The foregoing considerations will serve to dispel the popular illusion which represents Mr. Ruskin as an illequipped knight-errant entering the lists of economic controversy in a spirit of sentimental bravado. Alike in possession of material facts, in command of language, and in trained capacity of argument, he was quite competent to discuss economic problems with Senior, Fawcett, and J. S. Mill. His leading defects he only shared in common with most economists of the last generation, viz., a lack of opportunity of early free contact with the labouring classes, whose work and life is of prime importance in economic study, and an insufficient grasp of evolution in the structure of industrial and political institutions. § 5. Even had Mr. Ruskin, accepting the limits of economic science laid down by earlier authorities, confined himself to criticism of the inconsistencies and errors to be found there, the powers we have enumerated would have enabled him to do yeoman's service. But in the far larger task to which he set himself these rare qualities of nature and experience were of unique value. His arraignment of current Political Economy may be formally divided into two parts. Firstly, he accuses the science of commercial wealth of wrongfully assuming the title and function of Political Economy. Secondly, he impugns the accuracy of many of the fundamental doctrines of this commercial science, and imputes to them an injurious influence upon the happiness and morality of society. Under this latter count may be included the attack which he makes upon the justice and the utility of industry conducted competitively for individual profit; for the gravamen of this indictment of Political Economy has reference chiefly to the support it has yielded to the existing industrial system. The first head of the indictment alone will occupy this chapter. §6. Failure to understand the nature of Mr. Ruskin's attack has led many to assert that he has wrongfully imported sentiment into matters where it has no proper place. This charge, however, boldly begs the question, for his contention is, firstly, that sentiment does rightly enter, and ultimately dominates, a true science of Political Economy; and, secondly, that current Political Economy is largely sentimental both in its origin and influence, but that its sentiments are false. First let us turn to the charge he brings against current Political Economy of wrongly arrogating to itself this title. The subject-matter of this "science" consists of "wealth" defined as "utilities embodied in material objects," and possessing a money value. Here are two assumptions, first that wealth is rightly confined to material embodiments, and secondly that it is to be estimated by reference to a monetary standard. Researches into the right meaning of the terms "wealth" and "value" form the most vital criticism of "Unto this Last." Mr. Ruskin's mode of etymological inquiry, with its frequent assertion of fanciful analogies and its undue emphasis on roots, should not mislead us into supposing that the distinctions he makes are "purely verbal." In reality he always looks through words to things. In his pertinent question, " What right have you to take the word 'wealth,' which originally meant well-being,' and degrade and narrow it by con fining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money?" he is not ultimately concerned with the perversion of a word, but with the perversion of an idea. His real arraignment is of the process of segmentation, which takes a particular sort of material objects as a subject of separate scientific investigation, and professes to found upon such science an art of national and individual conduct. For it must be distinctly understood that Political Economy has always claimed to be both a science and an art, the art being, as is only natural, historically prior to the science. Now Mr. Ruskin does not deny that a hypothetical science may be framed, upon the assumptions that every man is idle and covetous, and that the maximum quantity of wealth embodied in material forms and measured by money is the sole object of his endeavour, in order to investigate the laws of the production and distribution of such wealth. A science based on these assumptions as to the nature and aim of men may be consistent in its parts and correct in its reasoning. But when he is invited to accept this as a science relating to actually existent men and their conduct, Mr. Ruskin flatly refuses to do so. How, he asks, if man be not wholly idle and "a covetous machine," but is endowed with a liking for good work and a capacity of self-sacrifice, is not moved entirely by money but also by affections, seeks not only material marketable goods but other goods that are neither material nor marketable? What is the use of a science which begins by assuming that man is what he is not? In "Unto this Last," Mr. Ruskin unduly presses the charge that political economists assert the existence of this economic man, and the utility of covetous action. The most rigid of the old economists, with their doctrine of the social utility of enlightened selfishness, would have admitted that the "economic man" was more or less a hypothetical creature. But Mr. Ruskin's over-pressure of this point does not really impair the validity of his criticism. The statement of the assumption of orthodox Political Economy contained in a quotation at the opening of "Unto this Last," is a substantially correct account of the prevailing mode of "working" the science: "The social affections are accidental and disturbing elements in human nature; but avarice and the desire of progress are constant elements. Let us eliminate the inconstants, and, considering the human being merely as a covetous machine, examine by what laws of labour, purchase, and sale the greatest accumulative result in wealth is obtainable. Those laws once determined, it will be for each individual afterwards to introduce as much of the disturbing affectionate element as he chooses, and to determine for himself the result in the new conditions supposed."1 The pages of such writers as James Mill, M'Culloch, and Ricardo furnish ample verification of this description of the method of argument in common use. First work out your problem by isolating the self-seeking forces, and afterwards make allowance for the "disturbing influence" of other motives. Indeed, only by such method of procedure could the old economic "laws" be made plausible. §7. Mr. Ruskin laid his finger accurately upon the root-fallacy of this mode of reasoning. It is found to 1 P. 2. reside in the assumption that "the accidentals afterwards to be introduced were of the same nature as the powers first examined," i. e. "allowance for friction" will work correctly in a mechanical problem where all the forces can be subjected to quantitative measurement, and where the problem is essentially mathematical, but it will work wrongly when the forces differ qualitatively, and are combined not mechanically but organically. It is not, however, difficult to understand how a purely mechanical science of Political Economy seemed plausible to those who confined their attention to certain large fields of industry in the earlier nineteenth century. In most departments of the new manufacturing industries, in mining, railways, and many branches of low skilled manual labour, generally in trade and in finance, the desire to "buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market," to "do as little as one could and get as much," was, in fact, so general, so persistent, and so dominant that, in considering the production and distribution of these sorts of wealth, all other motives seemed negligible quantities. Once assume, and in all those cases the assumption seemed not unreasonable, that work is in itself and for itself both undesired and undesirable, and that the sole object of such industrial energy is to get the highest wages and profits that are obtainable, the "covetous machine" idea of Political Economy seemed intelligible. If all industrial energy both did and necessarily must conform to this type, a science of Industry might reasonably be founded upon the assumptions actually made, though even then the claim of such a science to be Political Economy would be open to challenge. The economic problem, as it |