ACTUAL SUPREMACY OF THE ECONOMIC POWER 239 



of the services rendered to society by each social category, have 

 been broken down. The equilibrium of social life, which was 

 effected by social integration and solidarity, exists no longer ; 

 but a new scale of ideological values, corresponding to the new 

 division of social labour, cannot be organised in a day. As long 

 as the social forces thus Hberated by the disaggregation of society 

 remain without eqidlibriujn, their respective values remain unde- 

 termined. In such a state of afEairs, all individual desires and 

 aspirations wiU have completely lost their orientation. PubUc 

 opinion is disorganised, and can exercise no efficient action. And 

 a society which lacks the sohdarity necessary to impress upon 

 each social category the hmits within which the aspirations of its 

 members may be considered legitimate — Shaving regard to the 

 general level attained by social evolution— is on the road to 

 dissolution. 



This condition of amoralism, so to speak, in which the equili- 

 brium of social life has been upset, has become chronic to-day 

 in one sphere of Western civihsation. As we have said, the 

 history of the nineteenth century has been the history of the 

 development of the economic power at the expense of the pohtical 

 and ecclesiastical powers. The schools of thought apparently 

 most antagonistic to each other — the school of orthodox 

 Liberalism and that of Sociahsm — are none the less agreed as 

 to the supremacy of the economic factor in the life of society. 

 But the economic sphere is precisely the sphere of social life 

 which does not possess a principle of sohdarity or integration. 

 In the ecclesiastical sphere we have, as integrating principle, the 

 Moral Law, of which the Church is the safeguard and the trustee, 

 and which constitutes the criterion according to which the 

 members of the ecclesiastical society must regidate their activities. 

 In the pohtical sphere we have the Fatherland as an integrating 

 principle, symbol of common iaterests and common aspirations, 

 to which the individual interests and aspirations must sub- 

 ordinate themselves. In the economic sphere, nothing of the 



