CHAPTER TWO

NATURALISM

I. ANTECEDENTS

The Birth of Science. The study of economic subjects is no doubt almost as old as the history of mankind. It may safely be conjectured that men could not reach a high degree of civilization without busying themselves with the pros and cons of the manner of their living, of the sources of their weal and woe, of the ways and means available for improving their lot—all of which topics are, in their very nature, economic. What is more, we know that economic regulations had already become quite comprehensive in early Babylonian days, to say nothing of the meritorious part played by Greeks and Romans long before the advent of the Christian era.

If however we wish to find the beginnings of economics as a science we need not go back as far as antiquity, nor even much beyond the middle of the eighteenth century. For the astonishing revival of economic thought that characterized the period of 1500 to 1750 was rot accompanied so much by definite attempts at systematizing results, as by marked additions of knowledge on a variety of subjects, part of it being given a universal value, but most of it bearing on problems of national policy. Strictly speaking these studies of Kameralists and Mercantilists lacked a scientific character because the thought had not yet dominated them that social processes follow laws, and admit of measurement or deductive treatment

exactly as physicists had reduced their own manifold to a few grand principles of matter in motion. Only with the appearance of the Physiocrats does economics cease to be a loose bundle of individual facts. Now for the first time a unifying code is sought and proclaimed to exist. Now surveys are made and theorems submitted for others' approval which overshadow whatever significance may be attached to the earlier literature.

Still, it would be a mistake to ignore the great impetus given to economic studies by the period of transition from medieval to modern times. The great bulk of our modern exact knowledge can be traced back to this period of reawakening and searching whose advent had been so long prepared, and whose ultimate achievements so completely transformed the world.

During the Middle Ages nothing had been as firmly rooted in the minds of people as the need and goodness of authority. The guiding slogan of leaders was faith and submission. Authority was everything because its chief purpose had been announced in the Scriptures, and its sole oracle was the papacy—with all that that term implied. Authority of course has always existed and can therefore not be mentioned as a peculiar feature of the so-called Dark Ages. What was a distinguishing mark was the acceptance of authority even when the evidence of the sense contradicted it, or might easily have been invoked to contradict it. Authority in all matters, such was the axiom for high and low. It was not a case of submitting to hearsay because its teachings had been verified, or might at any time be proven correct to the satisfaction of doubters, but rather of extending the mandates of theology to other questions where tests might naturally suggest themselves.

The Middle Ages therefore stood for the maintenance

of a status quo as nearly as the practical and spiritual interests of Church or State advised it. The illiteracy of the masses was as much a help for preserving order as a hindrance to the dissemination of knowledge. The Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire worked hand in hand to fortify their creed of submission. Patristic literature and papal decrees, the Bible as officially placed at the disposal of the priesthood, the verdicts of Ecumenical Councils, and the codifications of law and dogma by great scholars like Gratian and Thomas Aquinas-such were the repositories of creed that none were permitted to impugn, whose power remained substantially intact for nearly a thousand years.

Of ancient writers Plato most enjoyed the esteem of the hierarchy until the twelfth century. After that Aristotle gained favor with the clergy, and even more with many of the secular students who now congregated around universities or pursued their studies independent of official recognition, content to search truth without encouragement, somewhat in the spirit of heroes and heretics. For the most part a foreign medium intervened between author and pupil. The Greeks were interpreted through Arabians whose commentaries won great fame. Roman works not infrequently circulated in medieval Latin, a variant and mutilation of the Ciceronian language. Studies from the sources were as rare as they were held unnecessary to a correct appreciation of ancient thought.

In fact, learning was not in any case a virtue of fundamental importance. Not knowledge but faith was the guarantee to salvation. The needs of the soul had no relation to the inclinations of the body or of an active mind. Asceticism ranked high because to forego things seemed more wholesome than to demand things. Suffer

ing in a measure took the place of service. To undergo tortures might benefit man more than to enjoy comforts. The value of this life on earth consisted in its opportunities for purifying the soul, for ridding sinners of their handicaps in a quest for the eternal life to come. What the priest did was consequently more important than the guidance of teacher or legislator, although the Church did support both, and indeed was throughout the Dark Ages the prime agency for enlightenment and moral uplift.

After the thirteenth century, however, the Church was undergoing a decline. Just as the authority of monarchs, dukes, and barons suffered at the hands of a rebellious bourgeoisie whose fate seemed bound up inseparably with economic and legal liberties, so the hierarchy found insuperable difficulties in trying to curb skepticism. A new view of life was being crystallized. A turn-about of opinions and purposes took place which, by the sixteenth century, had definitely conquered the medieval order. Principles were now being announced that could not but overthrow hallowed customs. The center of interest shifted, so that in the end a series of problems came to the fore, the solution of which was part of the task assigned to economics.

This rebirth of an older philosophy, this Renaissance, as it has fitly been christened, began in the first place with an enthusiastic movement for the exploration of pagan antiquities. Greek and Roman civilization now more than ever preoccupied the minds of plodding students. Barbarism, instead of being associated with heathenism, now came to mean ignorance of pre-Christian culture. Humanists these protagonists of pagan ideals styled themselves. Humanism breathed a cosmopolitan spirit like catholicism, but unlike this latter it

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stressed worldliness and individual rights. Unlike medieval learning that of the Renaissance centered on a bold appreciation of the immediate environment, of human nature in all its phases, of possibilities for material advancement and artistic elevation such as men have cultivated ever since.

Studies from the source now became tests of scholarly worth. One need only compare the writings of a Reuchlin or Erasmus or Thomas More or Machiavelli with the best of medieval books to be impressed with the difference of outlook. What an abundance of citations from the Ancients! What a zest for learning regardless of its religious implications! What effervescence of spirit and lightness of heart, what daring of conception and faith in mankind's earthly destinies! Verily, men had sloughed off the garb of repentance; the joy of life bade them search and act, to speak without fear and to urge new works whose merit it would be for everybody to put to a test.

Petrarch had opened the new era with his sonnets and hymns to the beauty of nature. However near he was to Dante in point of time, his temper was of a very different age, of times then only in the budding, but foreordained to find magnificent expression in the literature of the Tudors, in French literature under the Bourbons, and in the outbursts of Italian poets and essayists from Genoa to Venice. Worldliness in painting and architecture, in music and sculpture, in Erasmus' "Praise of Folly" where knaves prove honest, in Sir Thomas More's "Utopia," and in monuments of scientific endeavor! A symptom indeed of the times, these utopias of many forms and intents that issued from the press between 1500 and 1700! How novel the idea that men should concern themselves with their frames of