Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/600

 578 Trig ECONOMIC JOURNAL individual economy, domestic, social, national, and universal economy are the five arts. The division (if it is logical at all) seems to be founded on the ambiguity of the word ' economy'; and it is a pity that we cannot imitate our German neighbouts and say ' economy' when we mean the phenomena studied,' economics' when we mean the study. There are many'economies,' but strictly speaking only one ' economics.' Besides this the 'conquest of nature' is not a right description of the province of economics. Mr. Mackenzie speaks constantly (e.g. 49) as if economical were synonymous with technical; but the'conquest of nature,' as described in such books as Beckmann's History of Inventions, has nothing very directly to do with economics; it is a victory of the technical and mechanical arts. In the chapter on the Social 'Problem, the various aspects of the subject are presented with great skill. Besides the primary cause of difficulty which is ' that men multiply and the earth does not,' we are told that there are four groups of causes, due to the complexity of industrial development. They are the multiplicity of functions, the diversity of interests, the irapersonality of relations, and the instability of conditions (p. 90). Some of the comments and descriptions are very happy. For example, after telling us that the adjustment of dis- locations cannot simply be left to the medicating effects of nature however efficacious in the long run, our author adds, ' It is impossible for one thing to adapt itself to another by degrees, unless the other thing is constant or at least varies in accordance with a constant rule ' (94). He says, in a neat .epigram, that, since the industrial state has succeeded to the military,' the sacredness of property has taken the place of the divinity of Kings' (77). But it is surely an exaggeration to say that ' under an industrial rgime character hardly counts' (100). A voice from Elswick (Nineteent] Cettry, November 1888, p. 659), proclaimed the direct opposite. The great want of our times (we are told) is organisation (95),. But neither laissez faire nor socialism will secure it; what then will do so ? The answer is, apparently, that, even as things are, the move- ment of disintegration has in it (in Carlyle's language)the 'organic filaments' of a better union (107). 'Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.' But men are becoming aware of their subjection to' the iron law of circumstance,' and are combining with each other to put the saddle on the right horse and ride it themselves (107, 108). Mr. Mackenzie is not really misled by this metaphor of Emerson's, kind are human subjects of them. time to assimilate but he goes far to mislead his readers. The 'things' that ride man- arrangements, not the material and mechanical ' The conditions have grown upon us before we had them and make them our own' (113). This is in a sense true; but (as our author adds soon afterwards)they are 'the conditions which we have ourselves created' (114). This peculiar phenomenon is perhaps the hardest problem of economics.