Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/25

Rh remedy for the ills of society that Aristotle can give us guidance. Such schemes are usually supported by Marxian or semi-Marxian theories of wealth-production, as it actually takes place under natural (i.e. 'capitalistic’) conditions. Here, too, Aristotle, properly interpreted, annihilates all Marxian doctrine. Capital, said Marx, is robbery. Wealth 1s produced by labour, and is simply condensed labour—which is about as true as the saying that all crime is condensed beer. The capitalist, says Marx, takes all except the minimum required for the support of the labourer. Marx’s fallacies have been often enough refuted by genuine economists, but their neatest refutation, founded on Arnstotle, is still comparatively unknown. It is to be found in Mr. F. W. Bain’s Principle of Wealth Creation, wherein it 1s demonstrated that the four Aristotelian causes give a complete account of the process. Mr. Bain’s work is now out of print, and it is high time that another edition was published, for it has been strangely neglected by professional economists. The present writer, some years ago, was studying Ruskin’s economics, and turned to a well-known Dictionary of Political Economy to see what the authorities had to say on the subject. Ruskin’s name was omitted! The reputation that Mr. Bain has won in a very different field, as a writer of delicate imaginative prose, has perhaps tended to obscure the value of his contribution to economic theory; but that so brilliant and original a book as The Principle of Wealth Creation—even if the germ of it 1s in Aristotle—should have been allowed to fall into comparative oblivion, 1s no credit to our professors.

Let us then take a brief glance at the leading idea of Mr. Bain’s book.

Every commodity—the commodity being the type of wealth 1n a modern community—has four causes:

(1) The matter out of which it is made.

(2) The design to which it owes its form or shape.