This divergence really belongs to the origin of the science. Traces of it may be discovered if we compare the Physiocrats with Adam Smith, or J. B. Say with Ricardo; but it was now accentuated, for reasons that we shall presently indicate. Our third Book naturally divides itself into two parts, the one devoted to the French Liberal school, the other to the English. CHAPTER I: THE OPTIMISTS The previous Book has shown us the unsettled state of economic science. It has also indicated how the science was turned from its original course by reverses suffered at the hands of criticism, socialism, and interventionism, which were now vigorous everywhere. The time had come for an attempt to bring economic science back into its true path and to its old allegiance to the “natural order,” a position which it had renounced since the days of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith. This was the task more especially undertaken by the French economists. The attitude of the French school is not difficult to explain, for the French economists found themselves faced by both socialism and Protection. We must never forget that France is the classic land of socialism.[690] The influence exercised in England by Owen and in Germany by Weitling or Schuster is unworthy of comparison with the exalted _rôle_ played by Saint-Simon, Fourier, or Proudhon in France. The latter writers wielded a veritable charm, not merely over working men, but also over the intellectuals, and on that account were all the more dangerous, in the opinion of economists. French Protection was never represented by such a prominent champion as Germany had in List, but it was none the less active. Protection in England succumbed after a feeble resistance to the repeal movement led by Cobden, but in France it was powerful enough to resist the campaign inaugurated by Bastiat. It is true that Napoleon III suppressed it, but it soon reappeared, as vigorous as ever. The French school had thus to meet two adversaries, disguised as one; for Protection was but a counterfeit of socialism, and all the more hateful because it claimed to increase the happiness of proprietors and manufacturers—of the wealthy; while socialists did at least aim at increasing the happiness of the workers—of the poor. Protection was also more injurious, for being in operation its ravages were already felt, whereas the other, happily, was still at the Utopian stage. But in hitting at both adversaries at once the French school discovered that it possessed this advantage: it was free from the reproach that it was serving the interests of a particular class, and could confidently reply that it was fighting for the common good. A war of a hundred years can scarcely fail to leave a mark upon the nation which bears the brunt of it, and we think that this affords some explanation of the apologetic tendencies and of the normative and finalistic hypotheses for which the French school has so often been reproached.