THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 135
historians of this epoch, have no other mission than to demonstrate how wealth is acquired in the relations of bourgeois production, to formulate these relations in categories, in laws, and to demonstrate how far these laws, these categories, are, for the production of wealth, superior to the laws and categories of feudal society. Poverty in their eyes is only the pain which accompanies all child-birth, in nature as well as in industry.
The romanticists appertain to our epoch, where the bourgeoisie is in direct antagonism to the proletariat ; where poverty is engendered in as great abundance as wealth. The economists then pose as satisfied fatalists who, from their lofty position, throw_a glance of superb disdain on the active men who manufacture wealth. They copy all the developments given by their predecessors, and the indifference which with those was naiveté be- comes for these others mere coquetry.
Afterwards comes the humanitarian school, which takes to heart the evil side of the existing relations of production. This school seeks, as an acquittel for its conscience, to palliate, however little, existing contrasts ; it sincerely deplores the distress of the proletariat, the unrestricted competition between the bourgeoisie them- selves; it advises the workers to be sober and industrious, and to have but few children; it recommends the bour- geoisie to put thoughtful earnestness into the work of production. The whole theory of this school rests upon interminable distinctions between theory and practice, between principles and results, between the idea and the application, between the content and the form, between the essence and the reality, between right and fact, be- tween the good and the evil side.
The philanthropic school is the humanitarian school
