But it does not embrace the whole range of human affairs. The science of morals has appropriated all that comes within the attractive regions of Sympathy—the religious sentiment, paternal and maternal tenderness, filial piety, love, friendship, patriotism, charity, politeness. To Political Economy is left only the cold domain of Personal interest. This is unjustly forgotten when Economical science is reproached with wanting the charm and unction of morals. How can it be otherwise? Dispute its right to existence as a science, but don’t force it to counterfeit what it is not, and cannot be. If human transactions which have wealth for their object are vast enough, complicated enough, to afford materials for a special science, leave to it its own attractions, such as they are, and don’t force it to speak of men’s Interests in the language of Sentiment. For my own part, I believe that little good has been effected of late in exacting from writers on Political Economy a tone of enthusiastic sentimentality which in their mouth can only be declamation. Of what do they treat? Of transactions which take place between people who know nothing of each other, who owe each other nothing but common Justice, who seek to defend or advance certain interests. It has to do with claims and pretensions which limit and restrain each other, and with which disinterestedness and devotion have nothing to do. Take a lyre, and chant such themes! As well might Lamartine sing his odes with the aid of the logarithm tables. [p068] Not that Political Economy is without its poetry. There is poetry wherever order and harmony exist. But it is in the results, not in the demonstrations. It is brought out, not created. Kepler did not give himself out as a poet, and yet the laws which he discovered are the true poetry of mind. Thus, Political Economy regards man only in one aspect, and our first care must be to study man in that point of view. This is the reason why we cannot avoid going back to the primary phenomena of human ‹Sensibility› and ‹Activity›. Start not, gentle reader! We shall not detain you long in those cloudy regions of metaphysics, and we shall borrow from that science only such notions as are clear, simple, and, if possible, incontestable. The soul, or (to get rid of the spiritual question) man, is endued with ‹Sensibility›. Let this sensibility be either in the soul or in the body, man, as a ‹passive› being, always experiences ‹sensations› either painful or agreeable. As an ‹active› being, he makes an effort to drive away the one set of sensations and to multiply the other. The result, which affects him again as a ‹passive› being, may be called ‹Satisfaction›. The general idea of ‹Sensibility› springs from other ideas which are more precise: pain, want, desire, taste, appetite, on one side; and, on the other, pleasure, enjoyment, competence.