Note 12 — Chapter I · : THE PHYSIOCRATS
R. (Robert) Richards translation
“There is a natural society whose existence is prior to every other human association.… These self-evident principles, which might form the foundation of a perfect constitution, are also self-revealing. They are evident not only to the well-informed student, but also to the simple savage as he issues from the lap of nature.” (Dupont, vol. i, p. 341.) Some Physiocrats even seem inclined to the belief that this “natural order” has actually existed in the past and that men lost it through their own remissness. Dupont de Nemours mournfully asks: “How have the people fallen from that state of felicity in which they lived in those far-off, happy days? How is it that they failed to appreciate the natural order?” But even when interpreted in this fashion it had no resemblance to a savage state. It must rather be identified with the Golden Age of the ancients or the Eden of Holy Scripture. It is a lost Paradise which we must seek to regain.
The view is not peculiar to the Physiocrats, but it is interesting to note how unfamiliar they were with the modern idea of evolutionary progress.