Our society feels itself big with events, and is anxious about
the future: how account for these vague presentiments by the sole
aid of a universal reason, immanent if you will, and permanent,
but impersonal, and therefore dumb, or by the idea of necessity,
if it implies that necessity is self-conscious, and consequently
has presentiments? There remains then, once more, an agent or
nightmare which weighs upon society, and gives it visions.
Now, when society prophesies, it puts questions in the mouths of
some, and answers in the mouths of others. And wise, then, he
who can listen and understand; for God himself has spoken, quia
locutus est Deus.
The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences has proposed the
following question:--
"To determine the general facts which govern the relations of
profits to wages, and to explain their respective oscillations."
A few years ago the same Academy asked, "What are the causes of
misery?" The nineteenth century has, in fact, but one
idea,--equality and reform. But the wind bloweth where it
listeth: many began to reflect upon the question, no one answered
it.
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