times of advancing civilization, whether in the ancient or modern world; and, as a necessary consequence, he leaves his readers as much at a loss to understand the causes of disturbance that now exist, or the remedy required to be applied, as would a physician who should limit the study of his patient to an examination of the body in a mass, omitting all inquiry into the state of the lungs, the stomach, or the brain. His system of sociology does not explain the past, and cannot therefore be used to direct the future; and the reason why it does not and cannot is, that he has declined to use the method of physics, the philosophy which studies the near and the known for the purpose of obtaining power to comprehend the distant and the unknown-which studies the present to obtain knowledge by help of which to understand the causes of events in the past, and predict those which are bound to flow from similar causes in the future.

§ 5. Turning from France to Britain, we find ourselves in the home of Adam Smith, whose most essential doctrines have, however, been wholly repudiated by his successors of the modern school, which had its origin in the teachings of Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo. "Social science," as we are there taught by one of the most distinguished teachers, and in opposition to the views of Mr. Comte, "is a deductive science; not indeed," as he continues, "after the model of geometry, but after that of the highest physical sciences. It infers the law of each effect from the laws of causation upon which the effect depends; not, however, from the law merely of one cause, as in the geometrical method, but by considering all the causes which conjointly influence the effect, and compounding those laws with one another.”*

Such is the theory. What is the practice under it, we may now examine. "Political economy," says the same author, “considers mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth, and aims at showing what is the course of action into which mankind, living in a state of society, would be impelled, if that motive, except in the degree in which it is checked by the two perpetual counter motives above adverted to-aversion to labor and the desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences-were absolute ruler of all their actions. Under the influence of this desire,

*J. S. Mill. System of Logic, Book vi. ch. 8.

it shows mankind accumulating wealth, and employing this wealth in the production of other wealth; sanctioning by mutual agreement the institution of property; establishing laws to prevent individuals from encroaching on the property of others by force or fraud; adopting various contrivances for increasing the productiveness of their labor; settling the division of the produce by agreement, under the influence of competition, * * and employing certain expedients * * to facilitate the distribution. All these operations, though many of them are really the result of a plurality of motives, are considered by political economy as flowing solely from a desire of wealth. Not that any political economist was ever so absurd as to suppose that mankind are really thus constituted, but because this is the mode in which the science must necessarily be studied."*

* * * *

"For the sake of practical utility," however, the principle of population is required to be “interpolated into the exposition," and this is done, although to do so involves, as we are told, a departure from "the strictness of purely scientific arrangement."+

That having been done, we have the politico-economical man, on one hand influenced solely by the thirst for wealth, and on the other so entirely under the control of the sexual passion as to be at all times ready to indulge it, however greatly such indulgence may tend to prevent the growth of wealth.

What, however, is this thing in the quest for which he is so assiduously engaged? What is wealth? To this question political economy furnishes no reply, it having never yet been settled in what it is that wealth consists. Were it suggested that land constituted any part thereof, the answer would at once be made that by reason of a great law of nature, the more of it that was brought into use, and the larger the quantity of labor given to its improvement, the less must be the return to human effort, the poorer must the community become, and the greater must be the tendency towards poverty and death-and that such must certainly be the case could readily be proved by passages from writers of high authority. Were it next assumed that wealth might be found in the development of the individual faculties, proof sufficient could be furnished that not only would any search in that direction be

* J. S. Mill. System of Logic, Book vi. ch. 8.
† Ibid.

vain, but that it would result in the establishment of the fact that any increase in the number of teachers must be attended with diminution of the quantity of wealth at the command of the community. Foiled thus in all his efforts, the inquirer, after having studied carefully all the books, would still be found repeating the question -What is wealth?

Turning next to the being so sedulously engaged in the pursuit of an undefined something that seems to embrace so much, and that yet excludes so large a proportion of the things usually regarded as wealth, he would desire to satisfy himself if the subject of political economy was really the being known as man. He might perhaps ask himself, has man no other qualities than those here attributed to him? Is he, like the beasts of the field, solely given to the search for food and shelter for his body? Does he, like them, beget children for the sole gratification of his passions, and does he, like them, leave his offspring to feed and shelter themselves as they may? Has he no feelings or affections to be influenced by the care of wife and children? Has he no judgment to aid him in the decision as to what is likely to benefit or to injure him? That he did possess these qualities he would find admitted, but the economist would assure him that his science was that of material wealth alone, to the entire exclusion of the wealth of affection and of intellect held by Adam Smith in such high esteem and thus would he, at the close of all his search, discover that the subject of political economy was not really a man, but an imaginary being moved to action by the blindest passion, and giving all his energies to the pursuit of a thing in its nature so undefinable that all the books in use might be searched for a definition that would be admitted by a jury of economists as embracing all that should be included, and excluding all that should not.

The law of the composition of forces requires that we should study all the causes tending to produce a given effect. That effect is MAN-the man of the past and the present; and the social philosopher who excludes from consideration his feelings and affections, and the intellect with which he has been endowed, makes precisely the same mistake that would be made by the physical one who should look exclusively to gravitation, forgetting heat; and should thence conclude that at no distant day the whole material of which the earth is composed would become a solid mass, plants, ani

mals and men having disappeared. Such is the error of modern political economy, and its effects are seen in the fact that it presents for our consideration a mere brute animal, to find a name for which it desecrates the word "man," recognized by Adam Smith as expressing the idea of a being made in the likeness of its Creator. It was well asked by Goethe-" What is all intercourse with nature, if by the analytical method, we merely occupy ourselves with individual material parts, and do not feel the breath of the spirit which prescribes to every part its direction, and orders or sanctions every deviation by means of an inherent law?" And what, we may ask, is the value of an analytical process that selects only the "material parts" of man-those which are common to himself and the beast-and excludes those common to the angels and himself? Such is the course of modern political economy, which not only does not "feel the breath of the spirit," but even ignores the existence of the spirit itself, and is therefore found defining what it is pleased to call the natural rate of wages, as being "that price which is necessary to enable the laborers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution”*—that is to say, such price as will enable some to grow rich and increase their race, while others perish of hunger, thirst, and exposure. Such are the teachings of a system that has fairly earned the title of the "dismal science "--that one the study of which led M. Sismondi to the inquiry-"What, then, is wealth everything, and is man absolutely nothing?" In the eyes of modern political economy he is nothing, and can be nothing, because it takes no note of the qualities by which he is distinguished from the brute, and is therefore led to regard him as being a mere instrument to be used by capital to enable its owner to obtain compensation for its use. "Some economists," said a distinguished French economist, shocked at the material character of the socalled science, "speak as if they believed that men were made for products, not products for men ;" and at that conclusion must all arrive who commence by the method of analysis, and close with exclusion of all the higher and distinctive qualities of man.

§ 6. In the progress of knowledge we find ourselves gradually passing from the compound to the simple; from that which is Droz. Economie Politique.

* Ricardo.

abstruse and difficult to that which is plain and easily learned. That "all simple ideas are true," we have been assured by Descartes, and evidence of the fact may everywhere be found in the beautiful simplicity, and wonderful breadth of propositions in science, themselves the result of a long induction, leading to the knowledge of great truths not at first perceptible, but when announced so conclusive as to close, almost at once and forever, all discussion in reference to them. The falling of the apple led Newton to the law of gravitation, and to the discovery of that law we owe the astonishing perfection of modern astronomy. The establishment of the identity of lightning and electricity laid the foundation of a science, by help of which we have been enabled to command the services of a great power in nature, that has superseded all the contrivances of man. Kepler and Galileo, Newton and Franklin, would have failed in all their efforts to extend the domain of science, had they pursued the method of M. Comte in his attempt to establish a system of social science.

Does this method, however, supersede entirely the à priori one? Because we pursue the method of analysis, are we necessarily precluded from that of synthesis? By no means. The one, however, is the indispensable preparation for the other. It was by the careful observation of particular facts that Le Verrier was led to the grand generalization that a new and unobserved planet was bound to exist, and in a certain part of the heavens, and there it was almost at once discovered. To careful analysis of various earths it was due that Davy was led to the announcement of the great fact that all earths have metallic bases—one of the grandest generalizations on record, and one whose truth is being every day more and more established. The two methods were well described by Goethe, when he said that synthesis and analysis were "the systole and diastole of human thought," and that they were to him "like a second breathing process-never separated, ever pulsating." "The vice of the à priori method," says the writer from whom this passage is taken, "when it wanders from the right path, is not that it goes before the facts, and anticipates the tardy conclusions of experience, but that it rests contented with its own verdicts, or seeking only a partial, hasty confrontation with factswhat Bacon calls notiones temerè à rebus abstractas.'"*

* Westminster Review, Oct. 1852: Article, Goethe as a Man of Science.