There are others no less extensive and inexhaustible in the principles which underlie and maintain human society, and those which preside over the progressive development of humanity. Political economy is the department of social science which has been cultivated with most success. What, then, is its most comprehensive and best established theorem? This--that although the great majority of men are moved mainly by self-interest, and few seek with much zeal or persistency the general good, the result of their being left in perfect freedom to pursue their own advantage, so long as they do not outwardly violate the rules of justice, is far better for the whole society than if they conformed their conduct to any plan which human wisdom, aiming directly at the general good, could devise; nature having provided in the principles of the human constitution and the circumstances of human life for the selfish plans and passions of individuals so neutralising one another, so counteracting and counterpoising one another, as to secure the social stability and welfare--as to leave general ideas and interests to rule with comparatively little resistance. It is surely a natural inference from this that a Supreme Reason grasps all human reasons, and uses them in order to realise a purpose grander and better than any which they themselves contemplate. History viewed as a whole teaches the same truth on a wider scale. An examination of it discloses a plan pervading human affairs from the origin of man until the present day--a progress which has proceeded without break or stoppage, in accordance with laws which are as yet very imperfectly apprehended. Of the countless generations which have come and gone like the leaves of the forest, for unknown thousands of years, few have had the slightest glimpse of the order which connected them with their fellows, and embraced their every action; fewer still have sought to conform to it; the immense majority have set before them only mean and narrow schemes for personal good; all passions have raged and all vices prevailed in their turn; there have been confusion and tumult and war; and yet the order, progress, plan I speak of have been slowly and silently but surely built up. In this evolution of order out of the chaos of millions on millions of conflicting human wills seeking merely their own pleasure, there is, perhaps, even a more impressive proof of the operation of Divine Wisdom than in the origination and preservation of order among the multitudinous stars of heaven. The philosophical historian who has most conclusively shown by the scrutiny of the chief events in the annals of humanity the existence of such a progressive plan, is amply justified in arguing that it cannot have originated with man, or matter, or chance, but must be the work of God. "We have passed in review," he says, "all the theories imagined by philosophers and historians to explain the mysterious fact that there is in the life