Man can attain welfare only in proportion as his reason and his
liberty not only progress in harmony, but never halt in their
development. Now, as the progress of liberty, like that of
reason, is indefinite, and as, moreover, these two powers are
closely connected and solidary, it must be concluded that
liberty is the more perfect the more closely it defines itself in
conformity with the laws of reason, which are those of things,
and that, if this reason were infinite, liberty itself would
become infinite. In other words, the fullness of liberty lies in
the fullness of reason: summa lex summa libertas.
These preliminaries were indispensable in order to clearly
appreciate the role of machinery and to make plain the series of
economic evolutions. And just here I will remind the reader that
we are not constructing a history in accordance with the order of
events, but in accordance with the succession of ideas. The
economic phases or categories are now contemporary, now inverted,
in their manifestation; hence the extreme difficulty always felt
by the economists in systematizing their ideas; hence the chaos
of their works, even those most to be commended in every other
respect, such as Adam Smith's, Ricardo's, and J.
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