We will explain later the function of money.

This determined, it is conceivable that at a given moment the
proportions of values constituting the wealth of a country may be
determined, or at least empirically approximated, by means of
statistics and inventories, in nearly the same way that the
chemists have discovered by experience, aided by analysis, the
proportions of hydrogen and oxygen necessary to the formation of
water. There is nothing objectionable in this method of
determining values; it is, after all, only a matter of accounts.
But such a work, however interesting it might be, would teach us
nothing very useful. On the one hand, indeed, we know that the
proportion continually varies; on the other, it is clear that
from a statement of the public wealth giving the proportions of
values only for the time and place when and where the statistics
should be gathered we could not deduce the law of proportionality
of wealth. For that, a single operation of this sort would not
be sufficient; thousands and millions of similar ones would be
necessary, even admitting the method to be worthy of confidence.

Now, here there is a difference between economic science and
chemistry. The chemists, who have discovered by experience such
beautiful proportions, know no more of their how or why than of
the force which governs them. Social economy, on the contrary,
to which no a posteriori investigation could reveal directly the
law of proportionality of values, can grasp it in the very force
which produces it, and which it is time to announce.

This force, which Adam Smith has glorified so eloquently, and
which his successors have misconceived (making privilege its