Comparison with the Physiocratic doctrine concerning the natural and essential order of societies is illuminating. To the Physiocrats the “natural order” implied a system—an ideal. It required a genius to discover it, and only an enlightened despotism could realise it. For Smith the “spontaneous order” was a fact. It was not a thing to be brought into being. It already existed. It was doubtless held in check by a hundred imperfections, including, among others, the stupidity of human legislation.[206] But it was triumphant over them all. Beneath the artificial constitution of society lay the natural constitution which completely dominated it. This natural constitution, which for the Physiocrats was nothing more than an ideal, Smith discovered in actual operation, and he was able to describe its _modus operandi_. Political economy, which with Quesnay was nothing better than a system of rules and regulations, became in Smith’s hands a natural science based upon the observation and analysis of existing facts. In a passage written in his usual lucid style Smith shows the superiority of his system over that of the Physiocrats. “Some speculative physicians seem to have imagined that the health of the human body could be preserved only by a certain precise regimen of diet and exercise, of which every, the smallest, violation necessarily occasioned some degree of disease or disorder proportioned to the degree of the violation.… Mr. Quesnai, who was himself a physician, and a very speculative physician, seems to have entertained a notion of the same kind concerning the political body, and to have imagined that it would thrive and prosper only under a certain precise regimen, the exact regimen of perfect liberty and perfect justice. He seems not to have considered that in the political body, the natural effort which every man is continually making to better his own condition, is a principle of preservation capable of preventing and correcting, in many respects, the bad effects of a political œconomy in some degree both partial and oppressive. Such a political œconomy, though it no doubt retards more or less, is not always capable of stopping altogether the natural progress of a nation towards wealth and prosperity, and still less of making it go backwards. If a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered. In the political body, however, the wisdom of nature has fortunately made ample provision for remedying many of the bad effects of the folly and injustice of man; in the same manner as it has done in the natural body, for remedying those of his sloth and intemperance.”[207]