In no question is the arbitrariness of the historic socialism more apparent than in the artificial attempts made to formulate a just method of distribution or remuneration. We have in previous chapters indicated the different methods proposed in the schools of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Louis Blanc. Nothing has so much tended to give a utopian air to socialistic speculation. Our ideas of justice cannot well be expressed in a single formula, however comprehensive. It has been the endeavour more or less of all moralists and legislators since the origin of human society to elucidate it and reduce it to some kind of reasonable form, but with only very imperfect results; and socialists are not now likely to succeed in a task which is really impracticable. Progress in the realising of justice can be attained only through the collective enlightenment and moral experience of the race; and it will always fall short of our ideals, for our ideals rise as we approximate towards a realisation of them, and so ever leave us behind in the race after perfection. We need not say, however, that it is an obvious implicate in every equitable theory of distribution that remuneration must generally depend on work or desert. The normal income of the future must be based on service rendered to society by all able members. Regard will be had to the needs of the disabled. It should be emphasised, moreover, that socialism must assert the supremacy of morality over all the economic processes—production and exchange as well as distribution. Production should be rational and systematic. Above all, distribution should be equitable. In these respects socialism is fundamentally opposed to the one-sided conception of competition which has been so prevalent. It seeks to supersede the existing competitive system of industry by a new order, in which reason and equity shall prevail. It should also be clear that socialism supplies the much-needed complement and corrective of the principle of natural liberty advocated by Adam Smith. The principle of natural liberty had a great historical value, and when rightly understood must always be regarded as a prime factor in every theory of social progress. But it can be applied only under obvious limits, prescribed by reason and morality. The natural liberty of struggling individuals would, if unchecked, land us in social chaos. The true freedom of human beings is a rational and ethical freedom. Such principles ought to prevail in the commercial relations of nations with each other, as well as in every other department of our industrial and social life.