Chapter I: C D (9)

Man suffers, and will always suffer. Society, then, also suffers, and will always suffer. Those who address mankind should have the courage to tell them this. Humanity is not [p505] a fine lady with delicate nerves and an irritable temperament, from whom we must conceal the coming storm, more especially when to foresee it is the only way to ensure our getting out of it safely. In this respect, all the books with which France has been inundated, from Sismondi and Buret downwards, appear to me to be wanting in virility. Their authors dare not tell the truth; nay, they dare not investigate it, for fear of discovering that absolute poverty is the necessary starting-point of the human race, and that, consequently, so far are we from being in a position to attribute that poverty to the social order, it is to the social order that we must attribute all the triumphs which we have already achieved over our original destitution. But, then, after such an avowal, they could no longer constitute themselves tribunes of the people, and the avengers of the masses oppressed by civilisation.

After all, science merely establishes, combines, and deduces facts; she does not create them; she does not produce them, nor is she responsible for them. Is it not strange that men should have gone the length of announcing and disseminating the paradox, that if mankind suffer, their sufferings are due to Political Economy? Thus, after being blamed for investigating the sufferings of society, Political Economy is accused of engendering those sufferings by that same investigation.

I assert that science can do nothing more than observe and establish facts. Prove to us that humanity, instead of being progressive, is retrograde; and that inevitable and insurmountable laws urge mankind on to irremediable deterioration. Show us that the law of Malthus and that of Ricardo are true in their worst and most pernicious sense, and that it is impossible to deny the tyranny of capital, or the incompatibility between machinery and labour, or any of the other contradictory alternatives in which Châteaubriand and Tocqueville have placed the human race; then I maintain that science ought to proclaim this, and proclaim it aloud.

Why should we shut our eyes to a gulf which is gaping before us? Do we require the naturalist or the physiologist to reason upon individual man, on the assumption that his organs are exempt from pain or not liable to destruction? ‹Pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris›; such is the declaration of anatomical science backed by universal experience. No doubt, this is a hard truth for us to receive—not less hard than the contested propositions of Malthus and Ricardo. But are we for this reason to spare the delicate sensibility which has sprung up all at once among our modern [p506] publicists, and has given existence to Socialism? Is medical science, for the same reason, to affirm audaciously that we are constantly renewing our youth and are immortal? Or, if medical science refuse to stoop to such juggling, are we to foam at the mouth, and cry out, as has been done in the case of the social sciences—“Medical science admits the existence of pain and death; it is misanthropical; it is cruel; it accuses God of being malevolent or powerless; it is impious; it is atheistical; nay, more, it creates the evil the existence of which it refuses to deny”?

I have never doubted that the Socialist schools have led away many generous hearts and earnest minds, and I have no wish to humiliate any one. But the general character of Socialism is very whimsical, and I cannot help asking myself how long such a tissue of puerilities can continue in vogue.

In Socialism all is affectation.

It affects scientific forms and scientific language, and we have seen what sort of science it teaches.

In its writings, it affects a delicacy of nerve so feminine as to be unable to listen to a tale of social sufferings; and whilst it has introduced into literature this insipid and mawkish sensibility, it has established in the arts a taste for the trivial and the horrible; in ordinary life, a sort of scarecrow fashion in dress, appearance, and deportment—the long beard, the grim and sullen countenance, the vulgar airs of a village Titan or Prometheus. In politics (where such puerilities are less innocent), Socialism has introduced the doctrine of energetic means of ‹transition›, the violence of revolutionary practices, life and material interests sacrificed ‹en masse› to what is ideal and chimerical. But what Socialism affects, above all, is a certain show and appearance of religion? This is only one of the Socialist tactics, it is true—such tactics are always disgraceful to a school when they lead to hypocrisy.

These Socialists are perpetually talking to us of Christ; but I would ask them, how it is that while they acknowledge that Christ, the innocent ‹par excellence›, prayed in His agony that “the cup might pass from Him,” adding, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done,” they should think it strange that mankind at large should be called upon to exercise resignation also.

No doubt, had God willed it, He might have so arranged His almighty plans that just as the individual advances towards inevitable death, the human race might have advanced towards inevitable destruction. In that case, we should have had no choice but to [p507] submit, and science, whether she liked it or not, must have admitted the sombre social ‹dénoûment›, just as she now admits the melancholy individual ‹dénoûment›.

But happily it is not so.

There is redemption for man, and for humanity.

The one is indued with an immortal soul; the other with indefinite perfectibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [p508]

XXIV. PERFECTIBILITY.

That the human race is perfectible; that it progresses towards a higher and higher level; that its wealth is increasing and becoming more equalized; that its ideas are being enlarged and purified; that its errors, and the oppressions which these errors support, are disappearing; that its knowledge shines with brighter and brighter effulgence; that its morality is improving; that it is learning, by reason or by experience, in the domain of responsibility, the art of earning a constantly larger amount of recompense, and a constantly smaller amount of chastisement; that, consequently, evil is continually lessening, and good continually increasing;—these are conclusions which it is impossible to doubt when we scrutinize the nature of man and that intelligent principle, which is his essence, which was breathed into him with the breath of life, and warrants the scriptural declaration that man is made in the image of God.

We know too well that man is not a perfect being. Were he perfect, he would not reflect a vague resemblance of God; he would be God himself. He is imperfect, then,—subject to error and to suffering,—but, on the other hand, were he stationary, what title could he have to claim the unspeakable privilege of bearing in himself the image of a perfect being?

Moreover, if intelligence, which is the faculty of comparing, of judging, of rectifying errors, of learning, does not constitute individual perfectibility, what can constitute it?

And if the union of all individual perfectibilities, especially among beings capable of communicating to each other their acquisitions, does not afford a guarantee for collective perfectibility, we must renounce all philosophy and all moral and political science.

What constitutes man’s perfectibility is his intelligence, or the [p509] faculty which has been given to him of passing from error, which is the parent of evil, to truth, which is the generating principle of good.

It is science and experience which cause man to abandon, in his mind, error for truth, and afterwards, in his conduct, evil for good; it is the discovery which he makes, in phenomena and in acts, of effects which he had not suspected.

But to enable him to acquire this science, he must have an interest in acquiring it. In order that he should profit by this experience, he must have an interest in profiting by it. It is in the law of responsibility, then, that we must search for the means of realizing human perfectibility.

And as we can form no idea of responsibility apart from liberty; as acts which are not voluntary can afford neither instruction nor available experience; as beings capable of being improved or deteriorated by the exclusive action of external causes without the participation of choice, reflection, or free will (although this happens in the case of unconscious organized matter), could not be called perfectible, in the moral acceptation of the word, we must conclude that liberty is the very essence of progress. To impair man’s liberty is not only to hurt and degrade him; it is to change his nature; it is (in the measure and proportion in which such oppression is exercised) to render him incapable of improvement; it is to despoil him of his resemblance to the Creator; it is to dim and deaden in his noble nature that vital spark which glowed there from the beginning.

But in thus proclaiming aloud our fixed and unalterable belief in human perfectibility, and in progress, which is necessary in every sense, and which, by a marvellous correspondence, is as much more active in one direction as it is more active in all others, we must not be regarded as indulging in Utopianism, or be considered as optimists, believing “all to be for the best, in the best of worlds,” and expecting the immediate arrival of the millennium.

Alas! when we turn our regards on the world as it is, and see around us the enormous amount of mud and meanness, suffering and complaint, vice and crime, which still exist,—when we reflect on the moral action exerted on society by the classes who ought to point out to the lagging multitude the way to the New Jerusalem,—when we ask ourselves what use the rich make of their fortune, the poets of their genius, philosophers of their scientific lucubrations, journalists of the ministry with which they are invested, high functionaries, ministers of state, representatives of the people, kings, of the power which fate has placed in their hands,—when [p510] we witness revolutions like that which has recently agitated Europe, and in which each man seems to be in search of what must in the long-run prove fatal to himself and to society at large,—when we see cupidity in all shapes and among all ranks, the constant sacrifice of the interests of others to our own selfish interest, and of the future to the present,—when we see that great and inevitable moving spring of the human race, personal interest, still making its appearance only in manifestations the most material and the most improvident,—when we see the working classes, preyed upon by the parasitism of public functionaries, rise up in revolutionary convulsions, not against this withering parasitism, but against wealth legitimately acquired, that is to say, against the very element of their own deliverance and the principle of their own right and force,—when such spectacles present themselves to us on all sides, we get afraid of ourselves, we tremble for our faith in human perfectibility, the light would seem to waver, and be on the eve of extinction, leaving us in the fearful darkness of Pessimism.

But no—there is no ground for despair. Whatever be the impressions which too recent circumstances have made upon us, humanity still moves onward. What causes the illusion is that we measure the life of nations by the short span of our own individual lives; and because a few years are a long period for us, we imagine them also a long period for them. But even adopting this inadequate measure, the progress of society on all sides is visible. I need scarcely remind you of the marvels which have already been accomplished in what concerns material advantages, the improved salubrity of towns, and in the means of locomotion and communication, etc.

In a political point of view, has the French nation gained no experience? Who dares affirm that had all the difficulties through which we have just passed presented themselves half a century ago, or sooner, France would have overcome them with as much ability, prudence, and wisdom, and with so few sacrifices? I write these lines in a country which has been fertile in revolutions. Florence used to have a rising every five years, and at each rising one-half of her citizens robbed and murdered the other half. Had we only a little more imagination—not that which creates, invents, and assumes facts, but that which recalls them and brings them to mind—we should be more just to our times and to our contemporaries! What remains true, and it is a truth which no one can know better than an Economist, is this, that human progress, especially in its dawn, is excessively slow, so very slow as to give rise to despair in the heart of the philanthropist. . . . . [p511]

Men whose genius invests them with the power of the press ought, it seems to me, to regard things more nearly, before scattering amidst the social fermentation discouraging speculations which imply for humanity the alternative of two modes of degradation.

We have already seen some examples of this, when treating of population, of rent, of machinery, of the division of inheritance, etc.

Here is another, taken from M. de Châteaubriand, who merely formulates a fashionable conventionalism: “The corruption of morals and the civilisation of nations march abreast. If the last present means of liberty, the first is an inexhaustible source of slavery.”

It is beyond doubt that civilisation presents means of liberty, and it is equally beyond doubt that corruption is a source of slavery. That which is doubtful, more than doubtful,—and what for my own part I deny solemnly and formally,—is this, that civilisation and corruption march abreast. If it were so, a fatal equilibrium would be established between ‹the means of liberty› and ‹the sources of slavery›; and immobility would be the fate of the human race.

There cannot, moreover, enter into the human heart a thought more melancholy, more discouraging, more desolating, a thought more fitted to urge us to despair, to irreligion, to impiety, to blasphemy, than this, that every human being, whether he wills it or not, whether he doubts it or not, proceeds on the road of civilisation—and civilisation is corruption!

Then, if all civilisation be corruption, wherein consist its advantages? It is impossible to pretend that civilisation is unattended with moral, intellectual, and material advantages, for then it would cease to be civilisation. As Châteaubriand employs the term, civilisation signifies material progress, an increase of population, of wealth, of prosperity, the development of intelligence, the advancement of the sciences; and all these steps of progress imply, according to him, a corresponding retrogression of the moral sense.

This were enough to tempt men to a wholesale suicide; for I repeat that material and intellectual progress is not of our preparation and ordination. God himself has decreed it, in giving us expansible desires and improvable faculties. We are urged on to it without wishing it, without knowing it,—Châteaubriand, and his equals, if he has any, more than any one else. And this progress is to sink us deeper and deeper into immorality and slavery, by means of corruption! . . . . . . [p512]

I thought at first that Châteaubriand had let slip an unguarded phrase, as poets frequently do, without examining it too narrowly. With that class of writers, sound sometimes runs away with sense. Provided the antithesis is symmetrical, what matters it that the thought be false or objectionable? Provided the metaphor produces its intended effect, that it has an air of inspiration and depth, that it secures the applause of the public, and enables the author to pass for an oracle, of what importance are exactitude and truth?

I had thought, then, that Châteaubriand, giving way to a momentary excess of misanthropy, had allowed himself to formulate a conventionalism, a vulgarism dragged from the kennel. “Civilisation and corruption march abreast,” is a phrase that has been repeated since the days of Heraclitus, but it is not more true on that account.

At a distance of several years, however, the same great writer has reproduced the same thought, and in a more didactic form; which shows that it expressed his deliberate opinion. It is proper to combat it, not because it comes from Châteaubriand, but because it has got abroad, and so generally prevails.

“The material condition is ameliorated,” he says, “intellectual progress advances, and nations, in place of profiting, decay. Here is the explanation of the decay of society and the growth of the individual. Had the moral sense been developed in proportion to the development of intelligence, there would have been a counter weight, and the human race would have grown greater without danger. But it is just the contrary which happens. The perception of good and evil is obscured in proportion as intelligence is enlightened; conscience becomes narrowed in proportion as ideas are enlarged.”—‹Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe›, vol. xi. [p513]

XXV.

RELATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY WITH MORALS, WITH POLITICS, WITH LEGISLATION.[116]

WITH RELIGION.

A phenomenon is always found placed between two other phenomena, one of which is its ‹efficient›, and the other its ‹final› cause; [p514] and science has not done with that phenomenon as long as either of these relations remains undeveloped.

The human mind generally begins, I think, with the discovery of final causes, because they are more immediately interesting to us. No species of knowledge, besides, leads us with more force towards religious ideas, or is more fitted to make us feel in all the fibres of our heart a lively sense of gratitude for the inexhaustible goodness of God.

Habit, it is true, has so familiarized us with a great number of these ‹providential intentions›, that we enjoy them without thought. We see, and we hear, without thinking of the ingenious mechanism of the eye and of the ear. The sun, the dew, the rain, lavish upon us their useful effects, or their gentle sensations, without awakening our surprise or our gratitude. This is solely owing to the continued action upon us of these admirable phenomena. For let a final cause, although comparatively insignificant, come to be disclosed to us for the first time, let the botanist explain to us why this plant affects such or such a form, or why that other is clothed in such or such a colour, we immediately feel in our heart the unspeakable enchantment with which new proofs of the power, the goodness, and the wisdom of God never fail to penetrate us.

The region of final intentions, then, is for man’s imagination as an atmosphere impregnated with religious ideas.

But after we have perceived, or had a glimpse of the phenomenon in this aspect, we have still to study it in another relation, that is to say, to seek for its efficient cause. [p515]

It is strange, but it sometimes happens, that after having obtained the full knowledge of that cause, we find that it carries with it so necessarily the effect which we had admired at first, that we refuse to recognise in it longer the character of a final cause; and we say: “I was very simple to believe that God had provided such an arrangement with such a design; I see now that the cause which I have discovered being given (and it is inevitable), this arrangement must follow necessarily, apart from any pretended providential intention.”

It is thus that defective and superficial science, with its scalpel and its analyses, comes sometimes to destroy in our souls the religious sentiment to which the simple aspect of nature had given rise.

This is the case frequently with the anatomist and the astronomer. What a strange thing it is, exclaims the ignorant man, that when an extraneous substance penetrates into a tissue, where its presence does great injury, an inflammation and a suppuration take place, which tend to expel it! No, says the anatomist, there is nothing intentional in that expulsion. It is a ‹necessary› effect of the suppuration; and the suppuration itself is a ‹necessary› effect of the presence of an extraneous substance in our tissues. If you wish it, I shall explain to you the mechanism, and you will acknowledge yourself that the effect follows the cause, but that the cause has not been arranged intentionally to produce that effect, since it is itself the necessary effect of an anterior cause.

How I admire, says the ignorant man, the foresight of God, who has willed that the rain should not descend on the soil in a sheet, but should fall in drops, as if it came from the gardener’s watering-pot! Were it not so, vegetation would be impossible. You throw away your admiration, answers the learned naturalist; the cloud is not a sheet of water; if it were, it could not be supported by the atmosphere. It is a collection of microscopic vesicles, or minute bladders like soap-bubbles. When their density increases, or when they burst by compression, these thousands of millions of infinitesimal drops fall, growing larger in their descent by the vapour of the water which they precipitate, etc. If vegetation is benefited in consequence, it is by accident; but we must not think that the Creator amuses himself in sending us down water through the sieve of a monster watering-pot.

Ignorance, we must confess, very often imparts a certain plausibility to science, when the connexion of causes and effects is regarded in this way, by attributing a phenomenon to a final intention which does not exist, and which is dissipated before the light of superior knowledge. [p516]

Thus, in former days, before men had any knowledge of electricity, they were frightened by the noise of thunder, being able to recognise in that astounding voice, bellowing amid the storm, nothing less than a manifestation of Divine wrath. This is an association of ideas which, like many others, has disappeared before the progress of physical science. Man is so constituted, that when a phenomenon affects him, he searches for the cause of it; and if he finds out that cause, he gives it a name. Then he sets himself to find out the cause of that cause, and so he goes on until he can mount no higher, when he stops, and exclaims, “‹It is God; it is the will of God›.” This is his ‹ultima ratio›. He is arrested, however, only for the moment. Science advances, and soon this second, third, or fourth cause, which had remained unperceived, is revealed to his eyes. Then science says, This effect is not due, as we believed, to the immediate will of God, but to that natural cause which I have just discovered. And man, after having taken possession of this discovery, after having gained this step in the region of science, finds himself, so to speak, one step farther removed from the region of Faith, and again asks, What is the cause of that cause? And not finding it, he persists in the ever-recurring explanation, “It is the will of God.” And so he proceeds onwards for indefinite ages, through a countless succession of scientific revelations and exercises of faith.

This procedure on the part of mankind must appear to superficial minds to be destructive of every religious idea; for is the result of it not this, that as science advances, God recedes? Do we not see clearly that the domain of final intentions is narrowed in proportion as the domain of natural causes is enlarged?

Unhappy are they who give to this fine problem so narrow a solution. No, it is not true that as science advances, the idea of God recedes. On the contrary, what is true is that, as our intelligence increases, this idea is enlarged, and broadened, and elevated. When we discover a natural cause for what we had imagined an immediate, spontaneous, supernatural act of the Divine will, are we to conclude that that will is absent or indifferent? No, indeed; all that it proves is, that that will acts by processes different from those which it had pleased us to imagine. All that it proves is, that the phenomenon which we regarded as an accident in creation occupies its place in the universal frame; and that everything, even the most special effects, have been foreseen from all eternity by the divine prescience. What! is the idea which we form of the power of God lessened when we come to see that each of the countless results which we discover, or which escape our [p517] investigations, not only has its natural cause, but is bound up in an infinite circle of causes; so that there is not a detail of movement, of force, of form, of life, which is not the product of the great whole, or which can be explained apart from that whole.

But why this dissertation, which is foreign, as it would seem, to the main object of our inquiries? The phenomena of the social economy have likewise their efficient cause, and their providential intention. In this department, as in natural science, as in anatomy, or in astronomy, men have frequently denied the final cause precisely because the efficient cause assumes the character of an absolute necessity.

The social world abounds in harmonies, of which we can form no adequate or complete conception until the mind has remounted to causes, in order to seek their explanation, and descended to effects, to discover the destination of the phenomena. . . . .

NOTES.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

[1] Notice, etc., p. 30, ‹note› [TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: This refers to NOTE 11 Below].

NOTICE OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT.

[2] ‹Notice sur la vie, etc.›—‹Œuvres Complètes›, t. i. pp. 10, 11.

[3] ‹Correspondance›—‹Œuvres Complètes›, t. i. p. 27. ‹Revue des Deux Mondes›, t. xvii. p. 139.

[4] ‹Œuvres Complètes›, tome i. p. 244.

[5] Tome xvii. p. 148.

[6] ‹Revue des Deux Mondes›, t. xvii. p. 146.

[7] ‹Correspondance›—‹Œuvres Complètes›, t. i. p. 99.

[8] ‹Notice sur la vie›, etc.—‹Œuvres Complètes›, t. i. p. 18.

[9] This admirable work, the best and most complete treatise on money which exists in any language, well deserves a place in English literature.

[10] “God made the country; and it is perhaps in surveying plains, and meads, and mountains, remote from man, that the mind is most elevated to pure and high contemplations. But cities, temples, and the memorials of past ages, bridges, aqueducts, statues, pictures, and all the elegancies and comforts of the town, are equally the work of God, through the propensities of His creatures, and, we must presume, for the fulfilment of His design.”—‹Sir Charles Bell on the Hand›, ch. 3.

[11] The following list of chapters, intended to complete the ‹Harmonies Économiques›, found among the author’s papers, is exceedingly interesting. Of those marked * no notes or traces were found.

«Normal Phenomena.»

1. Producer—Consumer. 2. The Two Aphorisms. 3. Theory of Rent. 4. *Money. 5. *Credit. 6. Wages. 7. Saving. 8. Population. 9. Private and Public Services. 10. *Taxation.

«Corollaries.»

11. Machinery. 12. Free Trade. 13. Intermediaries. 14. Raw Materials—Manufactured Products. 15. Luxury.

«Disturbing Phenomena.»

16. Spoliation. 17. War. 18. *Slavery. 19. *Theocracy. 20. *Monopoly. 21. Governmental Undertakings. 22. False Fraternity or Communism.

«General Views.»

23. Responsibility—Solidarity. 24. Personal Interest or Social Motive Force. 25. Perfectibility. 26. *Public Opinion. 27. *Relations of Political Economy. with Morals, *with Politics, *with Legislation, with Religion.

TO THE YOUTH OF FRANCE

[12] The First Edition of the ‹Harmonies Économiques› appeared in 1850.—«Translator.»

[13] The author employs the term ‹prolétaire›, for which we have no equivalent word, to distinguish the man who lives by wages from the man who lives upon realized property—“les hommes qui n’ont que leurs bras, les salariés.”—‹See post›, Chap. X.—«Translator.»

[14] I shall explain this law by figures: Suppose three periods during which capital increases, labour remaining the same. Let the total production at these three periods be as 80—100—120. It will be thus divided:

Capitalist’s Labourer’s Total. share. share. First Period, 45 35 80 Second Period, 50 50 100 Third Period, 55 65 120

Of course these proportions are merely given for the sake of illustration.