Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/469

Rh that are no less beneficent than necessary, they need only suppose a moment that human nature had opposite tendencies. Imagine that, instead of preferring to buy things at low prices, men habitually preferred to give high prices for them; and imagine that, conversely, sellers rejoiced in getting low prices instead of high ones. Is it not obvious that production and distribution and exchange, supposing them possible under such conditions, would go on in ways utterly different from their present ways? If men went for each commodity to a place where it was difficult of production, instead of to a place where it could be produced easily, and if, instead of transferring articles of consumption from one part of a kingdom to another along the shortest routes, they habitually chose roundabout routes, so that the cost in labor and time might be the greatest, is it not clear that, could industrial and commercial arrangements of any kinds exist, they would be of natures so unlike the present ones as to be inconceivable by us? And, if this is undeniable, is it not equally undeniable that the processes of production, distribution, and exchange, as they now go on, are processes determined by certain fundamental traits in human nature, and that Political Economy is nothing more than a statement of the laws of these processes, as inevitably resulting from such traits?

That the generalizations of political economists are not all true, and that some, which are true in the main, need qualification, is very likely. But, to admit this, is not in the least to admit that there are no true generalizations of this order to be made. Those who see, or fancy they see, flaws in politico-economical conclusions, and there-upon sneer at Political Economy, remind one of the theologians who lately rejoiced so much over the discovery of an error in the estimation of the sun's distance, and thought the occasion so admirable a one for ridiculing men of science. It is characteristic of theologians to find cause for extreme satisfaction in whatever shows human imperfection; and in this case they were much elated because astronomers discovered that, while their delineation of the Solar System remains exactly right in all its proportions, the absolute dimensions assigned were too great by about one-thirtieth. In one respect, however, the comparison fails: for, though the theologians taunted the astronomers, they did not venture to include astronomy within the scope of their contempt—did not do as those to whom they are here compared, who show contempt, not for political economists only, but for Political Economy itself.

Were they calm, these opponents of the political economists would see that as, out of certain physical properties of things there inevitably arise certain modes of action, which, as generalized, constitute physical science; so out of the properties of men, intellectual and emotional, there inevitably arise certain laws of social processes, including, among others, those through which mutual aid in satisfying wants is made possible. They would see that, but for these processes,