They regard the land as an immense arena in which prizes are contended for,--no longer, it is true, with lances and swords, by force and by treachery; but by acquired wealth, by knowledge, talent, and by virtue itself.

In a word, they mean--and everybody agrees with them--that the greatest capacity is entitled to the greatest reward; and, to use the mercantile phraseology,--which has, at least, the merit of being straightforward,--that salaries must be governed by capacity and its results.
The disciples of these two self-styled reformers cannot deny that such is their thought; for, in doing so, they would contradict their official interpretations, and would destroy the unity of their systems.
Furthermore, such a denial on their part is not to be feared.

The two sects glory in laying down as a principle inequality of conditions,--reasoning from Nature, who, they say, intended the inequality of capacities.

They boast only of one thing; namely, that their political system is so perfect, that the social inequalities always correspond with the natural inequalities.

They no more trouble themselves to inquire whether inequality of conditions--I mean of salaries--is possible, than they do to fix a measure of capacity.[1] [1] In St.Simon's system, the St.-Simonian priest determines the capacity of each by virtue of his pontifical infallibility, in imitation of the Roman Church: in Fourier's, the ranks and merits are decided by vote, in imitation of the constitutional regime.
Clearly, the great man is an object of ridicule to the reader; he did not mean to tell his secret.
"To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its results." "To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill." Since the death of St.Simon and Fourier, not one among their numerous disciples has attempted to give to the public a scientific demonstration of this grand maxim; and I would wager a hundred to one that no Fourierist even suspects that this biform aphorism is susceptible of two interpretations.
"To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its results." "To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill." This proposition, taken, as they say, _in sensu obvio_--in the sense usually attributed to it--is false, absurd, unjust, contradictory, hostile to liberty, friendly to tyranny, anti-social, and was unluckily framed under the express influence of the property idea.
And, first, CAPITAL must be crossed off the list of elements which are entitled to a reward.