Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/601

 REVIEWS 57 In a trading community Econony, whether of production or dis- tribution, is largely carried out by actions that are not deliberately planned with an eye to remote effects, but are spontaneous ad- justments to immediate needs, with a neglect and (for very many human beings) a necessary neglect of the future consequences. The 'things' that ride mankind are its own immediate needs, and the consequences of not looking (or of being forbidden to look)beyond these. In fact, though elementary economics may seem far away from the concrete social problem, it might be argued that without a due appre- ciation thereof we should hardly understand how the social problem arises, or at least how ' things' come to' ride mankind.' Mr. Mackenzie speaks truly of the 'principle of utilities'as one of the most fruitful conceptions ever introduced into economics (214). But he goes on to declare that the doctrine is not a psychological one, and that ' it could be applied to plants which have no feeling as well as to human beings who have' (215). ' A scale of utilities might quite well be drawn out for particular kinds of plants' (lb.). No doubt this would be so if the doctrine simply meant that, in all living creatures which depend on external supplies, there is a point where su.fficiency passes into repletion, and where the endeavour after 'more' (since ' enough' has been fur- nished) passes into an avoidance or repulsion of further supplies. This is with other creatures an observed fact; but with ourselves it is some- thing more. In human beings, especially in youthful ones, it is rather the feeling of satiety than the known sufficiency of supplies that stops the striving for more; and one of the difficulties in the human problem is that men are more foolish than any plants and most animals; they refuse to stop when (to the eye of the passionless spec- tator) they have evidently had enough. The expansiveness of human wants is a familiar fact to Mr. Mackenzie; yet he will not allow that it makes the table of utilities specifically different for plants and animals Such a table as that of Professor Menget takes account of this quality of human wants; and such a table, too, by no means falls under the general condemnation directed by our author against the whole doctrine, that it' leaves out of account the intrinsic importance of our wants' (216). Of course the fact that man is a calculating animal should also not be forgotten; in economics it is perhaps the chief one to be remembered. A dispassionate critic may add that utilitarians do not seem fairly chargeable with tending ' to fayour present desires rather than ultimate ideals' (213). An economist (even when a utilitarianS considers man as a calculating animal, and calculation is surely an anticipation of the future, whether near or remote, and not an abandonment to present desires. And the critic may doubt whether Mr. Mackenzie's revised ver- sion of an old motto, 'pectus ecowmicum facit,' should be allowed to bear his interpretation (50), namely, that a man's political economy has too often depended on his personal prejudices. No doubt this has happened ??2