Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

But it does not embrace the whole range of human affairs. The science of morals has appropriated all that comes within the attractive regions of Sympathy—the religious sentiment, paternal and maternal tenderness, filial piety, love, friendship, patriotism, charity, politeness. To Political Economy is left only the cold domain of Personal interest. This is unjustly forgotten when Economical science is reproached with wanting the charm and unction of morals. How can it be otherwise? Dispute its right to existence as a science, but don’t force it to counterfeit what it is not, and cannot be. If human transactions which have wealth for their object are vast enough, complicated enough, to afford materials for a special science, leave to it its own attractions, such as they are, and don’t force it to speak of men’s Interests in the language of Sentiment. For my own part, I believe that little good has been effected of late in exacting from writers on Political Economy a tone of enthusiastic sentimentality which in their mouth can only be declamation. Of what do they treat? Of transactions which take place between people who know nothing of each other, who owe each other nothing but common Justice, who seek to defend or advance certain interests. It has to do with claims and pretensions which limit and restrain each other, and with which disinterestedness and devotion have nothing to do. Take a lyre, and chant such themes! As well might Lamartine sing his odes with the aid of the logarithm tables. [p068]

Not that Political Economy is without its poetry. There is poetry wherever order and harmony exist. But it is in the results, not in the demonstrations. It is brought out, not created. Kepler did not give himself out as a poet, and yet the laws which he discovered are the true poetry of mind.

Thus, Political Economy regards man only in one aspect, and our first care must be to study man in that point of view. This is the reason why we cannot avoid going back to the primary phenomena of human ‹Sensibility› and ‹Activity›. Start not, gentle reader! We shall not detain you long in those cloudy regions of metaphysics, and we shall borrow from that science only such notions as are clear, simple, and, if possible, incontestable.

The soul, or (to get rid of the spiritual question) man, is endued with ‹Sensibility›. Let this sensibility be either in the soul or in the body, man, as a ‹passive› being, always experiences ‹sensations› either painful or agreeable. As an ‹active› being, he makes an effort to drive away the one set of sensations and to multiply the other. The result, which affects him again as a ‹passive› being, may be called ‹Satisfaction›.

The general idea of ‹Sensibility› springs from other ideas which are more precise: pain, want, desire, taste, appetite, on one side; and, on the other, pleasure, enjoyment, competence.

Between these two extremes a middle term is interposed, and from the general idea of ‹Activity› spring the more precise ideas of pain, effort, fatigue, labour, production.

In analyzing ‹Sensibility› and ‹Activity› we encounter a word common to both; the word ‹Pain›. To experience certain sensations is a ‹pain›, and we cannot put an end to it but by an effort, which is also a ‹pain›. We ‹feel pains›; we ‹take pains›. This advertises us that here below we have only a choice of evils.

In the aggregate of these phenomena all is ‹personal›, as well the Sensation which precedes the effort, as the Satisfaction which follows it.

We cannot doubt, then, that ‹Personal interest› is the great mainspring of human nature. It must be perfectly understood, however, that this term is here employed as the expression of a universal fact, incontestable, and resulting from the organization of man,—and not of a critical judgment on his conduct and actions, as if, instead of it, we should employ the word ‹egotism›. Moral science would be rendered impossible, if we were to pervert beforehand the terms of which it is compelled to make use.

Human effort does not always come necessarily to place itself between the sensation and the satisfaction. Sometimes the [p069] satisfaction comes of its own accord. More frequently the effort is exercised upon ‹materials›, by the intervention of ‹forces› which nature has placed gratuitously at our disposal.

If we give the name of ‹Utility› to all which effects the satisfaction of wants, there are, then, utilities of two kinds:—one, vouchsafed to us gratuitously by Providence; the other (if I may use the expression), requiring to be purchased by an ‹Effort›.

Thus the complete evolution embraces, or may embrace, these four ideas:

Wants {Gratuitous Utility, Onerous Utility} Satisfaction.

Man is endued with progressive faculties. He compares, he foresees, he learns, he reforms himself, by experience. If want is a ‹pain›, effort is a ‹pain› also, and there is therefore no reason why he should not seek to diminish the latter, when he can do so without diminishing the satisfaction, which is his ultimate object. This is the reason of his success when he comes to replace ‹onerous› by ‹gratuitous Utility›, which is the perpetual object of his search.

It follows from the ‹interested› nature of the human heart, that we constantly seek to increase the proportion which our Satisfactions bear to our Efforts; and it results from the intelligent nature of our mind that we manage at each step to augment the proportion which gratuitous bears to onerous Utility.

Every time a success of this nature is achieved, a part of our efforts is, so to speak, rendered disposable, and we have the option of either indulging ourselves with longer repose, or of working for the satisfaction of new desires, if these are strong enough to stimulate our activity.

Such is the principle of all economic progress; and it is easy to see that it is the principle also of all deception; for progress and error have both their root in that marvellous gift of God to man—‹Free will›.

We are endued with the faculty of comparing, of judging, of choosing, and of acting in consequence; which implies that we may form a right or a wrong judgment, and make a good or a bad choice. It is never useless to remind men of this when they talk of Liberty.

We never deceive ourselves, it is true, regarding the particular nature of our sensations, and we discern with an infallible instinct whether they are painful or agreeable. But how many various forms may our errors take! We may be labouring under a mistake as to the cause, and pursue with ardour, as likely to afford us enjoyment, what can only indict pain upon us; or we may be [p070] mistaken as to the chain of consequences, and be ignorant that an immediate satisfaction will be followed by greater ulterior pain; or, again, we may mistake the relative importance of our wants and our desires.

Not only may we thus give a false direction to our efforts through ignorance, but also through a perverse will. “Man,” says M. Bonald, “is an intelligence served by organs.” What! is there nothing else in us? Have we no passions?

When we speak of harmony, then, we must not be understood to mean that the natural arrangement of the social world is such that error and vice have been excluded from it. To maintain that thesis in the face of plain facts would be to carry the love of system to madness. To have harmony without dissonance man must either be devoid of free will or he must be infallible. All we say is this, that the great social tendencies are harmonious, inasmuch as—all error leading to deception and all vice to chastisement—the dissonances have a continual tendency to disappear.

* * * * *

A first and vague notion of property may be deduced from these premises. Since it is the individual who experiences the sensation, the desire, the want,—since it is he who makes the ‹Effort›,—the satisfaction must necessarily redound to him, for otherwise the effort would be without cause or reason.

The same may be said of ‹Inheritance›. No theory, no declamation, is required in order to make fathers love their children. People who sit down to manufacture imaginary societies may think it strange, but it is so;—a father makes as many ‹Efforts› for the ‹satisfaction› of his children as for his own. Perhaps he makes more. If, then, an unnatural law should interdict the transmission of property, not only would that law violate property by the very act, but it would hinder its formation by abandoning to inaction one-half at least of our ‹Efforts›.

We shall have occasion to return to the subjects of Personal interest, Property, and Inheritance. Let us, in the first instance, mark out the limits of the science with which we have more immediately to do.

I am not one of those who think that a science, as such, has natural and unalterable boundaries. In the domain of ideas, as in that of facts, all things are bound up and linked together; truths run into one another; and there is no science which, in order to be complete, might not be made to include all. It has been said with reason that to an infinite intelligence there is but a single verity. It is, then, our weakness which obliges us to study separately a [p071] certain order of phenomena, and the classifications which result from it cannot escape a certain decree of arbitrariness.

The true merit is to explain accurately the facts, their causes, and their consequences. It is also a merit, although a much less and a purely relative one, to determine, not rigorously—for that is impossible—but rationally, the order of the facts which we propose to study.

I say this in order that it may not be supposed that I intend to criticise my predecessors if I give to Political Economy limits somewhat different from those which they have assigned to that science.

Economists have of late been reproached with addicting themselves too much to the study of ‹Wealth›. It has been wished that they had found a place in their science for all that, directly or indirectly, contributes to the happiness or sufferings of humanity. They have even been supposed to deny everything which they did not profess to teach—for example, the phenomena of sympathy, which is as natural to the heart of man as the principle of self-interest. It is as if they accused the mineralogist of denying the existence of the animal kingdom. What! Wealth, the laws of its production, of its distribution, of its consumption,—is not this a subject vast enough, and important enough, to be made the object of a special science? If the conclusions of the Economist were at variance with those of morals and politics. I could conceive ground for the accusation. One might say to him, “In limiting your science you are mistaken, for it is not possible for two verities to run counter to each other.” Perhaps one result of the work which I now submit to the public may be, that the Science of Wealth will be found to be in perfect harmony with all the other sciences.

Of the three terms comprehended in the human destinies—Sensation, Effort, Satisfaction—the first and the last are always and necessarily confounded in the same individuality. It is impossible to imagine them separated. We can conceive a sensation unsatisfied, a want unappeased, but it is quite impossible to suppose the ‹want› to be in one man and the ‹satisfaction› to be in another.

If the same observation applied to the middle term, ‹Effort›, man would be a being completely solitary. The Economic phenomena would then manifest themselves in an isolated individual. There might be a juxtaposition of persons, but there could be no society; there might be a Personal, but not a Political, Economy.

But it is not so. It is very possible, and very often happens, that the ‹wants› of one owe their ‹satisfaction› to the ‹efforts› of [p072] another. This is a fact. If any one of us were to pass in review all the satisfactions he enjoys, he would acknowledge that he owes them chiefly to efforts which he has not himself made; and in the same way, the labour which we undergo, each in his own profession, goes almost always to satisfy the desires of others.

This tells us, that it is neither in the wants nor in the satisfactions (phenomena essentially personal and intransmissible), but in the nature of the mean term, ‹human Efforts›, that we must search for the ‹social› principle—the origin of Political Economy.

It is in fact to this faculty, given to men, and to men alone, among all creatures, to ‹work the one for the other›; it is this transmission of efforts, this exchange of services, with all the infinite and involved combinations to which it gives rise, through time and through space, it is «THIS» precisely which constitutes Economic Science, points out its origin, and determines its limits.

I say, then:

‹Every effort, capable of satisfying, on condition of a return, the wants of a person other than the man who makes the effort, and consequently the wants and satisfactions relative to this species of effort, constitute the domain of Political Economy.›

Thus, to give an example: the act of breathing, although it includes the three terms which constitute the Economic phenomenon, does not pertain to that science, and we see the reason. What we have here to do with is a series of facts, of which not only the two extremes—want and satisfaction—are incapable of transmission (they are always so); but the mean term, ‹Effort›, is also incapable of transmission. To enable us to respire we invoke the assistance of no one; in that there is neither a service to be received nor a service to render. The fact is in its nature individual, not ‹social›, and consequently cannot enter into a science which is essentially one of relation, as its very name indicates.

But if, in peculiar circumstances, people were to render each other assistance to enable them to breathe, as when a workman descends in a diving-bell, when a physician treats a patient for pulmonary complaints, or when the police take measures for purifying the air, in such cases there is a want satisfied by a person other than the person who experiences the want; there is a service rendered; and respiration itself, as far at least as concerns assistance and remuneration, is brought within the sphere of Political Economy.

It is not necessary that the transaction should be completed, it is sufficient that it is possible, in order to impart to the ‹labour› employed an ‹economic› character. The labourer who raises corn [p073] for his own use accomplishes an economic fact in this respect that the corn is capable of being exchanged.

To make an effort in order to satisfy another’s wants is to render him a ‹service›. If a service is stipulated in return, there is an exchange of ‹services›; and as this is the most ordinary case, Political Economy may be defined ‹the theory of Exchange›.

Whatever may be for one of the contracting parties the urgency of the want, or for the other the intensity of the effort, if the exchange is free, the two services exchanged are ‹worth each other›. Value, then, consists in the comparative appreciation of reciprocal ‹services›, and Political Economy again may be defined ‹the theory of Value›.

I have just defined Political Economy, and marked out its domain, without mentioning an essential element, ‹gratuitous Utility›.

All authors have remarked that we derive a multitude of satisfactions from this source. They denominate these utilities, such as air, water, the light of the sun, etc., ‹natural wealth›, in contradistinction to ‹social wealth›, and having done so, they take no more notice of them; and in fact it would seem that, as they give rise to no effort, to no exchange, to no service, as (being destitute of value) they figure in no inventory of goods, they should not be admitted into the domain of Political Economy.

This exclusion would be rational if ‹gratuitous› utility were a fixed invariable quantity, always separated from ‹onerous› utility; but they are constantly mixed up, and in inverse proportions. Man’s constant endeavour is to substitute the one for the other, that is to say, to arrive, by means of natural and gratuitous agents, at the same results as by efforts. He accomplishes by the wind, by gravitation, by heat, by the elasticity of the air, what he accomplished at first only by muscular exertion.

Now what happens? Although the effect is equally useful, the effort is less. Less effort implies less service, and less service implies less value. Each step of progress, then, annihilates value; but how? Not by suppressing the useful effect, but by substituting gratuitous for onerous utility, natural for social wealth. In one sense the portion of value thus annihilated is excluded from the domain of Political Economy, just as it is excluded from our inventories. It is no longer exchanged, bought, or sold, and mankind enjoy it without effort and almost without consciousness. It is no longer accounted relative wealth, but is ranked among the gifts of God.

But, on the other hand, if science takes it no longer into account, the error is assuredly committed of losing sight of what [p074] under all circumstances is the main, the essential thing—the result, the ‹useful effect›. In that case we overlook the strongest tendencies towards community and equality, and discover much less of harmony in the social order. If this book is destined to advance Political Economy a single step, it will be by keeping constantly before the eyes of the reader that portion of ‹value› which is successively annihilated, and recovered, under the form of ‹gratuitous utility›, by mankind at large.

I shall here make an observation which will prove how frequently the sciences unite and nearly run into each other.

I have just defined ‹service›. It is the ‹effort› in one man, while the ‹want› and the ‹satisfaction› are in another. Sometimes the service is rendered gratuitously, without remuneration, without any service being exacted in return. It proceeds, then, from the principle of sympathy rather than from the principle of self-interest. It constitutes gift, not exchange. Consequently it would seem to appertain not to Political Economy (which is the theory of exchange), but to morals. In fact, acts of that nature, by reason of their motive, are rather moral than economical. We shall see, however, that, by reason of their effects, they concern the science which now engages us. On the other hand, services rendered for an onerous consideration, on condition of a return, and, by reason of that motive (essentially economic), do not on that account remain excluded from the domain of morals, in so far as their effects are concerned.

Thus these two branches of knowledge have an infinite number of points of contact; and as two truths cannot be antagonistic, when the economist ascribes to a phenomenon injurious consequences, and the moralist ascribes to it beneficial effects, we may affirm that one or other of them is mistaken. It is thus that the sciences verify and fortify one another. [p075]

III. WANTS OF MAN.

It is perhaps impossible, and, at any rate, it would not be of much use, to present a complete and methodical catalogue of human wants. Nearly all those which are of real importance are comprised in the following enumeration:—

Respiration (I retain here that want, as marking the boundary where the transmission of labour or exchange of services begins)—Food—Clothing—Lodging—Preservation or re-establishment of Health—Locomotion—Security—Instruction—Diversion—Sense of the beautiful.

Wants exist. This is a fact. It would be puerile to inquire whether we should have been better without wants, and why God has made us subject to them.

It is certain that man ‹suffers›, and even dies, when he cannot satisfy the wants which belong to his organization. It is certain that he ‹suffers›, and may even die, when in satisfying certain of his wants he indulges to excess.

We cannot satisfy the greater part of our wants without pain or trouble, which may be considered as ‹suffering›. The same may be said of the act by which, exercising a noble control over our appetites, we impose on ourselves a privation.

Thus, ‹suffering› is inevitable, and there remains to us only a choice of evils. Nothing comes more home to us than suffering, and hence ‹personal interest›—the sentiment which is branded now-a-days with the names of egotism and individualism—is indestructible. Nature has placed ‹sensibility› at the extremity of our nerves, and at all the avenues to the heart and mind, as an advanced guard, to give us notice when our satisfactions are either defective or in excess. Pain has, then, a purpose, a mission. We are asked frequently, whether the existence of evil can be reconciled with the infinite goodness of the Creator—a formidable [p076] problem that philosophy will always discuss, and never probably be able to solve. As far as Political Economy is concerned, we must take man as he is, inasmuch as it is not given to imagination to figure to itself—far less can the reason conceive—a sentient and mortal being exempt from pain. We should try in vain to comprehend sensibility without pain, or man without sensibility.

In our days, certain sentimentalist schools reject as false all social science which does not go the length of establishing a system by means of which suffering may be banished from the world. They pass a severe judgment on Political Economy because it admits, what it is impossible to deny, the existence of suffering. They go farther—they make Political Economy responsible for it. It is as if they were to attribute the frailty of our organs to the physiologist who makes them the object of his study.

Undoubtedly we may acquire a temporary popularity, attract the regards of suffering classes, and irritate them against the natural order of society, by telling them that we have in our head a plan of artificial social arrangement which excludes pain in every form. We may even pretend to appropriate God’s secret, and to interpret His presumed will, by banishing evil from the world. And there will not be wanting those who will treat as ‹impious› a science which exposes such pretensions, and who will accuse it of overlooking or denying the foresight of the Author of things.

These schools, at the same time, give us a frightful picture of the actual state of society, not perceiving that if it be ‹impious› to foresee suffering in the future, it is equally so to expose its existence in the past or in the present. For the infinite admits of no limits; and if a single human being has since the creation experienced suffering, that fact would entitle us to admit, without ‹impiety›, that suffering has entered into the plan of Providence.

Surely it is more philosophical and more manly to acknowledge at once great natural facts which not only exist, but apart from which we can form no just or adequate conception of human nature.

Man, then, is subject to suffering, and consequently society is also subject to it.

Suffering discharges a function in the individual, and consequently in society.

An accurate investigation of the social laws discloses to us that the mission of suffering is gradually to destroy its own causes, to circumscribe suffering itself within narrower limits, and finally to assure the preponderance of the Good and the Fair, by enabling us to purchase or merit that preponderance. [p077]

The nomenclature we have proposed places material wants in the foreground.

The times in which we live force me to put the reader on his guard against a species of sentimental affectation which is now much in vogue.

There are people who hold very cheap what they disdainfully term ‹material wants›, ‹material satisfactions›: they will say, as Belise says to Chrysale,

“Le corps, cette guenille, est-il d’une importance,
D’un prix à mériter seulement qu’on y pense?”

And although, in general, pretty well off themselves, they will blame me for having indicated as one of our most pressing wants, that of ‹food›, for example.

I acknowledge undoubtedly that moral advancement is a higher thing than physical sustenance. But are we so stuffed with declamatory affectation that we can no longer venture to say, that before we can set about moral culture, we must have the means of living. Let us guard ourselves against these puerilities, which obstruct science. In wishing to pass for philanthropical we cease to be truthful; for it is contrary both to reason and to fact to represent moral development, self-respect, the cultivation of refined sentiments, as preceding the requirements of simple preservation. This sort of prudery is quite modern. Rousseau, that enthusiastic panegyrist of the ‹State of Nature›, steered clear of it; and a man endued with exquisite delicacy, of a tenderness of heart full of unction, a spiritualist even to quietism, and, towards himself, a stoic—I mean Fénélon—has said that, “After all, solidity of mind consists in the desire to be exactly instructed as to how those things are managed which lie at the foundation of human life—all great affairs turn upon that.”

Without pretending, then, to classify our wants in a rigorously exact order, we may say, that man cannot direct his efforts to the satisfaction of moral wants of the highest and most elevated kind until after he has provided for those which concern his preservation and sustenance. Whence, without going farther, we may conclude that every legislative measure which tells against the material well-being of communities injures the moral life of nations,—a ‹harmony› which I commend, in passing, to the attention of the reader.

And since the occasion presents itself, I will here mark another.

Since the inexorable necessities of material life are an obstacle to moral and intellectual culture, it follows that we ought to find more virtue among wealthy than among poor nations and classes. [p078] Good Heaven! what have I just said, and with what clamour shall I be assailed! But the truth is, it is a perfect mania of our times to attribute all disinterestedness, all self-sacrifice, all which constitutes the greatness and moral beauty of man, to the poorer classes, and this mania has of late been still more developed by a revolution, which, bringing these classes to the surface of society, has not failed to surround them with a crowd of flatterers.

I don’t deny that wealth, opulence, especially where it is very unequally spread, tends to develop certain special vices.

But is it possible to admit as a general proposition that virtue is the privilege of poverty, and vice the unhappy and unfailing companion of ease? This would be to affirm that moral and intellectual improvement, which is only compatible with a certain amount of leisure and comfort, is detrimental to intelligence and morality.

I appeal to the candour of the suffering classes themselves. To what horrible ‹dissonances› would such a paradox conduct us!

We must then conclude, that human nature has the frightful alternative presented to it, either to remain eternally wretched, or advance gradually on the road to vice and immorality. Then all the forces which conduct us to wealth—such as activity, economy, skill, honesty—are the seeds of vice; while those which tie us to poverty—improvidence, idleness, dissipation, carelessness—are the precious germs of virtue. Could we conceive in the moral world a dissonance more discouraging? Or, were it really so, who would dare to address or counsel the people? You complain of your sufferings (we must say to them), and you are impatient to see an end of these sufferings. You groan at finding yourselves under the yoke of the most imperious material wants, and you sigh for the hour of your deliverance, for you desire leisure to make your voice heard in the political world and to protect your interests. You know not what you desire, or how fatal success would prove to you. Ease, competence, riches, develop only vice. Guard, then, religiously your poverty and your virtue.

The flatterers of the people, then, fall into a manifest contradiction when they point to the region of opulence as an impure sink of egotism and vice, and, at the same time, urge them on—and frequently in their eagerness by the most illegitimate means—to a region which they deem so unfortunate.

Such discordances are never encountered in the natural order of society. It is impossible to suppose that all men should aspire to competence, that the natural way to attain it should be by the exercise of the strictest virtue, and that they should reach it [p079] nevertheless only to be caught in the snares of vice. Such declamations are calculated only to light up and keep alive the hatred of classes. If true, they place human nature in a dilemma between poverty and immorality. If untrue, they make falsehood the minister of disorder, and set to loggerheads classes who should mutually love and assist each other.

Factitious inequality—inequality generated by law, by disturbing the natural order of development of the different classes of society—is, for all, a prolific source of irritation, jealousy, and crime. This is the reason why it is necessary to satisfy ourselves whether this natural order leads to the progressive amelioration and progressive equalization of all classes; and we should be arrested in this inquiry by what lawyers term a ‹fin de non-recevoir›, a peremptory exception, if this double material progress implied necessarily a double moral degradation.

Upon the subject of human wants I have to make an important observation,—and one which, in Political Economy, may even be regarded as fundamental,—it is, that wants are not a fixed immutable quantity. They are not in their nature stationary, but progressive.

We remark this characteristic even in our strictly physical wants; but it becomes more apparent as we rise to those desires and intellectual tastes which distinguish man from the inferior animals.

It would seem that if there be anything in which men should resemble each other, it is in the want of food, for, unless in exceptional cases, men’s stomachs are very much alike.

And yet aliments which are ‹recherchés› at one period become vulgar at another, and the regimen which suits a Lazzarone would subject a Dutchman to torture. Thus the want which is the most immediate, the grossest of all, and consequently the most uniform of all, still varies according to age, sex, temperament, climate, custom.

The same may be said of all our other wants. Scarcely has a man found shelter than he desires to be lodged, scarcely is he clothed than he wishes to be decorated, scarcely has he satisfied his bodily cravings than study, science, art, open to his desires an unlimited field.

It is a phenomenon well worthy of remark, how quickly, by continuous satisfaction, what was at first only a vague desire becomes a taste, and what was only a taste is transformed into a want, and even a want of the most imperious kind.

Look at that rude artizan. Accustomed to poor fare, plain [p080] clothing, indifferent lodging, he imagines he would be the happiest of men, and would have no farther desires, if he could but reach the step of the ladder immediately above him. He is astonished that those who have already reached it should still torment themselves as they do. At length comes the modest fortune he has dreamt of, and then he is happy, very happy—for a few days.

For soon he becomes familiar with his new situation, and by degrees he ceases to feel his fancied happiness. With indifference he puts on the fine clothing after which he sighed. He has got into a new circle, he associates with other companions, he drinks of another cup, he aspires to mount another step, and if he ever turns his reflections at all upon himself, he feels that if his fortune has changed, his soul remains the same, and is still an inexhaustible spring of new desires.

It would seem that nature has attached this singular power to ‹habit›, in order that it should be in us what a rochet-wheel is in mechanics, and that humanity, urged on continually to higher and higher regions, should not be able to rest content, whatever degree of civilisation it attains to.

The ‹sense of dignity›, the feeling of self-respect, acts with perhaps still more force in the same direction. The stoic philosophy has frequently blamed men for desiring rather to ‹appear› than to ‹be›. But, taking a broader view of things, is it certain that to ‹appear› is not for man one of the modes of ‹being›?

When, by exertion, order, and economy, a family rises by degrees towards those social regions where tastes become nicer and more delicate, relations more polished, sentiments more refined, intelligence more cultivated, who can describe the acute suffering which accompanies a forced return to their former low estate? The body does not alone suffer. The sad reverse interferes with habits which have become as it were a second nature; it clashes with the sense of dignity, and all the feelings of the soul. It is by no means uncommon in such a case to see the victim sink all at once into degrading sottishness, or perish in despair. It is with the social medium as with the atmosphere. The mountaineer, accustomed to the pure air of his native hills, pines and moulders away in the narrow streets of our cities.

But I hear some one exclaim, Economist, you stumble already. You have just told us that your science is in accord with morals, and here you are justifying luxury and effeminacy. Philosopher, I say in my turn, lay aside these fine clothes, which were not those of primitive man, break your furniture, burn your books, dine on raw flesh, and I shall then reply to your objection. It is too much [p081] to quarrel with this power of habit, of which you are yourself the living example.

We may find fault with this disposition which Nature has given to our organs; but our censure will not make it the less universal. We find it existing among all nations, ancient and modern, savage and civilized, at the antipodes as at home. We cannot explain civilisation without it; and when a disposition of the human heart is thus proved to be universal and indestructible, social science cannot put it aside, or refuse to take it into account.

This objection will be made by publicists who pride themselves on being the disciples of Rousseau; but Rousseau has never denied the existence of the phenomenon. He establishes undeniably the indefinite elasticity of human wants, and the power of habit, and admits even the part which I assign to them in preventing the human race from retrograding; only, that which I admire is what he deplores, and he does so consistently. Rousseau fancied there was a time when men had neither rights, nor duties, nor relations, nor affections, nor language; and it was then, according to him, that they were happy and perfect. He was bound, therefore, to abhor the social machinery which is constantly removing mankind from ideal perfection. Those, on the contrary, who are of opinion that perfection is not at the beginning, but at the end, of the human evolution, will admire the spring and motive of action which I place in the foreground. But as to the existence and play of the spring itself we are at one.

“Men of leisure,” he says, “employed themselves in procuring all sorts of conveniences and accommodations unknown to their forefathers, and that was the first yoke which, without intending it, they imposed upon themselves, and the prime source of the inconveniences which they prepared for their descendants. For, not only did they thus continue to emasculate both mind and body, but these luxuries having ‹by habit› lost all their relish, and degenerated into ‹true wants›, their being deprived of them caused more pain than the possession of them had given pleasure: they were unhappy at losing what they had no enjoyment in possessing.”

Rousseau was convinced that God, nature, and humanity were wrong. That is still the opinion of many; but it is not mine.

After all, God forbid that I should desire to set myself against the noblest attribute, the most beautiful virtue of man, self-control, command over his passions, moderation in his desires, contempt of show. I don’t say that he is to make himself a slave to this or that factitious want. I say that wants (taking a broad and general [p082] view of them as resulting from man’s mental and bodily constitution), combined with the power of habit, and the sense of dignity, are indefinitely expansible, because they spring from an inexhaustible source—namely, desire. Who should blame a rich man for being sober, for despising finery, for avoiding pomp and effeminacy? But are there not more elevated desires to which he may yield? Has the desire for instruction, for instance, any limits? To render service to his country, to encourage the arts, to disseminate useful ideas, to succour the distressed,—is there anything in these incompatible with the right use of riches?

For the rest, whatever philosophers may think of it, human wants do not constitute a fixed immutable quantity. That is a certain, a universal fact, liable to no exception. The wants of the fourteenth century, whether with reference to food, or lodging, or instruction, were not at all the wants of ours, and we may safely predict that ours will not be the wants of our descendants.

The same observation applies to all the elements of Political Economy—Wealth, Labour, Value, Services, etc.,—all participate in the extreme versatility of the principal subject, Man. Political Economy has not, like geometry or physics, the advantage of dealing with objects which can be weighed or measured. This is one of its difficulties to begin with, and it is a perpetual source of errors throughout; for when the human mind applies itself to a certain order of phenomena, it is naturally on the outlook for a ‹criterion›, a common measure, to which everything can be referred, in order to give to that particular branch of knowledge the character of an ‹exact science›. Thus we observe some authors seeking for fixity in ‹value›, others in ‹money›, others in ‹corn›, others in ‹labour›, that is to say, in things which are themselves all liable to fluctuation.

Many errors in Political Economy proceed from authors thus regarding human wants as a fixed determinate quantity; and it is for this reason that I have deemed it my duty to enlarge on this subject. At the risk of anticipating, it is worth while to notice briefly this mode of reasoning. Economists take generally the enjoyments which satisfy men of the present day, and they assume that human nature admits of no other. Hence, if the bounty of nature, or the power of machinery, or habits of temperance and moderation, succeed in rendering disposable for a time a portion of human labour, this progress disquiets them, they consider it as a disaster, and they retreat behind absurd but specious formulas, such as these: ‹Production is superabundant›,—‹we suffer from plethora›,—‹the power of producing outruns the power of consuming›, etc. [p083]

It is not possible to discover a solution of the question of ‹machinery›, or that of ‹external competition›, or that of ‹luxury›, if we persist in considering our ‹wants› as a fixed invariable quantity, and do not take into account their indefinite expansibility.

But if human ‹wants› are indefinite, progressive, capable of increase, like desire, which is their never failing source, we must admit, under pain of introducing discordance and contradiction into the economical laws of society, that nature has placed in man and around him indefinite and progressive means of ‹satisfaction›;—equilibrium between the means and the end being the primary condition of all harmony. This is what we shall now examine.

I said at the outset of this work that the object of Political Economy is ‹man›, considered with reference to his wants, and his means of satisfying these wants.

We must then begin with the study of man and his organization.

But we have also seen that he is not a solitary being. If his ‹wants› and his ‹satisfactions› are, from the very nature of sensibility, inseparable from his being, the same thing cannot be said of his ‹efforts›, which spring from the active principle. The latter are susceptible of transmission. In a word, men work for one another.

Now a very strange thing takes place.

If we take a general, or, if I may be allowed the expression, abstract view, of man, his wants, his efforts, his satisfactions, his constitution, his inclinations, his tendencies, we fall into a train of observation which appears free from doubt and self-evident,—so much so, that the writer finds a difficulty in submitting to the public judgment truths so vulgar and so palpable. He is afraid of provoking ridicule; and thinks, not without reason, that the impatient reader will throw away his book, exclaiming, “I shall not waste time on such trivialities.”

And yet these truths which, when presented to us in an abstract shape, we regard as so incontrovertible that we can scarce summon patience to listen to them, are considered only as ridiculous errors and absurd theories the moment they are applied to man in his social state. Regarding man as an isolated being, who ever took it into his head to say, “Production is superabundant—the power of consumption cannot keep pace with the power of production—luxury and factitious tastes are the source of wealth—the invention of machinery annihilates labour,” and other apophthegms of the same sort,—which, nevertheless, when applied to mankind in the aggregate, we receive as axioms so well established that they are actually made the basis of our commercial and industrial legislation? ‹Exchange› produces in this respect an illusion of which [p084] even men of penetration and solid judgment find it impossible to disabuse themselves, and I affirm that Political Economy will have attained its design, and fulfilled its mission, when it shall have conclusively demonstrated this:—that what is true of an individual man is true of society at large. Man in an isolated state is at once producer and consumer, inventor and projector, capitalist and workman. All the economic phenomena are accomplished in his person—he is, as it were, society in miniature. In like manner, humanity, viewed in the aggregate, may be regarded as a great, collective, complex individual, to whom you may apply exactly the same truths as to man in a state of isolation.

I have felt it necessary to make this remark, which I hope will be justified in the sequel, before continuing what I had to say upon man. I should have been afraid, otherwise, that the reader might reject, as superfluous, the following developments, which in fact are nothing else than veritable ‹truisms›.

I have just spoken of the ‹wants› of man, and after presenting an approximate enumeration of them, I observed that they were not of a stationary, but of a progressive nature; and this holds true, whether we consider these wants each singly, or all together, in their physical, intellectual, and moral order. How could it be otherwise? There are wants the satisfaction of which is exacted by our organization under pain of death, and up to a certain point we may represent these as fixed quantities, although that is not rigorously exact, for however little we may desire to neglect an essential element—namely, the ‹force of habit›—however little we may condescend to subject ourselves to honest self-examination, we shall be forced to allow that wants, even of the plainest and most homely kind (the desire for food, for example), undergo, under the influence of habit, undoubted transformations. The man who declaims against this observation as materialist and epicurean, would think himself very unfortunate, if, taking him at his word, we should reduce him to the black broth of the Spartans, or the scanty pittance of an anchorite. At all events, when wants of this kind have been satisfied in an assured and permanent way, there are others which take their rise in the most expansible of our faculties, desire. Can we conceive a time when man can no longer form even reasonable desires? Let us not forget that a desire which might be unreasonable in a former state of civilisation—at a time when all the human faculties were absorbed in providing for low material wants—ceases to be so when improvement opens to these faculties a more extended field. A desire to travel at the rate of thirty miles an hour would have been unreasonable [p085] two centuries ago—it is not so at the present day. To pretend that the wants and desires of man are fixed and stationary quantities, is to mistake the nature of the human soul, to deny facts, and to render civilisation inexplicable.

It would still be inexplicable if, side by side with the indefinite development of wants, there had not been placed, as possible, the indefinite development of the means of providing for these wants. How could the expansible nature of our wants have contributed to the realization of progress, if, at a certain point, our faculties could advance no farther, and should encounter an impassable barrier?

Our wants being indefinite, the presumption is that the means of satisfying these wants should be indefinite also, unless we are to suppose Nature, Providence, or the Power which presides over our destinies, to have fallen into a cruel and shocking contradiction.

I say indefinite, not infinite, for nothing connected with man is infinite. It is precisely because our faculties go on developing themselves ‹ad infinitum›, that they have no assignable limits, although they may have absolute limits. There are many points above the present range of humanity, which we may never succeed in attaining, and yet for all that, the time may never come when we shall cease to approach nearer them.[22]

I don’t at all mean to say that ‹desire›, and the ‹means› of satisfying desire, march in parallel lines and with equal rapidity. The former runs—the latter limps after it.

The prompt and adventurous nature of desire, compared with the slowness of our faculties, shews us very clearly that in every stage of civilisation, at every step of our progress, suffering to a certain extent is, and ever must be, the lot of man. But it shews us likewise that this suffering has a mission, for desire could no longer be an incentive to our faculties if it followed, in place of preceding, their exercise. Let us not, however, accuse nature of cruelty in the construction of this mechanism, for we cannot fail to remark that desire is never transformed into want, strictly so called, that is, into ‹painful desire›, until it has been made such by ‹habit›; in other words, until the ‹means› of satisfying the desire have been found and placed irrevocably within our reach.[23] [p086]

We have now to examine the question,—What means have we of providing for our wants?

It seems evident to me that there are two—namely, Nature and Labour, the gifts of God, and the fruits of our efforts—or, if you will, the application of our faculties to the things which Nature has placed at our service.

No school that I know of has attributed the satisfaction of our wants to Nature ‹alone›. Such an assertion is clearly contradicted by experience, and we need not learn Political Economy to perceive that the intervention of our ‹faculties› is necessary.

But there are schools who have attributed this privilege to Labour alone. Their axiom is, “All wealth comes from labour—labour is wealth.”

I cannot help anticipating, so far as to remark, that these formulas, taken literally, have led to monstrous errors of doctrine, and, consequently, to deplorable legislative blunders. I shall return to this subject. I confine myself here to establishing, as a fact, that ‹Nature› and ‹Labour› co-operate for the satisfaction of our wants and desires.

Let us examine the facts.

The first want which we have placed at the head of our list is that of ‹breathing›. As regards respiration, we have already shown that ‹nature› in general is at the whole cost, and that human ‹labour› intervenes only in certain exceptional cases, as where it becomes necessary to purify the atmosphere.

Another want is that of quenching our ‹thirst›, and it is more or less satisfied by Nature, in as far as she furnishes us with water, more or less pure, abundant, and within reach; and Labour concurs in as far as it becomes necessary to bring water from a greater distance, to filter it, or to obviate its scarcity by constructing wells and cisterns.

The liberality of Nature towards us in regard to ‹food› is by no means uniform; for who will maintain, that the labour to be furnished is the same when the land is fertile, or when it is sterile, when the forest abounds with game, the river with fish, or in the opposite cases?

As regards ‹lighting›, human labour has certainly less to do when the night is short than when it is long.

I dare not lay it down as an absolute rule, but it appears to me that in proportion as we rise in the scale of wants, the co-operation of Nature is lessened, and leaves us more room for the exercise of our faculties. The painter, the sculptor, and the author even, are forced to avail themselves of materials and instruments which Nature alone [p087] furnishes, but from their own genius is derived all that makes the charm, the merit, the utility, and the value of their works. ‹To learn› is a want which the well-directed exercise of our faculties almost alone can satisfy. Yet here ‹Nature› assists, by presenting to us in divers degrees objects of observation and comparison. With an equal amount of application, may not botany, geology, or natural history, make everywhere equal progress?

It would be superfluous to cite other examples. We have already shown undeniably that Nature gives us the means of satisfaction, in placing at our disposal things possessed of higher or lower degrees of ‹utility› (I use the word in its etymological sense, as indicating the ‹property of serving›, of being ‹useful›). In many cases, in almost every case, labour must contribute, to a certain extent, in rendering this ‹utility› complete; and we can easily comprehend that the part which labour has to perform is greater or less in proportion as Nature had previously advanced the operation in a less or greater degree.

We may then lay down these two formulas:

1. ‹Utility is communicated sometimes by Nature alone, sometimes by Labour alone, but almost always by the co-operation of both›.

2. ‹To bring anything to its highest degree of› «UTILITY», ‹the action of Labour is in an inverse ratio to the action of Nature›.

From these two propositions, combined with what I have said of the indefinite expansibility of our wants, I may be permitted to deduce a conclusion, the importance of which will be demonstrated in the sequel. Suppose two men, having no connexion with each other, to be unequally situated in this respect, that Nature had been liberal to the one, and niggardly to the other; the first would evidently obtain a given amount of satisfaction at a less expense of labour. Would it follow that the part of his forces thus left ‹disposable›, if I may use the expression, would be abandoned to inaction? and that this man, on account of the liberality of Nature, would be reduced to compulsory idleness? Not at all. It would follow that he could, if he wished it, dispose of these forces to enlarge the circle of his enjoyments; that with an equal amount of labour he could procure two satisfactions in place of one; in a word, that his progress would become more easy.

I may be mistaken, but it appears to me that no science, not even geometry, is founded on truths more unassailable. Were any one to prove to me that all these truths were so many errors, I should not only lose confidence in them, but all faith in evidence itself; for what reasoning could one employ which should better deserve the acquiescence of our judgment than the evidence thus [p088] overturned? The moment an axiom is discovered which shall contradict this other axiom—that a straight line is the shortest road from one point to another—that instant the human mind has no other refuge, if it be a refuge, than absolute scepticism.

I positively feel ashamed thus to insist upon first principles which are so plain as to seem puerile. And yet we must confess that, amid the complications of human transactions, such simple truths have been overlooked; and in order to justify myself for detaining the reader so long upon what the English call ‹truisms›, I shall notice here a singular error by which excellent minds have allowed themselves to be misled. Setting aside, neglecting entirely, the ‹co-operation of Nature› in relation to the satisfaction of our wants, they have laid down the absolute principle that ‹all wealth comes from labour›. On this foundation they have reared the following erroneous syllogism:

“All wealth comes from labour:

“Wealth, then, is in proportion to labour.

“But labour is in an inverse ratio to the liberality of Nature:

“‹Ergo›, wealth is inversely as the liberality of Nature.”