LA PLAY'S STUDIES IN SOCIAL PHENOMENA. 793 



(gleaned in the latter case from no less than six different writers), to 

 show that they are virtually the same. He denominates it the " Eter- 

 nal Decalogue," and declares that obedience to it is the first essential 

 of social organization. He enumerates seven essentials to the upbuild- 

 ing of the social edifice. The first, as stated, is the decalogue, and 

 this, with the second, paternal authority, are the two foundation-stones 

 that must be permanent and inseparable. What he calls the "two 

 cements " are religion and the authority of the state ; while the " three 

 materials" are the three forms of land-holding, communal, individual, 

 and tributary. 



Surely, Le Play is to be classed with " the social architects," yet 

 he and his followers have always inveighed against " the dogmatists 

 of '89," against the Saint-Simonians, the Fourierites, and all others who 

 believed that they had " discovered " the perfect society while grop- 

 ing amid the shadows of an idealized antiquity, or through the cloud- 

 lands of their inner consciousness. The " golden age " in which Le 

 Play believed was not of the past only, nor of the future only, but 

 exists whenever and wherever a people fears God and keeps his com- 

 mandments. His elaborate specifications regarding " the essential 

 organization " of society claim to be only descriptions of what is al- 

 ways found in a society where peace and happiness obtain. He had 

 labored long and faithfully at the task of social analysis, and, when at 

 length he turned to the work of synthesis, it was his firm conviction 

 that in the three volumes, " L'Organisation du Travail," " L'Organisa- 

 tion de la Famille," and " La Constitution Essentielle de l'Humanite," 

 he did nothing more than bring together the influences which rigidly 

 scientific investigation had proved to be the indispensable sources of 

 man's welfare. Among all the races that enjoy social peace and sta- 

 bility he found the solidarity of the family intact ; he found that this 

 form of organization gave the best opportunity for the effective train- 

 ing of the children in the moral law ; and he concluded that the cha- 

 otic and unsatisfactory condition of the foremost nations of Europe 

 resulted from the breaking down of the almost patriarchal system in 

 which he was learning to believe, from the "infinite morselization " 

 (morcellement injini) of interests, from that division of labor which 

 compels the father of a family to be too much of a drudge ever to be 

 a guide, and leaves his children's education to the precarious chances 

 of right management at the hands of various sorts of specialists. He 

 dared to say flatly, for his own country, that her politics and social 

 state were the most unsettled in Europe because her morals were the 

 worst, that her laborers were restless and dissatisfied because they 

 were vicious, because " the system of adultery, instituted with eclat 

 at the court of Versailles, had led to the public concubinage which 

 now desolates the Parisian workshops." 



A remedy for existing evils, he believed, could not be found by 

 ingenious theorizing, but only by the development and application of 



