Although, however, I find nothing to modify in these papers, it is a matter of regret to me that the most startling of all the statements in them--that respecting the necessity of the organization of labour, with fixed wages,--should have found its way into the first essay; it being quite one of the least important, though by no means the least certain, of the positions to be defended. The real gist of these papers, their central meaning and aim, is to give, as I believe for the first time in plain English--it has often been incidentally given in good Greek by Plato and Xenophon, and good Latin by Cicero and Horace,--a logical definition of WEALTH: such definition being absolutely needed for a basis of economical science. The most reputed essay on that subject which has appeared in modern times, after opening with the statement that "writers on political economy profess to teach, or to investigate,[25] the nature of wealth," thus follows up the declaration of its thesis--"Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by wealth." ... "It is no part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of definition."[26] [25] Which? for where investigation is necessary, teaching is impossible. [26] "Principles of Political Economy." By J. S. Mill. Preliminary remarks, p. 2. Metaphysical nicety, we assuredly do not need; but physical nicety, and logical accuracy, with respect to a physical subject, we as assuredly do. Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being House-law (_Oikonomia_), had been Star-law (_Astronomia_), and that, ignoring distinction between stars fixed and wandering, as here between wealth radiant and wealth reflective, the writer had begun thus: "Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by stars. Metaphysical nicety in the definition of a star is not the object of this treatise;"--the essay so opened might yet have been far more true in its final statements, and a thousand-fold more serviceable to the navigator, than any treatise on wealth, which founds its conclusions on the popular conception of wealth, can ever become to the economist. * * * * * It was, therefore, the first object of these following papers to give an accurate and stable definition of wealth. Their second object was to show that the acquisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain moral conditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in the existence and even, for practical purposes, in the attainability of honesty.