a power—that is, law.
Two sorts of books, then, are required by these sciences; those which expound them, and those which propagate them; those which show the truth, and those which combat error.
It appears to us that the inherent defect in the form of this little Essay—repetition—is that which constitutes its principal value.