Further criticism of this kind can serve no useful purpose, and it applies to every collective system, differing only in matters of detail. Whenever it is proposed to set up an elaborate plan of economic activity, directed and controlled by some central authority, with a view to supplanting the present system of individual initiative and social spontaneity, we are met at the threshold with the difficulty of setting up a new code of morality. Instead of the human heart with its many mixed motives, its insubordination and weaknesses, in place of the human mind with all its failings, ignorance, and error, is to be substituted a heart and mind altogether ideal, which only serve to remind us how far removed they are from anything we have ever known. The Saint-Simonians recognised that a change so fundamental could only be accomplished through the instrumentality of religion. In doing this they have shown an amount of foresight which is rare among the critics who treat their ideas with such disdain. It is more important that we should insist upon another fact, namely, that the Saint-Simonian system is the prototype of all the collectivist schemes that were proposed in the course of the century. The whole scheme is very carefully thought out, and rests upon that penetrative criticism of private property which differentiates it from other social Utopias. The only equality which the Saint-Simonians demanded was what we call equality of opportunity—an equal chance and the same starting-point for every one. Beyond that there is to be inequality in the interests of social production itself. To each according to his capacity, and to every capacity according to the work which it has accomplished—such is the rule of the new society.[482] An interesting _résumé_ of the Saint-Simonians’ programme, given in a series of striking formulæ which they addressed to the President of the Chamber of Deputies,[483] is worth quoting: “The Saint-Simonians do not advocate community of goods, for such community would be a manifest violation of the first moral law, which they have always been anxious to uphold, and which demands that in future every one shall occupy a situation becoming his capacity and be paid according to his labour. “In view of this law they demand the abolition of all privileges of birth without a single exception, together with the complete extinction of the right of inheritance, which is to-day the greatest of all privileges and includes every other. The sole effect of this system is to leave the distribution of social advantages to a chance few who are able to lay some pretence to it, and to condemn the numerically superior class to deprivation, ignorance, and misery.