There was a view held in time past by the physiocrats, that,--Either men make artificial government regulations for economic life, which check its free expansion,--and then these regulations are harmful;--Or else, the laws tend in the same direction as economic life does when left to itself,--and then they are superfluous. As an academic theory, this view has had its day; but it still crops up everywhere as a habit of thought, and plays havoc in men's brains. People think, that if one department of life is guided by its own laws, then everything else whatever that is needed in life must follow as a consequence out of this one department. That if, for instance, economic life were regulated in a way to satisfy men's wants, that then this well-ordered economic soil would infallibly produce the right sort of spiritual life and "rights" life as well. But it is not possible; and only a way of thinking foreign to all reality can believe it possible. In the circuit of economic life there is nothing whatever that affords of itself any motive to guide that which runs all through the relation of man to man and proceeds from the sense of right. And if people insist on regulating this relation by economic motive the result will be, that the human being, with his labour and his control of the means of labour, will be bound hand and foot to the economic life. Economic life will go on like clockwork, and man will be a wheel in it,--Economic life has a tendency always to go on in one course, which needs rectifying from another side. It is neither, that the "rights" regulations are good, provided they move in the course set by economic life--nor, that when they run counter to it, they are bad. But rather, that if the course taken by economic life is constantly under the influence of those rules of "right" which concern man simply as man, then a human existence within the economic life becomes possible. And not till individual ability grows on its own ground, quite detached from the economic system, conveying ever afresh to economic life those forces that economics and industry are powerless to produce, can economic life itself develope in a way beneficial to men. It is a curious thing:--in purely external matters, people are ready enough to see the advantage of a division of labour. They do not expect a tailor to milk his own cow. But when it comes to a general division and co-ordination of human life, then they think that no good can come of anything but a onefold system.