Excerpt from Body and Soul: Or, the Method of Economy I showed in that book how the true definition of Wealth is the central idea, out of which flows naturally and Spontaneously the whole complicated Science of wealth-creation: an idea which conciliates the contradictions Of all previous systems of Political Economy: explains, and thus refutes, constructively, their various one-sided errors; provides a Simple and convincing solution of the perplexing problems of Money and Credit; and stands, in fact, to Political Economy exactly as the Copernican idea stood to Astronomy; being the focus, the fons et origo, of the whole economical order. Indeed, without this central idea, even history is unintelligible. For history during the last few centuries is simply the record of the process by which society has changed its structure it was formerly organised on a feudal and hierarchical, military and ecclesiastical basis, and is now organised mainly on a commercial basis: a basis which can only be understood by means of the idea explained on T fie Prin ciple of weazt/z Creation for the economical organisation of the whole of society flows deductively from it. Society is nothing but the material embodiment of that central idea, which is its soul. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.