He saw just the same thing in the socialistic books: either they were the beautiful but impracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was a student, or they were attempts at improving, rectifying the economic position in which Europe was placed, with which the system of land tenure in Russia had nothing in common.
Political economy told him that the laws by which the wealth of Europe had been developed, and was developing, were universal and unvarying.
Socialism told him that development along these lines leads to ruin.