Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/353

Rh In England Hobbes was the prophet of what is going on today, namely, the modification of the national English character by the materialist of pleasure becoming the materialist of political economy. This transformation was effected by the birth of utilitarianism which, as Fouillee wisely observes, sums up faithfully the whole modern English spirit. Adam Smith made utilitarianism the basis of his social-economic system, and is the first Englishman to proclaim this doctrine. His ideas were modified by Bentham, in whose Manual of Political Economy, and the various monographs which he published on the same subject, may be found all the errors of the orthodox political economy in regard to sociology. Among these monographs is the celebrated treatise on the "Defense of Usury," a work which has for us a truly great importance. Bentham established a kind of moral arithmetic by which to balance the accounts of utilitarianism. Any kind of pleasure whatever is brought to this balance and undergoes a comparison. This comparison naturally can only be essentially materialistic, hence, for the economist all pleasure enters into the field of material satisfaction, that is, of political economy. Thus all the other social facts, from law to morals, come to have an economic basis. In this arithmetical commensuration it was shown just how much advantage each had, and that "evil, injustice, of whatever kind it may be, is in the last analysis pain or the loss of pleasure." By this school everything was reduced to economic pain or pleasure, and hence political economy was able to overlook all the other social factors which were consequences of them. Against this system M. Cousin protested in a session of the Academy of Moral Sciences, held in Paris forty-three years ago. "I believe," said Cousin, "that there is a positive science based on material facts which bears the name of political economy, but if you wish to include in it the art of good conduct; if you call wealth everything which has a moral value; if all this moral wealth, produced by whatever kind of labor, belongs to political economy, you must then include morals, jurisprudence, logic, philosophy, and