Another thing worthy of observation is, that of the incalculable number of transactions to which the student owed his daily subsistence, there was not perhaps a millionth part which contributed to it directly. The things of which he has now the enjoyment, and which are innumerable, were produced by men the greater part of whom have long since disappeared from the earth. And yet they were remunerated as they expected to be, although he who now profits by the fruits of their labours had done nothing for them. They knew him not; they will never know him. He who reads this page, at the very moment he is reading it, has the power, although perhaps he has no consciousness of it, to put in motion men of every country, of all races, I had almost said of all time—white, black, red, tawny—to make bygone generations, and generations still unborn, contribute to his present enjoyments; and he owes this extraordinary power to the services which his father had formerly rendered to other men, who apparently had nothing in common with those whose labour is now put in requisition. Yet despite all differences of time and space, so just and equitable a balance has been struck, that every one has been remunerated, and has received exactly what he calculated he ought to receive. But, in truth, could all this have happened, and such phenomena been witnessed, unless society had had a natural and wise ‹organization›, which acts, as it were, unknown to us? Much has been said in our day of inventing a new ‹organization›. Is it quite certain, that any thinker, whatever genius we may attribute to him, whatever power we may suppose him to possess, could imagine and introduce an organization superior to that of which I have just sketched some of the results? [p052] But what would be thought of it if I described its machinery, its springs, and its motive powers? The machinery consists of men, that is to say, of beings capable of learning, reflecting, reasoning, of being deceived and undeceived, and consequently of contributing to the amelioration or deterioration of the mechanism itself. They are capable of pleasure and pain; and it is that which makes them not only the wheels but the springs of the mechanism. They are also the motive power; for it is in them that the active principle resides. More than that, they are themselves the very end and object of the mechanism, since it is into individual pains and enjoyments that the whole definitely resolves itself. Now it has been remarked, and it is unhappily obvious enough, that in the action, the development, and even the progress (by those who acknowledge progress) of this powerful mechanism, many of the wheels have been inevitably, fatally injured; and that, as regards a great number of human beings, the sum of unmerited suffering surpasses by much the sum of enjoyment.