instead of walking home, then we may follow ordinary usage, and say that he expects from them equal pleasures. Again if we find that the desires to secure either of two pleasures will induce people in similar circumstances each to do just an hour's extra work, or will induce men in the same rank of life and with the same means each to pay a shilling for it, we then may say that those pleasures are equal for our purpose.

Next suppose that the person whom we saw doubting between several little gratifications for himself had thought after a while of a poor invalid whom he would pass on his way home, and had spent some time in making up his mind whether he would choose a physical gratification for himself, or would do a kindly act and rejoice in another's joy. As his desires turned now towards the one, now the other, there would be change in the quality of his mental states. But the economist treats them in the first instance merely as motives to action, which are evenly balanced. No doubt his concern with them does not end there. Even for the narrower uses of economic studies, it is important to know whether the desires which prevail are such as will help to build up a strong and righteous character. And in the broader uses of those studies, when they are being applied to practical problems, the economist, like every one else, must concern himself with the ultimate aims of man, and take account of differences in real value between gratifications that are equally powerful motives or incentives to action and have therefore equal money values. A study of these money values is only the starting-point of economics: but it is the starting-point.

§ 3. There are other ways in which the money values of various efforts and benefits fail to measure their real values. Some people can derive more happiness and more well-being of all kinds than others from the same money income. When a tax of £1 is taken from each of two persons hav- Difficulties of ing an income of £300 a-year, each will give up measurement. that £1 worth of pleasure (or other satisfaction) which he can

most easily part with, i.e., each will give up what is measured to him by just £1: but the intensities of the satisfaction given up may not be nearly equal.

Again the desire to earn a shilling is a much stronger motive to a poor man with whom money is scarce than to a rich one. A rich man in doubt whether to spend a shilling on a single cigar, is weighing against one another smaller pleasures than a poor man, who is doubting whether to spend a shilling on a supply of tobacco that will last him for a month. The clerk with £100 a year will walk to business in a heavier rain than the clerk with £300 a year; for a sixpenny omnibus fare measures a greater pleasure to the poorer man than to the richer. If the poorer man spends the money, he will suffer more from the want of it afterwards than the richer would. The pleasure that is measured in the poorer man's mind by sixpence is greater than that measured by it in the richer man's mind.

Allowance for the different

utilities of

and poor.

These difficulties can however be avoided. For if we take averages sufficiently broad to cause the personal peculiarities of individuals to counterbalance one money to rich another, the money which people of equal incomes will give to obtain a pleasure or avoid a pain is a sufficiently accurate measure of the pleasure or the pain. If there are a thousand families living in Sheffield and another thousand in Leeds, each with about £100 a-year, and a tax of £1 is levied on all of them, we may be sure that the loss of pleasure which the tax will cause in Sheffield is very nearly equal to that which it will cause in Leeds and similarly anything that increased all the incomes by a £1 would give command over very nearly the same amount of additional pleasure in the two towns.

But next suppose that instead of falling on families with an income of about £100 a-year, the loss fell in each of the two towns on 600 families with an average income of £50 and on 400 families with an average income of £100; then,

although the loss of pleasures to the poorer group would be much greater than to the richer, yet the aggregate loss in Leeds might be taken to be about the same as in Sheffield; because in each case it was distributed in equal proportions among the richer and the poorer. And in fact it happens that by far the greater number of the events with which economics deals affect in about equal proportions all the different classes of society; so that if the money measures of the happiness caused by two events are equal, there is not in general any very great difference between the amounts of the happiness in the two cases.

action is

deliberate.

Next it must be remembered that nobody's actions are all governed by careful calculation; in fact even the It is not asmost deliberate persons are much under the in- sumed that all fluence of habit and impulse. But on the other hand habit itself is largely based on deliberate choice and further the side of life with which economics is specially concerned is that in which man's conduct is most deliberate, and in which he most often reckons up the advantages and disadvantages of any particular action before he enters on it. It is that side of his life in which, when he does follow habit and custom, and proceed for the moment without calculation, the habits and customs themselves are most nearly sure to have proceeded from closely watching the advantages and disadvantages of different courses of conduct.

§ 4. Thus "money" or "general purchasing power" or "command over material wealth," is the centre around which economic science clusters; this is so, not because money or material wealth is regarded as the main aim of human effort, nor even as affording the main subject-matter for the study of the economist, but because in this world of ours it is the one convenient means of measuring human motive on a large scale; and if the older economists had made this clear, they would have escaped many grievous misrepresentations. The splendid teachings of Carlyle and Ruskin as to the right aims

Economic

of human endeavour and the right uses of wealth, would not then have been marred by bitter attacks on economics, based on the mistaken belief that that not exclusively science had no concern with any motive except the selfish desire for wealth, or

motives are

selfish.

inculcated a policy of sordid selfishness'.

even that it

So far from confining their attention to selfish motives, economists have always given a prominent place to the unselfish sacrifices which men make in order to secure comfortable provision for their families. The grounds for doing this are obvious on the principle which we have adopted. For family affection acts with so much uniformity in any given stage of civilization that its effects can be systematically observed, reduced to law and measured; and it is therefore reasonable for economists to take it always into account; while yet they do not attempt to study the working of many other benevolent and self-sacrificing motives whose action is irregular. But the greater part of those actions, which are due to a feeling of duty and love of one's neighbour, cannot be classed, reduced to law and measured; and it is for this reason, and not because they are not based on self-interest, that the machinery of economics cannot be brought to bear on them.

money is the

result of many various mo

§ 5. There is another direction in which the range of The desire for economics has been wider than is commonly thought. When the motive to a man's action is spoken of as supplied by the money which he will earn, it is not meant that his mind is closed to all other considerations save those of gain. For even the most purely business relations of life assume honesty and good faith; while many of them take for granted, if not

tives.

1 It is pointed out in Principles I. v. 4, that a theory of economics similar to our own might exist in a world in which there was no private property in material wealth, and no money, provided that motives could be measured, as for instance by transferable honours.

generosity, yet at least the absence of meanness; and the pride which every honest man takes in acquitting himself well, is an important factor of economic efficiency. Again, much of the work by which people earn their living is pleasurable in itself; and there is truth in the contention of socialists that more of it might be made so. Indeed in business work, that seems at first sight unattractive, many persons find a distinct pleasure, which is partly direct, and partly arises from the gratification which the work affords to their instincts of rivalry and power. Just as a race-horse or an athlete strains every nerve to get in advance of his competitors, and delights in the strain; so a manufacturer or a trader is often stimulated much more by the hope of victory over his rivals than by the desire to add something to his fortune.

But again, the desire to make money does not itself necessarily proceed from motives of a low order, even when it is to be spent on oneself. Money is a means towards ends, and if the ends are noble, the desire for the means is not ignoble. The lad who works hard and saves all he can, in order to be able to pay his way afterwards at a University, is eager for money; but his eagerness is not ignoble. In short, money is general purchasing power, and is sought as a means to all kinds of ends, high as well as low, spiritual as well as material.

The earlier English economists paid almost exclusive attention to the motives of individual action. Motives to colBut it must not be forgotten that economists, lective action. like all other students of social science, are concerned with individuals chiefly as members of the social organism. As a cathedral is something more than the stones of which it is built, as a person is something more than a series of thoughts and feelings, so the life of society is something more than the sum of the lives of its individual members. It is true that the action of the whole is made up of that of its constituent