Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/416

Rh 400 POLITICAL E C O N O M Y sciences of inorganic and vital nature which is necessary j whether as supplying bases of doctrine or as furnishing lessons of method. Their education has usually been of a j metaphysical kind. Hence political economy has retained j much of the form and spirit which belonged to it in the 17th and 18th centuries, instead of advancing with the times, and assuming a truly positive character. It is homogene ous with the school logic, with the abstract unhistorical jurisprudence, with the a priori ethics and politics, and other similar antiquated systems of thought ; and it will be found that those who insist most strongly on the mainten ance of its traditional character have derived their habitual mental pabulum from those regions of obsolete speculation. We can thus understand the attitude of true men of science towards this branch of study, which they regard with ill- disguised contempt, and to whose professors they either re fuse or very reluctantly concede a place in their brotherhood. The radical vice of this unscientific character of political economy seems to lie in the too individual and subjective aspect under which it has been treated. Wealth having been conceived as what satisfies desires, the definitely determinate qualities possessed by some objects of supply ing physical energy, and improving the physiological con stitution, are left out of account. Everything is gauged by the standard of subjective notions and desires. All desires are viewed as equally legitimate, and all that satisfies our desires as equally wealth. Value being regarded as the result of a purely mental appreciation, the social value of things in the sense of their objective utility, which is often scientifically measurable, is passed over, and ratio of exchange is exclusively considered. The truth is, that at the bottom of all economic investigation must lie the idea of the destination of wealth for the maintenance and evolution of a society. And, if we overlook this, our economics will become a play of logic or a manual for the market, rather than a contribution to social science ; whilst wearing an air of completeness, it will be in truth one-sided and superficial. Economic science is something far larger than the catallactics to which some have wished to reduce it. A special merit of the physiocrats seems to have lain in their vague perception of the close relation of their study to that of external nature; and, so far, we must recur to their point of view, basing our economics on physics and biology as developed in our own time. Further, the science must be cleared of all the theologico-metaphysical elements or tendencies which still encumber and deform it. Teleology and optimism on the one hand, and the jargon of &quot; natural liberty &quot; and &quot; indefeasible rights &quot; on the other, must be finally abandoned. Nor can we assume as universal premises, from which economic truths can be deductively derived, the con venient formulas which have been habitually employed, such as that all men desire wealth and dislike exertion. These vague propositions, which profess to anticipate and supersede social experience, and which necessarily intro duce the absolute where relativity should reign, must be laid aside. The laws of wealth (to reverse a phrase of Buckle s) must be inferred from the facts of wealth, not from the postulate of human selfishness. We must bend ourselves to a serious direct study of the way in which society has actually addressed itself and now addresses itself to its own conservation and evolution through the supply of its material wants. AVhat organs it has developed for this purpose, how they operate, how they are affected by the medium in which they act and by the co existent organs directed to other ends, how in their turn they react on those latter, how they and their functions are progressively modified in process of time these problems, whether statical or dynamical, are all questions &amp;lt;&amp;gt;f fact, as capable of being studied through observation and history as the nature and progress of human language or religion, or any other group of social phenomena. Such study will of course require a continued &quot;reflective analysis &quot; of the results of observation; and, whilst eliminat ing all premature assumptions, we shall use ascertained truths respecting human nature as guides in the inquiry and aids towards the interpretation of facts. And the employment of deliberately instituted hypotheses will be legitimate, but only as an occasional logical artifice. II. Economics must be constantly regarded as forming only one department of the larger science of sociology, in vital connexion with its other departments, and with the moral synthesis which is the crown of the whole intellectual system. We have already sufficiently explained the philosophical grounds for the conclusion that the economic phenomena of society cannot be isolated, except provision ally, from the rest, that, in fact, all the primary social elements should be habitually regarded with respect to their mutual dependence and reciprocal actions. Especially must we keep in view the high moral issues to which the eco nomic movement is subservient, and in the absence of which it could never in any great degree attract the interest or fix the attention either of eminent thinkers or of right-minded men. The individual point of view will have to be sub ordinated to the social; each agent will have to be regarded as an organ of the society to which he belongs and of the larger society of the race. The consideration of interests, as George Eliot has well said, must give place to that of functions. The old doctrine of right, which lay at the basis of the system of &quot; natural liberty,&quot; has done its temporary work ; a doctrine of duty will have to be substituted, fixing on positive grounds the nature of the social co-operation of each class and each member of the community, and the rules which must regulate its just and beneficial exercise. Turning now from the question of the theoretic constitu tion of economics, and viewing the science with respect to its influence on public policy, we need not at the present day waste words in repudiating the idea that &quot; non-govern ment &quot; in the economic sphere is the normal order of things. The laissez faire doctrine, coming down to us from the system of natural liberty, was long the great watchword of economic orthodoxy, and it had a special acceptance and persistence in England, in consequence of the political struggle for the repeal of the corn laws, which made economic discussion in this country turn almost altogether on free trade a state of things which was continued by the effort to procure a modification of the protective policy of foreign nations. But it has now for some time lost the sacrosanct character with which it was formerly invested. This is a result not so much of scientific thought as of the pressure of practical needs a cause which has modified the successive forms of economic opinion more than theorists are willing to acknowledge. Social exigencies will force the hands of statesmen, whatever their attachment to abstract formulas ; and politicians have practically turned their backs on laissez faire. The state has with excellent eil ect proceeded a considerable way in the direction of controlling, for ends of social equity or public utility, the operations of individual interest. The economists them selves have for the most part been converted on the question ; amongst theorists Mr Herbert Spencer finds himself almost a vox damantis indesertoin protesting against what he calls the &quot; new slavery &quot; of Governmental interference. He will protest in vain, so far as he seeks to rehabilitate the old absolute doctrine of the economic passivity of the state. But it is certainly possible that even by virtue of the force of the reaction against that doctrine there may be an excessive or precipitate tendency in the opposite direction. With the course of production or exchange considered in itself there will probably be in England little disposition