Chapitre Premier.

CHAP. 1: CHAPTER ONE.

Of the various ways of treating the moral and legislative sciences; of the phenomena necessary to know in order to master these sciences; of the causes that have arrested or favored their progress; and of the object of this work.

In writing on legislation, my goal is not to present a system of laws, nor to attack or defend the institutions of any particular country; I wish simply to investigate the causes that make a people prosper or decline, or that render it stationary. To devote myself to these investigations, I need neither to imagine systems nor to reason from general principles; it is enough for me to observe the facts, to classify them in the most natural order, and to see how some arise from others.

This method is not new; it is applied with success every day to the study of the natural sciences, and even to a part of the moral sciences. It is to the application of this method to the study of political economy and of human understanding that we must attribute the progress made by these two branches of our knowledge.

Producing only happy results in the sciences to which it is applied, and even being considered by scholars as the only means of arriving at the discovery of truth, could this method be deceptive or dangerous in the study of morality and legislation? It must indeed have appeared inapplicable or dangerous, since it is rejected, at least in theory, by three classes of persons who otherwise hardly agree: by theologians, by philosophers, and by practitioners of law.

One can conceive that theologians, of whatever religion they may be, reject the application of the analytical method to the study of morality, and even, in some cases, to the study of legislation. Their religious ideas may lead them to consider the use of this method as dangerous, or at the very least as useless. They find rules of conduct, and sometimes of government, in the books that are the basis of their religious beliefs. They see the causes of these rules, not in the needs of men, or in accidental circumstances, but in the will of the author of their religion. They do not have to investigate their effects, because they seem good to them independently of the consequences they may produce on the happiness of the human race. It is good to observe them, for the sole reason that he who is believed to be their author finds it good that they be observed.

Of what use would it be to a Muslim, keenly persuaded of the truth of his religion, to investigate the good or bad consequences that may result from observing the precepts of Muhammad? If the application of the analytical method to these precepts is to have no result other than to prove their goodness and to recommend their observance, it adds nothing to the science; it is useless. If its effect is to prove that their observance produces no good, or even that it produces harm, it is fit only to shake the faith of believers; it is dangerous or impious. A Jew will find this reasoning flawed in the mouth of a follower of Muhammad; but applied to his own religion, it will seem to him unanswerable. It will be the same for any man whose religion has consecrated a system of morality, legislation, or government, if he is keenly persuaded of the truth of this system, or if he has a powerful interest in supporting it.

The application of the analytical method to the study of morality is sometimes rejected even by theologians whose moral principles have nothing to fear from a thorough examination. The reason for this is clear. The result of the analysis, as we shall see later, is to convince men that it is important for them to have good morals, independently of this or that particular opinion. Such a conviction would doubtless only undermine malevolent religions, and for all others it would be one more reason to conduct themselves well. It would, however, cause certain dogmas, and those whose mission it is to teach them, to lose a part of their temporal importance. One could no longer say that this or that religious opinion is the exclusive foundation of laws and good morals; a mullah, for example, could not claim that it is impossible to have probity if one does not believe in the miracles of Muhammad and the truth of the Quran.

Another reason must cause the analytical method to be rejected by theological systems that have consecrated principles of legislation, government, or morality. When such systems are formed, there is no longer any possible progress for the human mind, unless the religions that consecrate them admit interpreters of the divine will, whose mission is to subject morals and institutions to the changes whose necessity is demonstrated by the progress of enlightenment. In such a case, to change a law or a maxim of morality, it is not enough to prove that this change is advantageous to the human race; one must prove, moreover, that it is commanded or at least authorized by the divinity; a proof that becomes all the more difficult to make, the more enlightened men are. The stationary state of peoples subject to theocratic governments has been attributed to the ambition of priests; such a state is an inevitable consequence of the very nature of these governments. The principles of legislation and the rules of morality, being the result of a superior will, are beyond the influence of reason; to attempt to modify them is an act of impiety, even in the ministers of the religion; to inspire the desire for it is to shake the foundations of the entire edifice.It would be wrong to always attribute to bad faith and self-interest the reluctance generally felt by the ministers of all religions to see the method that has brought such rapid progress to the natural sciences applied to the moral sciences. For this reluctance to exist, it is enough that they be keenly persuaded of the goodness of their principles of morality, legislation, or government, and that they have little confidence in the judgment of men. They have been told so often of the weakness and wanderings of human reason that it is quite natural for them to distrust it, and to wish to permit its use only in cases where faith cannot guide them. Reasoning could hardly seem a very sure guide to men who make it a duty for their fellow men to humble their reason, and who often set the example for them.

But if it is natural that the ministers of all religions generally prefer the theological method to the analytical method, it is not easy to understand how philosophers, who do not admit the former, nevertheless reject the latter. To reject from the study of the moral sciences, all at once, both the authority of any positive religion and the authority that results from the examination of facts, is a process so strange that one would refuse to believe it possible if one did not have examples of it. Writers who did not think that all religious books were infallible guides have reasoned at great length to prove that in the study of the moral sciences one must consult sentiment, and not reason. The application of the analytical method to the study of these sciences has seemed to them even more dangerous than to the theologians; they have attributed to it most of the vices or crimes that have dishonored the world. These writers have sought, in a way, to proscribe the use of intelligence, and to consult exclusively, sometimes inner sentiment, and sometimes religious sentiment; they have claimed that these sentiments guided man in so sure a manner that, if he were not led astray by his reason, they could in all circumstances allow him to distinguish a good action from a bad one.

There is another way of writing about the moral sciences, which has often been employed by philosophers, and which has not yet ceased to be, especially in politics. It consists in creating for oneself, by the force of imagination, a particular system, and then making the facts presented to us by history fit into it. This method has been put into practice in almost all the sciences, and it has been rejected from them as the art of observation has progressed. Men began by trying to guess the truth, and it is only after falling into numerous errors, and having exhausted, in a way, the number of possible suppositions, that they have been able to resign themselves to observing facts and following their chain of connection. Moral and political writers have not yet been able to submit to this necessity; they reject a method that must halt the flight of their imagination, that leaves no room for the genius for invention, and that condemns them to long and painful studies. What would remain, indeed, in most works of morality or legislation, if one were to suppress everything that was not a well-observed fact, or the exact deduction from a fact?

Jurisconsults, for the most part at least, have rejected the method of observation from the study of laws with as much energy as the philosophers. They have adopted a certain number of maxims to which they have given the name of natural laws, and they have admitted as just only the deductions drawn from these maxims. It is true, they have not agreed on the number that should be admitted; some have multiplied them to infinity, and others have reduced them to almost nothing; but this has not prevented them from agreeing on the foundation of the system. It is also true that several of these maxims have been disregarded in practice, not only by multitudes of individuals but even by entire nations, and that philosophers have contested their truth, even in theory. This, however, has not prevented their proponents from maintaining that they were recognized by all of humankind. And they certainly had to be maintained, since, if one had ceased to consider them as the basis of the science of legislation, no one could have said on what this science could rest, nor even in what it could consist.

Finally, others have sought to found the science of legislation and morality on justice or on duty; they have sought to set aside all consideration of utility, pleasure, or pain. They have put duty in the place of right, which seemed to them too sensitive or too fastidious, and they have hoped that they would thus set the human race at peace with itself, by changing two or three words.

There is, in all these systems, a foundation of good intentions that one certainly cannot fail to recognize; but, from whatever point of view one considers them, one can find in them neither a science, nor a scientific method. And let no one hasten to conclude from this that, to become instructed in the moral sciences, it is necessary to have no rules, to despise justice, to take no account of any duty. Who could have such a thought? The question is not whether one must conform to justice, whether there are duties that must be observed, rights that must be respected, maxims or principles that it is good to put into practice; it is to know what is the best method for arriving at the discovery of what is just, of what is a right, of what is a duty. One would fall into a strange error if one imagined that, to teach morality or legislation to men, it is enough to convince them that they must be just, that they must observe their duties, that they must be moral. This error would resemble that of a professor of mathematics who believed that, to make his students great mathematicians, it is enough for him to convince them that they must always be just in their calculations. He could employ much time and talent in making them understand this great truth; but if, after having persuaded them, he did not say a word to them about the manner in which they must go about calculating, he would leave them as ignorant as he had found them.

Rules or maxims of legislation and morality must doubtless emerge from science, just as the rules observed in the arts emerge from the research of scientists; but to imagine that one will produce a science from a certain number of maxims, instead of producing the maxims from observation, is the vainest of pretensions.

But is the analytical method really applicable to the moral sciences? Can one subject to observation all the physical or moral causes that influence the prosperity or decline of peoples? Can one subject to it actions, habits, institutions, and the effects that result from them, as one can subject organized bodies? Locke and, after him, Condillac applied this method to the study of human understanding, to the formation of our ideas, to the mechanism of languages. Now, it would be difficult to conceive how a method that leads us to the discovery of truth when we apply it to the study of our ideas would be fit only to lead us astray when we apply it to the study of our actions. Adam Smith, and after him J.-B. Say, applied the same method to the study of political economy; and it is only since the publication of their writings that political economy has acquired the character and certainty of a true science. Could the method that shows us how a nation's wealth is formed, distributed, and destroyed not show us with the same certainty the effects that human institutions produce on the prosperity or decline of peoples? Is not a part of political economy itself devoted to making known to us the effects of certain laws or certain institutions on the wealth of nations, and consequently on their prosperity? And is there any reason to believe that a method which has allowed us to appreciate with such accuracy the effects of a considerable part of legislation will be deceptive if applied to the other parts of the same science?

There is only one way to arrive at the knowledge of truth: the observation of facts. The botanist who studies a plant, the anatomist who studies the physical organization of man, and the moralist who studies the causes, nature, and consequences of an action or a habit follow exactly the same procedure. All describe the things or phenomena they have before their eyes: the method is the same; the difference exists only in the objects to which it is applied. If the descriptions they give us are exact and complete, they are truly forming sciences; if, instead of describing facts, they give us suppositions or hypotheses; if, instead of simply making known to us what things are and what they produce, they seek to inspire in us affection or aversion for a certain thing, a particular form, or a certain kind of action, they can no longer be considered as men who are studying a science and who wish to make it progress: they are men who are more or less ingenious, more or less eloquent, more or less estimable, according to the goal they set for themselves; but they are not men whom the sciences can recognize.

Men who create systems by the power of imagination, and those who set forth for us what things are, both make use of facts, but not in the same way. The former call them in support of their systems, and give them their own coloring; they set aside those that are contrary to them, or explain them in such a way as to render their testimony null. They ordinarily engage in the search for facts only when their system is complete, and when they imagine they have nothing more to learn. It is a kind of courtesy they show to their audience or their readers, from whom they dare not demand blind faith. They proceed like lawyers who search the writings of jurisconsults for authorities, not to form an opinion, but to defend their case; whatever the result of their research, they defend the interests entrusted to them no less.

When one confines oneself, on the contrary, to the observation and exposition of the phenomena of nature, one sets aside all opinion, all preconceived systems. One is convinced that one knows nothing, so long as one has not studied each of the facts upon which one wishes to focus one's research. Judgments are formed only as one advances in the study of facts: they are results of the examination one undertakes; but these results are unforeseen and in no way depend on our will. The opinion that results in our mind from the observation of a fact is as independent of us as the impression of heat, sounds, or odors, when we expose our organs to the action of hot, sonorous, or odorous bodies. It is not rare that in undertaking a research one arrives at unexpected consequences, contrary to our ideas, our interests, or our hopes. One can then certainly conduct a new examination, repeat one's experiments: but if the same procedure always leads to the same consequences, it is impossible for us not to remain convinced. We can hide our opinion, or even manifest a contrary opinion; but that is where our power ends. It is possible to believe on the testimony of others; it is not possible to believe against the testimony of facts.

It results from this manner of proceeding that one holds to the opinions that have formed in one's mind only as long as one believes them to be true, and that one is disposed to abandon them as soon as one begins to doubt whether the observations that gave rise to them were well made. As it is not in anyone's power to change the nature of things, or to make it so that, in a given circumstance, a certain fact is not followed by a certain consequence, scientists are not worried by the contradictions they encounter, nor by the criticisms to which their writings may be subject, nor even by the obstacles that popular prejudices oppose to them. They are well convinced that truth, by its own inherent force, will end by overcoming all resistance, and that once it has been demonstrated, it is indestructible, even if it were rejected by the entire world and disavowed by the very one who discovered it. When Galileo had demonstrated the movement of the earth, it was an established fact that could be destroyed neither by the authority of the Bible, nor by the power of the Roman church, nor by popular prejudices, nor by the illusions of our senses, nor even by the disavowal of the discovery's author, and which ended by being recognized even by those who believed they had the greatest interest in contesting it.

This security that truth inspires in those who seek it would prevent them from resorting to violent means to have their opinions adopted, even if they could put such means to use. They confine themselves to setting forth what things are, without engaging in declamations, and even without troubling themselves much about whether or not the procedures they have discovered are adopted. They know that the tendency of the human race toward its prosperity has more force than all the orators in the world, and that, when a useful truth has been discovered and demonstrated, it is not the fault of those who know it if they do not put it into practice. If one discovers, for example, that a certain process in the arts produces a saving of time, force, or capital, it is not very necessary to resort to oratorical means to persuade manufacturers not to waste their time, not to make useless employment of forces, or not to dissipate their capital without result. If one discovers and demonstrates that a certain remedy stops a certain pain, or cures a certain illness, one needs neither exhortations nor authorities to persuade suffering people to put an end to their pains and to recover their health.

It is not with this simplicity that men proceed who wish to have a system adopted that has been produced by the imagination or born of self-interest. These men never believe that the exposition of their ideas has enough force in itself to produce conviction. After having employed reasoning, when indeed they are willing to take the trouble to reason, they put to use all the resources of eloquence, and sometimes even of invective. Contradiction offends and irritates them, and they are always disposed to attribute to those who do not share their opinions bad faith, bad intentions, or at the very least a deplorable blindness. They wish to supplement by the power of public authority what their reasoning lacks in force; and it is through the torment of unbelievers that they seek to bring conviction to the souls of skeptics.

One would be mistaken if one believed that this manner of convincing minds has been particular to religious sects; it has been common to all men who have sought to found or support systems whose truth could not be demonstrated by experience. It is not only suited to the partisans of absolute power; it also pleases the partisans of popular power. The former do not hesitate to say that it is with the cannon that one must prove the principle of legitimacy, and overthrow the arguments made in favor of civilization and the progress of enlightenment [2]; but Jean-Jacques Rousseau hesitated no more to maintain that the State had the right to impose a politico-religious belief on its citizens, and to banish or even put to death anyone who would not adopt it, or who would not observe it after having sworn to it [3]. Philosophers have acted no differently than theologians and politicians, so long as they have claimed to arrive at the discovery of truth otherwise than by the study of facts. The decrees of the Parlement of Paris, in favor of the opinions of Aristotle, differ in no way, as to the spirit that obtained or dictated them, from the decisions of the Sorbonne, or from the judgments that were later rendered to reaffirm in the minds of men certain political dogmas that discussion had shaken.

By freeing the moral and political sciences from the beliefs particular to each religion, they are thus nothing but the description of human actions and institutions, of the physical and moral causes that produce them, and of the effects that result from them relative to the well-being of men. It is solely from this point of view that I propose to consider them; I wish neither to establish a system, nor to present in new forms a system imagined by others; my sole goal is, by bringing, if possible, the sciences of legislation and morality back to the simple observation of facts, to have these two branches of our knowledge considered as a part of the natural history of man.Does the knowledge of systems imagined by writers form a part of the science? A distinction must be made: systems that have produced and can produce no effect are foreign to the science; it is not even necessary to know them, or at least to speak of them. But those that have been adopted, whether by peoples or by governments, leave the domain of opinions; they enter into the number of facts whose character must be determined, whose causes must be sought, and whose consequences must be followed. We shall even see that these facts have sometimes had very important results. I will therefore have to examine the various systems of morality or legislation imagined by more or less celebrated writers, whenever I believe that these systems have produced or may still produce some effect on the conduct of men. In the moral sciences, the number of errors to be destroyed perhaps exceeds the number of truths to be demonstrated. Our immense libraries would be singularly reduced if one were to suppress from them the exposition of all false systems, and the refutations or commentaries to which they have given rise.

But, although the moral sciences can be formed only by the observation of facts, their study is infinitely more difficult than the study of the physical sciences. A physicist is master of the material on which he performs his experiments; if he has doubts about the correctness of this or that observation, if it does not seem clearly demonstrated to him that a certain effect must be attributed to a certain cause, he can repeat his experiments until he has arrived at complete certainty. The effects are, in general, rapid enough and close enough to the causes that produce them for the scholar who studies them to be able to see their connection, and never need to rely on the testimony of others. If he can be mistaken, he does not at least have to fear the errors of others; for he can see all that they have seen, and redo the experiments they have done.

In the moral and political sciences, one does not find the same advantages. Scholars do not have peoples at their disposal as chemists have matter. They can make observations on the facts that history has established, or of which they themselves are witnesses; but it is not in their power either to conduct new experiments, or to repeat those that have been done in other times or in other places. In truth, governments, which also have their systems, hardly act upon nations otherwise than as upon a material for experimentation: but their experiments are always conducted in the same direction, and with a view to arriving at a result that is not always avowed. They do not grant to those who are not convinced of the goodness of their procedures the faculty of conducting counter-experiments. The connection between effects and causes is, moreover, not as easy to demonstrate in the moral sciences as in the natural sciences; first, because a great number of causes acting simultaneously on a people makes it difficult to disentangle the effects that must be attributed to each of them; and, second, because the interval that elapses between the moment an institution is established and the moment it is possible to appreciate its results is often too long to follow the chain of connection of the facts well, and for the same individual who saw the cause begin to be a witness to the results. Often, too, it is impossible to travel to the places that are the theater of the facts: a man's life is not long enough to permit him to visit all the peoples of the world, and, even if he lived long enough, ignorance of languages or lack of fortune would make it impossible for him to verify the facts for himself. Hence the necessity for men who occupy themselves with the moral sciences to rely on the testimony of historians or travelers, a necessity to which men who devote themselves to the study of the natural sciences are not, in general, subject.

The human species is, moreover, endowed with such great flexibility, it carries within itself principles of conservation and development so energetic, that if it does not prosper equally in all situations, there is at least none in which it cannot preserve itself. It accustoms itself to all climates, is nourished by all sorts of foods, makes for itself clothing or shelter from anything that can protect it from the inclemencies of the weather, and obeys all the governments that ignorance, caprice, or force impose upon it. Subjected to institutions that constrain it in a thousand ways, and which seem fit only to destroy it, it often finds within itself the means to paralyze their effect, and prospers despite laws that tend only to make it decline. The men who profit from abuses or who hope to profit from them one day do not fail then to say that the laws they have made, or which they support, are the cause of its prosperity, and there is always a great number of people who give credence to their speeches and who repeat them.

The obstacles one encounters in the study of private morality are less great than those that oppose the formation of the political sciences. It is easier to see the causes and calculate the effects of a private action or habit than to see the causes and calculate the effects of a law that governs a nation. These causes are less numerous, less distant; these effects are less diverse, less extensive, closer: one can establish them without resorting to the testimony of others, and one consequently has only to guard against one's own errors. To expound the causes and describe the effects of a law or a political institution, one must sometimes consult the history of a people that has ceased to exist, or travel to a people that lives at a great distance; but to indicate the causes and describe the effects of a private action or habit, it is often sufficient to look around oneself. Finally, the interests that oppose the progress of private morality are less powerful than those that oppose the perfection of public institutions. An individual who would compromise his fortune and even his life to support a vicious institution would be in despair if he saw his son, his wife, or his daughter give themselves over to a dishonorable habit. There must therefore be more certainty in the judgments one makes about private actions than in those one makes about laws or institutions. One must also, for the same reasons, bring less animosity to the discussion of questions of morality than to questions of legislation or politics. Finally, the first of these questions must be within the reach of a greater number of minds than the second.

But, however difficult it may be to reduce the science of legislation and morality to the observation and exposition of facts, it is nevertheless not impossible; perhaps even the number of facts that have been established is great enough that one can give to several branches of these two sciences the same degree of certainty that has been given to the natural sciences. For half a century, indeed, scholars have collected such a prodigious quantity of new facts, and the human mind has made such immense progress, that questions which divided the most learned men of the last century can be resolved today by men of very mediocre capacity; and that, without being endowed with extraordinary sagacity, one can discover, in the most celebrated of their works, grave and numerous errors.

And could one be astonished at this, when one considers the means we possess and which they lacked? For less than half a century, all the sciences have acted upon one another and lent each other mutual aid. The study of human understanding has taught us to give precision to language and has put us in possession of a new method. The progress of political economy and the art of criticism has shed light on the history of ancient and modern peoples. Natural history, navigation, and commerce have made us aware of new peoples about whom one could previously only form conjectures. Laws whose description was found only in thousands of volumes, and which one was accustomed to revering as oracles of wisdom, have been discussed, systematized, and reduced to their simplest expression. Finally, men who had studied legislation as jurisconsults have critiqued it as philosophers, and have shown us the means of ascertaining its good and bad effects.

To these means that the sciences have furnished us, we must add the experience that revolutions have given us. The independence of North America has given rise to governments of which the ancients had no idea, and whose existence modern Europeans would perhaps not have believed possible, had experience not convinced them. The formation of a new world, more extensive than the old, destined to be one day more populous and richer, possessing or aspiring to give itself governments equally distant from European forms, Asian forms, and the forms of the ancient peoples of Greece and Rome, makes us lose a part of our importance and shakes the confidence we had in the infallibility of our political maxims. The revolutions and counter-revolutions that France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland have undergone in a space of about thirty years have uprooted or overthrown our old institutions, and changed even our habits. The wars to which these revolutions gave rise have caused peoples to pass alternately over one another's territory, and have thus put the most ignorant men in a position to compare their state to that of their neighbors. The decline of the colonial system, accelerated by the progress of knowledge and by the independence of the American continent, has overthrown commercial laws and maxims. Finally, the freedom of religious and political opinions, the multiplication and diffusion of philosophical works, and the changes wrought by the very governments that profess a violent hatred for innovations, have completed the destruction of the confidence one had in the old doctrines, and rendered almost obsolete the writings in which they were expounded.

One still admires, out of habit, writers who have enjoyed a just celebrity because, at the moment they appeared, they found themselves much more advanced than were their contemporaries; one even cites them sometimes, but one cites them without believing them, and often even without having read them. One considers their writings not as bodies of doctrine, but as arsenals that can furnish us with arms against enemies. Those who take the trouble to study them feel that they were made for an order of things that no longer exists, and for times that cannot return. One holds to them, however, because one does not have the time or the means to form more just ideas, and because one does not believe one's mind strong enough to permit oneself to walk without guides; but one follows them without having confidence in them, and with the circumspection of a general being led by a prisoner through enemy territory.

This absence of doctrines or of recognized truths, which is so keenly felt in politics or in legislation, gives rise to more or less ingenious systems that are sometimes adopted with enthusiasm, and then rejected with disdain. One forms for oneself, almost at random, principles or maxims that one accommodates as much as one can to the circumstances and interests of the moment, and in which one strives to believe. One seeks all the reasons that can justify them, and when the illusion has reached its peak, when one imagines one has acquired a very robust faith, and when one repeats with the liveliest confidence the creed one has imagined or adopted, an unforeseen event occurs that thwarts all our combinations, and that shows us a result contrary to all our hopes. One then attributes the unexpected events not to the vices of the system one has adopted, but to the bad intentions of those who have fought it, or to the incredulity of those who have not given it their faith. If repeated experiments end by convincing one that a vicious system has been adopted, one rejects it to adopt another equally imaginary; or else one seeks to correct its vices by some modification; or else one persuades oneself that there is nothing certain in legislation, and that one could do no better than not to occupy oneself with it. This last course is ordinarily the one taken by the crowd, because it suits equally laziness, ignorance, peremptory presumption, and the vices of the men who possess power. The day the people persuade themselves that there is nothing certain in politics is a day of triumph for bad governments; for, from that day on, they no longer have any resistance to fear.

What is the means of escaping this state of uncertainty or indifference, in which the ruin of the old systems and the revolutions that the world has undergone have left us? Must one imagine new systems, inflame minds for metaphysical speculations, or try to re-establish discredited systems? None of these means could produce lasting, or even very extensive, effects. The peoples do not have enough enlightenment to see for themselves the good and bad consequences of their institutions; but they have far too much to adopt blindly the opinions of anyone whomsoever, or to become passionate for a philosophical system, however ingenious it may be. It is still possible to bring new truths to light, but the time for forming sects is past. One consents to believe only what one finds demonstrated, and one measures one's enthusiasm for an opinion by the interest one believes one has in that opinion being adopted.

This disposition of minds, far from being an obstacle to the progress of the moral sciences, is, on the contrary, the most favorable circumstance that can present itself. One is never more disposed to let oneself be guided by facts than when one has ceased to have confidence in systems, and even in individuals. But, for light to emerge from facts, it is not enough to collect them and pile them up at random in a work; it is not enough to affirm that such a fact is produced by such another: one must present them in the very order in which they are generated, and demonstrate their lineage. It is only by classifying them in this manner and by showing their chain of connection that one follows a scientific path, and that one can hope to make the human mind take some progress. It is true that in following this method one is obliged to stop as soon as one ceases to be led by facts, and that one may, consequently, find oneself in the necessity of leaving important questions undecided. It is also true that one cannot give oneself over to those movements of inspiration, which the public sometimes takes for genius, and which are very often only the products of an unregulated imagination. But, when one treats a science, one does not undertake to resolve all the questions that may present themselves, and one does not speak to one's readers or one's audience in the same tone as a popular orator who seeks to set the multitude that listens to him in motion.

One sees, by what precedes, that in writing this work, I propose more than one object: I would first like to try to introduce into the study of morality and legislation the method that has made other sciences progress so surely and so rapidly, by substituting the study of facts for the invention and study of systems. I would like, in the second place, to make use of the immense quantity of new facts that the sciences and revolutions have furnished us for half a century, to bring morality and legislation to the level of our other knowledge, or at least to bring them closer to it. I would like, in the third place, to furnish young people whom the love of study and truth torments with means of instruction more sure than imaginary systems and the declamations that inflame their imagination without enlightening their minds. Finally, I would like to try to give to the part of our knowledge that most interests humanity the same certainty that has been given to others less important.If I had only my own strength to rely on, I would not have the courage to form such an undertaking. But, although the science of legislation is far from being as advanced as the other sciences, not everything, however, remains to be done. Some branches of this science have even made such great progress that little remains to be added to them; and the method that has served to bring light to them can easily illuminate those that are less advanced. We owe to the union of two scholars, whose names it is impossible to separate, Messrs. Bentham and Dumont, for having at once provided a better method of reasoning and for having often applied it with great success. On the other hand, the progress of political economy, and the research that has been done on the causes of the increase and decrease of population in all countries, have given us the means to resolve a host of important questions. Finally, a good method gives the mind such power that it can, in a way, replace talent; it is a lever that gives the weak man who employs it a strength that the strongest man, deprived of such a means, could not possess.