Book 2 — Footnotes

1.

The author's preface to the twelfth edition is confined to pointing out the improvements etc., made in the eleventh. There is no new preface to the thirteenth edition of the original, which appeared in 1877.—Translator.

2.

“We shall never thoroughly understand the reason of customary law unless we also have a knowledge of that which is not customary. The one is connected and bound to the other. We have no slaves; why vex ourselves with questions about slaves?—Words worthy of a novice.”

3.

“I am a man; I think nothing foreign to me that pertains to man.”

4.

“That excellent and glorious philosophy.”

5.

Introduction to the Civilistisches Magazin.

6.

Dunoyer, De la Liberté du Travail.

7.

Cicero, De Leg., I.

8.

Discours Préliminaire du Code Civil.

9.

Cicero, De Leg., II, 4. “Legem neque hominum ingeniis excogitatam, nec scitum aliquod esse populorum, sed æternum quiddam quod universum mundum regeret, imperandi, prohibendique sapientia.” Ibid.

10.

Revue de Législ. et de Jurispr. (1841, XIII, p. 39.) Montesquieu says: “The relations of justice and equity are anterior to all positive laws.”

11.

Mr. Wolowski translated the second edition of Roscher's Principles into French, and prefixed the present essay thereto as a preface. Since Wolowski's translation appeared, the original work has gone through eleven editions, been largely increased in size, and enriched with new notes, the result of nearly twenty additional years of research and thought. The thirteenth German edition, from which the present translation is made, is larger than the first by one hundred and seventy pages.—Translator's note.

12.

And he adds: “Animals which yield only to an impulse or blind instinct, come together only fortuitously or periodically and in a manner destitute of all morality. But in the case of men, reason is mixed up more or less with every act of their lives. Sentiment is found side by side with desire, and right succeeds instinct. I discover a real contract in the union of the two sexes.” It would be impossible to present a more complete or eloquent refutation of the definition of the Roman jurisconsults which debases marriage to the level of the promiscuous coming together of animals, and which limits the natural law to the law common to man and beast. “Jus naturale est quod natura omnia animalia docuit; nam jus istud non humani generis proprium, sed omnium animalium quæ in terra, quæ in mare nascuntur, avium quoque commune est. Hinc descendit maris atque feminæ conjunctio, quam nos matrimonium appellamus, hinc liberorum procreatio, hinc educatio; videmus etenim cætera quoque animalia, feras etiam, istius juris peritia censeri.” D. L. I. De Just. et Jure.

13.

Comment. in tit. Dig., De Just. et Jure, VII, 11th Naples edition. The ingenious argument of the great jurisconsult falls to the ground under the beautiful words of Cicero: “Ut justitia, ita jus sine ratione non consistit; soli ratione utentes jure ac lege vivunt.” De Natura Deorum, II, 62. “Virtus ratione constat, brutæ ratione non utuntur, cujus sunt expertia, ergo jure non vivunt, et ut rationis, sic jures sunt expertia.” Besides, Cujas himself recognizes how faulty and incomplete was the definition he was defending: “At ne jus quidem naturale, de quo agimus, est commune omnium animalium quatenus rationale, est, sed quatenus sensible est, sensui congruit. Tullius participare hominem cum brutis eo quod sentit, sed ratione ab eo differre. Et alio loco: jus naturale esse commune omnium Quiritium, veluti ut se velint tueri: sed hoc distare hominem a bellua, quod bellua sensu moveatur, homo etiam ratione.”

14.

Rossi.

15.

Politics, I, ch. I, II.

16.

Ueber die Nothwendigkeit eines Allgemeinen burgerlichen Rechts fur Deutschland.

17.

Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung etc.

18.

In one of his latest productions (Ueber die sogennante historische und nicht historische Rechtsschule, Archives du Droit Civil, Heidelberg, XXI 1838) the veteran of the philosophical school, resuming a debate begun a quarter of a century before, energetically defends himself against the erroneous interpretations which it was sought to give to his thoughts. “Does it follow,” he inquires, “that because a man is desirous of reform, he must surrender the study of the past? And if there be new laws to construe, how could his evil genius deter him from the necessary knowledge of ancient laws? Is there a single jurisconsult, who, in the hope of a better future, despises the meaning and spirit of that which still exists? I do not know even one.... And when I am accused of passing by the institutions of the past with coldness and hatred in my heart, because I was one of the first to express the hope of a better future, a charge is laid at my door which is perfectly incomprehensible ... I am reproached with despising the history of law. It is a slander on me. Although I have only laughed at these reports, one man's mistake grieved me; for that man's name was Niebuhr.... When he [Niebuhr] returned from Italy to devote himself entirely to science, in his retreat at Bonn, he passed through Heidelberg, where he remained five or six days. During a great part of that time we came frequently together. He was at first a little cold; but Cicero made us friends. After a happy word let drop concerning that writer, he asked me what I thought of him. I answered laconically: ‘If they were burning all the Latin authors, and I were permitted to grant a pardon to one of them, I should say, without hesitation: Spare the works of Cicero.’ He joyfully exclaimed: ‘I have at last found a man who judges rightly of Cicero. I share your admiration for him, and that is the reason I have given my boy the name of Marcus.’ The ice was now broken, and he frankly told me that he could not understand how I could be an inveterate enemy of Roman law and of the history of law. I gave him to understand that I had simply been slandered, and I added, that, in order to live entirely with the classics, I had always refused to give legal advice, or act as a counsellor, although I might have made a fortune in that way. I told him that I owed my gayety and vigor, in great part, to my love for the classics of all ages, even those outside the domain of jurisprudence; but that I held, above all things, to the good qualities of the German nation, and that I did not hesitate to say with Facciolatus: ‘Expedit omnes gentes Romanis legibus operam dare, suis vivere.’ “When he heard those words of mine, he exclaimed with his usual energy and vivacity: ‘Habes me consentientem, labes me consentientem.’ From that moment all coldness between us was at an end, and we approached, without any embarrassment, a host of questions in one conversation in which I endeavored, as I had before, to learn from him. “Thus I receive with sincere gratitude, all the works, both useful and profound, which have appeared in our day on the history of law. It would be folly in me to deny the impetus which the study of positive law has received. New sources have been discovered. Their newness and importance have excited the zeal of many scholars who have studied them profoundly; a fact which made a review of the older sources, still by far the most important, necessary. These two circumstances soon rendered it imperative to proceed to the making of scrupulous dogmatic researches. Thus there now is a new life among jurisconsults, and a great activity, which, it is my hope, may continue long.”

19.

Revue de Législ. et de Jurisprudence, 1834-35.

20.

Rossi.

21.

M. de Bonald.

22.

M. Cousin has brought this out in an admirable manner in his lectures on Adam Smith. Cours de Philosophie Moderne.

23.

Channing.

24.

Knies. Die politische Œkonomie vom Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode, Braunschweig, 1853.

25.

Cours Complet d' Economie politique, II, 540, éd. Guillaumin.

26.

Cousin.

27.

We here append an extract from Heinrich Contzen's Geschichte, Literatur, und Bedeutung der Nationalökonomie, Cassel und Leipzig, 1876, p. 7: “Roscher ... is rightfully considered the real founder and the principal representative of the historical school. This school is continually gaining in extent, and has found, both in Germany and in France, the most distinguished disciples—men who honor Roscher as their teacher and master, the leader whose beacon light they follow. Roscher combines the richest positive learning with rare clearness and plastic beauty in the presentation of his thought. These are conceded to him on every hand; and it does not detract from him, or alter the fact that he possesses them, that, here and there, an ill-humored or maliciously snappish critic calls them in question.” It should be borne in mind here that Wolowski wrote in 1857; Contzen, like Wolowski, a politico-economical writer of mark, in 1876.—Translator's note.

28.

Leben, Werk und Zeitalter des Thukydides.

29.

Rau's Archiv., Heidelberg. This remarkable essay has since appeared in Roscher's Ansichten der Volkswirthschalt vom geschichtlichen Standpunkte, 1861.—Translator's note.

30.

Grundriss zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirthschaft nach geschichtlichen Methode.

31.

Berliner Zeitschrift für allgem Geschichte.

32.

Ueber Kornhandel und Theuerungspolitik, 3d ed., 1852.

33.

Untersuchungen über das Kolonialwesen.

34.

Umrisse zur Naturlehre der drei Staatsformen (Berliner Zeitschrift, 1847-1848).

35.

Ueber das Verhältniss der Nationalökonomie zum klassischen Alterthume (K. Sachs Akademie der Wissenschaft, 1849). Also to be found in Roscher's Ansichten etc.—Translator.

36.

Zur Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre im 16 und 17 Jahrh.

37.

Ein nationalökonom. Princep der Forstwirthschaft.

38.

Roscher's complete work he calls “A System of Political Economy.” It embraces the four parts above referred to; but each of these parts constitutes an independent work. The first part, or the Principles of Political Economy, covers the ground generally covered by English treatises on Political Economy. Besides the works above mentioned, Professor Roscher has written Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft aus dem geschichtlichen Standpunkte, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1861; Die deutche Nationalökonomik an der Grenzscheide des sechszehnten und siebenzehnten Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1862; Gründungsgeschichte des Zollvereins, Berlin, 1870; Betrachtungen über die geographische Lage der grossen Städte, Leipzig, 1871; Bertrachtungen über die Währungsfrage der deutschen Münzreform, Berlin, 1872; Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutschland, Munich, 1874; Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, 8th ed., Stuttgart, 1875.—Translator's note.

39.

Die politische Œkonomie vom Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode.

40.

Die National Œkonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft.

41.

Recherches sur les Finances de France.

42.

Frédéric Passy, de la Contrainte et de la Liberté.

43.

Poor peasantry, poor kingdom; poor kingdom, poor sovereign.

44.

Cours d' Econ. polit., 2e., Leçon I, p. 33.

45.

This would be: Propter vitiam, vitæ perdere causas.

46.

Cousin, loc. cit., p. 276.

47.

Ibid., 274.

48.

Frédéric Passy: De la Contrainte et de la Liberté.

49.

Schäffle, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift (1861), emphasizes this. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), very characteristically, begins with the yearly labor of the nation; J. B. Say (Traité d'Economie Politique, 1802), with richesses; Ricardo (Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817), with the idea of value.

50.

The sum total of the wants (Bedarf) of the Bavarian people, for a whole year, is estimated by Hermann, Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen (2d ed., 1870, p. 81), at 177,000,000 florins for food (77 millions for wheat and potatoes, 69 millions for meat, 15 millions for milk etc., 16 millions for eggs, vegetables, salt and spices); 50 millions for clothing, 45 millions for shelter, 37.5 millions for fuel, 60 millions for beverages.

51.

The original adds: deren Gesammtheit sein Bedarf heisst; the aggregate of which is called his [man's] Requisite (Bedarf). There being no exact equivalent in English for the word Bedarf in this connection, this note is appended.—Translator.

52.

According to Boisguillebert (ob. 1714) Traité des Grains, I., c. 4, the wants nécessaire, commode, délicat, superflu, magnifique, arise in successive order with increasing welfare or prosperity, and are surrendered in a reverse order, with increasing need. Tucker distinguishes necessaries, comforts, and conveniences of the respective conditions, elegancies and refinements, and lastly, “grand and magnificent.” (Two Sermons, 1774, 29 ff.); F. B. W. Hermann, loc. cit, 1st, ed., 1832, 68; necessary goods (Güter der Nothdurft), goods that contribute to pleasure and recuperation, to culture and splendor.

53.

Compare Tucker, On the Naturalization Bill (1751 seq.), IV, note.

54.

No people without fire (Prometheus!); and it seems that broiling was the earliest mode of preparing food; then followed baking in heated cavities, and lastly came boiling in vessels. (Klemm, Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte, I, 180, 343.)

55.

There is an interesting attempt by Faucher, in the Vierteljahrsschrift für Volkswirthschaft und Kulturgeschichte, 1868, III, 148 ff., to determine the relative place of our various wants according to their capacity for extension or contraction.

56.

The qualification “true,” excludes from the circle of goods, not only all those things which might satisfy only irrational or immoral wants (compare Mischler, Grundsätze der Nationalökonomie, 1856, I, 187), but also vindicates the fundamental idea of the whole system of Political Economy, as a subject of moral as well as of psychological investigation.

57.

Even Aristotle (Eth. nicom. V, 8), considers that all things intended to enter into commerce, should be susceptible of comparison with one another, and that the measure of this comparison is want, which is the foundation of all association among men.

58.

An Arab helped pillage a caravan, and carried away, as his share of the booty, a chest of pearls. He thought it a box of rice, and gave them to his wife to cook, but finding they did not boil tender, he threw them away. (Niebuhr, Beschreibung von Arabien, 383). See a similar anecdote in Ammian. Marcell., XXII. Compare Strabo, VIII, 381.

59.

As soon as the Persians renounce the superstition that the daily contemplation of a turquoise is a talisman against the "evil eye" (K. Ritter, Erdkunde, VIII, 327), that precious stone will lose much of its value. On the other hand, the amulets of antiquity, although they have long lost the quality of goods as objects of superstition, have now a real value for the archæologist.

60.

Since observation shows, that, as time runs on, matter tends more and more to become goods, the blind forms of motion in nature to become useful labor and useful sustenance, impersonal and objectless existence to be transformed into personal property and personal culture, Schäffle inclines to the belief that the whole mechanism of unconsciously governing nature is destined ultimately to aid in the realization of moral good, which alone is really valuable. Das gesellschaftliche System der menschlichen Wirthschaft, III, Auff., 1873, I, 3.

61.

Hermann, loc. cit, 1st ed., I, calls internal goods whatever each of us finds in himself, the free gift of nature; also that which we develop in ourselves by our own free action; and external, whatever we create or obtain, through the external world, as a means of satisfying our wants. The internal goods of one man may be external goods to another, as, for instance, when the former conveys them directly to the latter to be enjoyed, by words, demeanor, etc., or indirectly, in combination with other external goods.

62.

The exclusion of all else, has, indeed, been called one-sidedness and materialism. But, as Senior says, no one blames the writer on tactics, because he confines his attention to military subjects; nor is the objection raised, that by so doing, he is encouraging eternal war. On the other hand, J. B. Storch (1815) devoted a special division of his work to the consideration of “internal goods” (health, knowledge, morality, security, leisure,.etc.). See Rau's translation of his Manual, II, 337 ff. Compare Gioja, Nuovo Prospetto delle Scienze economiche, 1815 ff. VIII.

63.

The inclination to exchange is, according to Adam Smith, one of the most important marks which distinguish man from the brute. (Wealth of Nations, I, ch. 2). But see Büsch, Geldumlanf (1780), I, § 29, on exchange among the lower animals.

64.

Observed by Aristot. Polit. I, ch. 6.

65.

The efforts of political economists to select from among the infinite number of goods, those which should constitute the subject of their investigations, have taken two directions in recent times. Bastiat here confines himself too exclusively to commerce. The political economist should concern himself only with wants and satisfactions, where the labor, which is the connecting link between them, is undertaken by some other person for a consideration. Thus the ordinary act of respiration lies outside the circle, that of the diver, which is paid for, does not. (Harmonies économiques, 1850, 68 ff.) But even Robinson Crusoe had his own system of economy. Are the products which the farmer consumes in his own home, the work he does himself, any the less matters of economic moment than the products he sells, or the labors of his servants? Schäffle is right when he says that ordinary respiration is no economic function, because it is an unconscious necessity of nature. But his definition is too broad, inasmuch as he places the essence of the economic character of goods or of an act, in the conscious adaptation of means to human ends. (Tübinger Progr. z. 27 Sept. 1862, 9, 24 seq.) To take a walk is no economic operation, although it may be the best means to a very important end,—health. The same goods or the same act may have, frequently, according to the end proposed, an economic or non-economic character. The beauty of the human body, for instance, however systematically made use of for purposes of vanity, is not economic goods. But it is an economic speculation, base though it be, when a man relies on his handsome figure to secure a wealthy wife, or, for purposes of gain, allows her to pose as a model to artists or to take part in tableaux vivants. According to C. Menger, Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftslehre (1871) I, 51 ff., there are no economic goods, but those the disposable supply of which is, at most, equal to the quantity that is required. But is not the largest navigable stream, even in the most thinly populated country, an economic good?

66.

Hegel, Rechtsphilosophie, § 67. Even the use of a corpse as manure, or for any mercantile purpose, is repugnant to our feelings, “because of the dignity of personality.” (Schäffle, National Œkonomie, 1860, 28.) In this respect, prostitution is a remnant of slavery. Schäffle is right, when he says that to repay personal services with material commodities which do not afford as much food etc., as the former have cost in expenditure of vital energy, is a slow and frequently a very cruel kind of cannibalism. (Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 1870, 18).

67.

Bornitz, De rerum Sufficientia in Republica procuranda, 1625, gives in this encyclopædia of political science, together with a dissertation on agriculture, commerce and manufactures, a complete survey of the ministeria. Several modern writers refuse to look upon personal services, or the ability to render such services, as elements of wealth: compare Kaufmann, Untersuchungen im Gebiete der politischen Œkonomie, 1830, II, Heft I. They demonstrate, however, no more than this, that that class of goods has something very peculiar. Thus Malthus, Principles of Political Economy (1820), chap. I, sect. I, objects that they cannot be inventoried or taxed; but can material goods be so completely? Can all the parts of the wealth of a nation be so inventoried and taxed? Rau, Lehrbuch der pol. Œkonomie (1826) I, § 46, remarks that the personal aptitude to perform services dies with the person, and that personal services cannot be stored up (?), etc. I appeal simply to the definition I have given above of economic goods, and which applies equally to services of every kind which can be performed for other people. Besides, those who oppose this view are unable to give a satisfactory explanation of all the phenomena of commerce. Of course, the qualification “recognized as useful” is of the utmost importance as a mark to determine what is goods. But a prima donna, or a world-renowned physician, cast naked by shipwreck on the shores of North America, is certainly, better off than a blind beggar, his fellow sufferer. Compare Storch, Handbuch II, 335 ff. and his Considérations sur la Nature du Revenu National.

68.

Ad. Müller compares persons, so far as they render any kind of service, to things, and, so far as they are required to be preserved in their individuality, to persons. The children in the “status” of a country gentleman, for instance, are treated more as persons, and domestics, more like things; the land partakes of a species of personality, but not the implements of labor. (Nothwendigkeit einer theolog. Grundlage der Staatswissenschaft, 1819, 48.)

69.

The privilege of selling refreshments in the garden of the Palais Royal was formerly let for 38,000 francs a year.

70.

See the cases cited by Hermann, Staatswirtsch. Untersuchungen, 6 ff. and by Bernoulli, Schweiz. Archiv. für Statistik und N. Œkon. II, 55. Think of the firm of J. M. Farina! In Athens, good stands were leased at a very high rent, even where there was no investment of the lessee's capital. (Demosthenes, pro. Phorm., 948; adv. Steph. I, iiii.) There is, again, the sale of inventions, while they are still “mere ideas.” According to Schäffle, Theorie der ausschliessendnen Verhältnisse, 1857, II ff., the value in exchange of these relations depends on the extra income which is assured in fact, or in law, against diminution, by the exclusion of competition. He, therefore, recommends, instead of the word “relations,” “custom,” or “publicum.” But these words, by no means, exhaust the meaning expressed by “relation.” Thus, the good administration of public affairs, although it has no value in exchange, is one of the most valuable economic goods which a people can possess.

71.

The relation mentioned above of a general to an army may even have great value in exchange. Instance, the Italian condottieri in the fifteenth century!

72.

Relations which take from one man, as much as they afford to their possessor, are of value as components of a man's private fortune, but not of the wealth of the nation. To this class belong debts due from persons or from things, compulsory custom or good-will of every description; as for instance, the seventy-two places of the agents de change in Paris, each of which was worth more than a million of francs; or the right of navigating the Elbe as far as Magdeburg, which, about the beginning of this century, was worth in every instance about 10,000 thalers. (Krug, Abriss. der St. Œkonomie, 62.)

73.

Schäffle, N. Œkonomie, 10. In the German language, this same word is used to designate utility, and sometimes useful objects (so called values). A clear distinction, however, should be made between utility and value in use. Utility is a quality of things themselves, in relation, it is true, to human wants. Value in use is a quality imputed to them, the result of man's thought, or of his view of them. Thus, for instance, in a beleagured city, the stores of food do not increase in utility, but their value in use does. Compare Schäffle, System, III, I, 170.

74.

Genovesi, Economia civile (1869), II, I, 7. L. Say, De la Richesse individuelle et de la Richesse publique (1827), 29, estimates the value of goods according to the degree of discomfort attendant on the privation of them.

75.

Friedländer has, however, made a general attempt in this direction. Theorie des Werthes (Dorpat, 1852). But says Th. Fix (Journal des Economistes, 1844, IX, 12): “It is as impossible to establish a scale of values, as it is to find an exact mathematical and permanent measure of our wants, passions, desires, tastes and fancies.”

76.

Compare Knies, Geld und Credit, 1873, I, 126 ff. The very respectable attempt made by A. Samter, Sociallehre (1875), with the idea society-value (Gesellschaftswerth) covers too nearly the idea of value in exchange. Further research will here have to be made, with the idea of “impotent need,” inasmuch as, from a high ethical, national-dietetical point of view, the question is asked whether, to what extent, and how, “impotent need” may be made a potent one.

77.

Friedländer, loc. cit, 50. If too many copies of the very best book be published, there is a certainty that a number of them will remain little better than waste paper.

78.

Schäffle, System, II, aufl., 55. See also his Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 1870, 31, 35, 43.

79.

Thus Kleinwächter (Hildebrand's Jahrbücher für N. Oek. und Statistik, 1867, II, 318), defines value in exchange=value in use + costliness. According to Schäffle, it is “a covert comparison between the cost-value and the value in use of the two kinds of goods to be exchanged.” (Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 35.)

80.

An intermediate dealer can, so far as he is himself concerned, attribute value in exchange to goods only to the extent that they have use for the last person who has acquired them. Hence, Storch calls value in use immediate, and value in exchange, mediate value. As the English are always wont to express the immediate in words of Germanic origin, and the mediate in words borrowed from the Latin, Locke calls value in use “worth,” and value in exchange, simply “value.” (K. Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Œkonomie, 1867, I, 2.)

81.

It is, of course, otherwise when, for instance, a beautiful sea view, or a desirable position as regards air and sunshine, is connected with a piece of land.

82.

In Ravenna a cistern had greater value in exchange than a vineyard: Martial, III, 56. In Paris, too, drinking water, which is transported only with considerable trouble, costs 1-1/3 thalers per cubic meter. We may also mention snow and ice in summer, which last sells in the capitals of southern Europe at 0.34, silber groschens per pound. According to Carey, “utility” is the measure of man's power over nature, “value,” the measure of nature's power over man. He very inaccurately adds, that both are always in an opposite direction. (Principles of Social Science, 1861, VI, ch. 9.)

83.

Hence Ad. Müller calls value in use, individual value, and value in exchange, social value. The Germans call the value of goods whose value in use is recognized by only one person, Affectionswerth, (affection-value) a value which influences its value in exchange only when the individual who holds it in high esteem is not himself the possessor of the goods. An instance of this latter is a piece of paper covered with notes, intelligible only to the maker of them.

84.

The very important difference between value in use and value in exchange was recognized oven by Aristotle. Aristot. Pol. I, 9. Hutchinson, System of Moral Philosophy (1755), II, 53 ff. The Physiocrates speak very frequently of valeur usuelle and vénale, on which, according to Dupont, Physiocratie, CXVIII, the difference between biens and richesses is based. La valeur d'un septicr de blé, considéré comme richesse ne consiste que dans son prix. (Quesnay, éd. Daire, 300.) Turgot distinguishes between “valeur estimative” and “échangeable or appréciative;” the former designating the relation between the amount of energy, physical and mental, which one is willing to spend in order to obtain the goods, to the sum total of his energies, physical and mental; the latter the relation between the aggregate like energy of two persons which they are willing to spend in order to procure each of the goods to be exchanged, and the sum total of their energies in general. (Valeurs et Monnaies, p. 87, seq., éd. Daire.) Ad. Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, I, ch. 4, shows that he knew the difference between value in use and value in exchange; but he afterwards drops the consideration of the former, altogether. In this respect he has had only too faithful and one-sided followers among his countrymen, so that Ricardo, Principles, ch. 28, asks what value in exchange can have in common with the capacity of commodities to serve as food or clothing. (See, however, ch. XIX seq.) Many “free traders” would have no objection to interpose, if a people should abandon the cultivation of wheat, etc., to devote themselves exclusively to the manufacture of point lace, provided the latter had a greater value in exchange. The two degrees of the idea of value have been examined with much thoroughness by Hufeland in his Neue Grundlegung der Staatswirthschaftskunst (1807), I, 118 ff.; Lotz, Revision der Grundbegriffe (1811 ff.), I, 31, ff.; Storch, Handbuch, I; Rau, Lehrbuch, I, 56, ff.; Thomas, Theorie des Verkehrs, I, p. 11; Knies, Tübing. Zeitschr. 1855; Bastiat's declaration (Harmonies, p. 171 ff.): that “valeur” (by which Bastiat means only value in exchange), = le raport de deux services échangés, contains a two-fold error: the ambiguity of the word services, which applies equally to a yielding or affording of utility, as to useful labor, and the error that the labor necessary to produce a commodity, and of which the purchaser is relieved, alone determines its value in exchange. Compare infra §§ 47, 107, 110, 115 ff., and Knies, loc. cit., p. 644 ff.

85.

Proudhon, Système des Contradictions économiques, 1846, ch. 2.

86.

In France, according to Cordier (Mémoire sur l'Agriculture de la Flandre Française), the wheat harvest yielded, in 1817, forty-eight million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of two thousand and forty-six million francs; in 1818, fifty-three million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of one thousand and four hundred and forty-two million francs; in 1819, sixty-four million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of one thousand and one hundred and seventy million francs. A rise in the value in exchange of wheat, such as was witnessed in 1817, is synonymous with a decline in the value in exchange of money, and of all those goods whose money price has not risen. It is no objection to the views here advocated, that when the necessaries of life are very scarce, the want of clothing, furniture, articles of luxury etc., is not felt so keenly as at other times, and that the value in use of these commodities really falls; and vice versa.

87.

Compare B. Hildebrand, N. Œkonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft, 1848, I, p. 316 ff. Knies, loc. cit.

88.

The greater importance attached, in our days, to value in exchange, than to value in use, is seen especially in the attitude which the buyer, who is possessed of the more current commodity (money), assumes toward the seller,—an attitude not unlike that of a patron towards his client. In the interior of Africa, the possessor of money, as such, would scarcely look down on the possessor of the means of subsistence. The South American Indians are ready to render an amount of service for a little brandy, which it would be in vain to ask them to perform for ten times its value in gold. (Ausland, Jan. 15, 1870.) The miser estimates the possibility of being able to procure for himself, for one dollar, a hundred different articles worth a dollar each, to be worth one hundred dollars.

89.

When the wants of a person or of a people change, it is possible for the value in use of one kind of goods, which had the greater prominence before, to take the place occupied previously by its value in exchange; and vice versa. Thus, the youth sells the plaything he used in childhood; the man, the educational apparatus of his earlier years; the old man, the implements that enabled him to acquire wealth, and which he can no longer use except with great effort. (Menger, Grundsätze, I, 220 ff.)

90.

Rau (Lehrbuch, I, § 61 ff.) distinguishes between the concrete or quantitative value which a certain kind of goods may have for a certain person, under certain circumstances, and the abstract or species-value which a whole class of commodities may have for men in general. But F. J. Neumann, (Tübinger Zeitschrift, 1872, p. 288 ff.) objects, that even the abstract value of a commodity always suggests the relation of a definite number of concrete men to a definite quantity of goods; else, by the expression, value of goods, is to be understood not what it is generally meant to signify, but only the capacity to satisfy a single want.

91.

Storch, Ueber die Natur des Nationaleinkommens (1824, 1825), 5, defines (Vermögen) thus: a source of income, permanent in its nature, and capable of being transmitted, the possessor of which does not need to work, on its account. Hence he does not approve of the expression “the people's resources” (Volksvermögen).

92.

See especially Lord Lauderdale, Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, 1804, ch. 2. Storch, loc. cit.

93.

Moreau de Jonnès, Le Commerce au 19. Siècle (1825) I, 114 ff., says that the United States imported from abroad 9.6, France 6, and Great Britain 5.8 per cent. of their annual consumption; and exported respectively 10.4, 6.2, 9.8 per cent. of their annual production. The recent free trade tendencies, and the improvement in the international means of transportation, have certainly increased the relative importance of foreign commerce. In the kingdom of Saxony (1853), Engel estimates that 10/47 of the whole production of the country was destined for foreign countries, and that 10/47 of the consumption was imported.

94.

When the land of a country becomes dearer, simply on account of the increase of population, or goods, the quantity of which is susceptible of increase, because the cost of production has been increased, this cannot be considered an increase in the wealth of the people, (v. Mangoldt.)

95.

Neither is value in exchange a quality inherent in goods, but only a relation between them and other goods. Hence it is absurd to speak of a rise or fall of all values in exchange. If the goods A lose in capacity to be exchanged against goods B, goods B of course increase in exchange power as compared with A, and vice versa. It is necessary to guard against being misled here by the intervention of money, that is, by the custom universal among men of employing a definite kind of goods as a medium of exchange for all others. Yet there are many writers who have been thus misled. Thus Galiani, Delia Moneta (1750), II, p. 2, who regards the lasting increase of the prices of all commodities as an infallible sign of national prosperity. To the same effect is the motto of the Physiocrates: Abondance et cherté c'est opulence. In its coarsest form, in Saint Chamans, Nouv. Essai sur la Richesse des Nations (1824), 456, who would have that which is now the free gift of nature, to come to us or be produced only as the reward of toil. Verri, on the other hand, Meditazioni sull. econ. pol. (1771), ch. V, thinks that the number of buyers in a country should be as small as possible, and that of sellers as great as possible, in order that thus prices might be low; (as if every buyer was not, eo ipso, also a seller.)

96.

Kaufmann, Untersuchungen, I, p. 165 seq. Also, Verri, Meditazioni, XVII, 2.

97.

The differences characteristic of poverty, indigence, managing to live, fortune and wealth, cleverly treated by von Justi, Staatswirthschaft, I, p. 449, seq. Rau, Lehrbuch I, § 76, seq., establishes the following gradation: privation and wretchedness, poverty, indigence, “getting on,” comfort, wealth, superfluity. L. Say calls those who can satisfy the wants of luxury rich; well-to-do, those who can command the comforts of life; and wretched, those who cannot obtain a sufficiency of the objects of prime necessity. In France, the limits of these situations are marked by an income of respectively 60,000, 6,000 and 900 francs per family, so that a family with an income of only 300 francs per year is in a condition of wretchedness. (Traité de la Richesse, 1827, I ff., 71 ff.)

98.

Palmieri, Ricchezza nazionale, Introd. The greater number of the definitions of wealth are rather onesided than false. Socrates, for instance, looks only at the relation existing between means and their owner's wants. (Xenoph. Memor., IV, 2, 37, seq. Œconom. II, 2 ff.). Plato, on the other hand, as the socialists are wont to do, looks to the excess over that possessed by others. (Legg. V, 742, seq.). Xenophon's observations, Hiero, 4, on the nature of wealth, are many-sided and beautiful. Aristotle distinguishes between natural and artificial wealth: πλῆθος ὀργάνων οἰκονομακῶν καὶ πολιτικῶν—πλῆθος νομίσματος. (Polit, I, 3, 9, 16.) Compare Cicero, Parad. VI. The dominant idea of the so-called Mercantile System is thus expressed in a Saxon pamphlet of 1530 (Müntzbelangende Antwort, etc.): “Money is the real watchword; where there is much money, there is wealth, it is clear.” Compare Luther, Werke, Irmisch edition, XXII, p. 200 seq. See some excellent remarks in opposition hereto, in the Saxon pamphlet, Gemeyne Stimmen von der Müntz, 1530. Schröder, Fürstliche Schatz-und Rentkammer, 1686, ch XXIX. “A country grows rich in proportion as it draws gold or money, either from the earth or from other countries; poor, in proportion as money leaves it. The wealth of a country must be estimated by the quantity of gold and silver in it.” See a very passionate argument against this view in Boisguillebert, Dissertation sur la Nature des Richesses, written sometime between 1697 and 1714. Berkeley, Querist (1735), Nos. 562, 542. Among Englishmen, the correct view was prevalent much earlier, especially among the founders of the American colonial empire. See Hachluyt, Voyages (1600) III, 22 ff. 45 ff. 152 ff. 165 ff. 182 ff. 266 ff; but especially the work “Virginia's Verger” in “Purchas Pilgrims” (1625), IV, p. 809 ff. However, several Spaniards were led by hard experience to adopt a view opposed to the Midas-view (compare Aristotle, Polit. I, ch. 3, 16), by which the first American explorers were carried away: Garcilasso de la Vega (1609), Comment. reales II, ch. 6; Saavedra Faxardo, Idea Principis christiani (1640) Symb. 69: potissimæ divitiæ ac opes terræ fructus sunt, nec ditiores in regnis fodinæ, quam agricultura; plus emolumenti, acclivia montis Vesuvii latera adverunt, quam Potosus mons. Contemporary with those Englishmen, was the Italian, Giov. Botero, who called attention to the fact, that France and Italy were the countries of Europe richest in gold, although they possessed no mines of the precious metal themselves: Della Ragion di Stato (1591) p. 88 ff. Also Sully, who called agriculture and cattle-breeding the breasts of the state, the real mines and pearls of Peru. (Economies royales I, ch. 81. See however, II, p. 381). Montchrêtien, Traité d'Économie politique (1615) 81, 172 seq. According to Sir D. North's Discourses upon Trade, 1691, wealth is synonymous with freedom from want, and the ability to procure many comforts, while Temple (ob. 1700, Works I, 140 seq.) looks entirely at the subjective side of wealth. Pollexfen, “England and East India inconsistent in their Manufactures” (1697), considers gold and silver as the only real wealth. To this definition Davenant (ob. 1714), opposes another. Wealth, according to him, is whatever places prince or people in a condition of superabundance, peace and security. See his Works, I, p. 381 seq. He even reckons intellectual powers, alliances etc., among the national wealth. Compare W. Roscher, Zur Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre 1851, in the acts of the royal Saxon Academy of Sciences, vol. III. Vauban (Dime royale 1707), Daire's edition, says: “The real wealth of a people consists in an abundance of those things, the use of which is so necessary to sustain the life of man, that they cannot at all be dispensed with.” By the wealth of a people Galiani, Della Moneta II, c. 2, understands the aggregate of all lands, houses, movable property, money, etc. which belong to them, but, that the chief element of wealth, and the condition precedent of all others, is men themselves. Hence, the process of the impoverishment of a people in their decline, takes the following course: money first emigrates, next, population diminishes, afterwards, the houses fall in ruin, finally, the land itself becomes a waste. According to Broggia, wealth is un avanzo osia valore di tutto cio che avanza al proprio consumo e bisogno, Delle Monete, 1743, IV, 307, 314; Cust. Palmieri (ob. 1794), also says: il superfluo constituisce la richezza. (Publica Felicità.) According to Turgot, Sur la Formation et Distribution des Richesses 1771, § 90, the wealth of a nation consists in the net proceeds of landed property capitalized at the ordinary price of land, and then of the aggregate of all the movable property of the country. Büsch, Geluumlauf III, § 27, considers a certain duration of the produce or revenue as an essential element in the idea of wealth. Lauderdale, Inquiry, ch. II, distinguishes national wealth and private wealth; the former embracing all that man covets as agreeable or desirable; while it is one of the marks of the latter, that there should be no general superfluity of it on hand. Several modern English economists call wealth only that, the production of which cost human labor. Thus, Malthus, Definitions (1827) p. 234. Torrens, Production of Wealth, 1821, ch. I. When Rossi, Cours d'Economie politique, 1835, L. 2, says: tout chose propre à satisfaire aux besoins de l'homme est richesse, he demonstrates how the frequent inaccuracy of the French language stands in the way of a close analysis. The greater number of more recent definitions are true of resources rather than of wealth. Bastiat distinguishes between richesse effective and relative, the former being based on utilité, the latter on valeur. (Harmonies, ch. 6.)

99.

The national wealth of Athens, at the time of the hundredth Olympiad, is estimated by Böckh (Staatshaushalt der Athen, I, p. 636, 2d ed.) to have been from thirty to forty thousand talents, besides the non-taxable property of the state. That of Great Britain is estimated at about 8,000 million pounds sterling. (Athenæum 5 March, 1853.) Wolowski estimated that of France at, at least, 116 milliards of francs, with an annual increase of 1-½ milliards, (L'or et l'Argent, 1870. Enquête, 59.) David A. Wells estimated that of the United States, in 1860, slaves not included, at 14,183 million dollars, or $451.20 per capita, whereas in England, the per capita wealth was about $1,000. (Hildebrand's Jahib., 1870, I, 431.) The national wealth of the kingdom of Saxony is equal to 600 million thalers immovable, and 600 million movable, property. (Engel, Statist. Zeitschr. August, 1856). That of Würtemberg=2,710 million florins, of which 700 millions represent movable goods, and 100 million, claims on foreign countries. (Statistisches Handbuch, 1863.) Of course all these estimates are very inexact.

100.

Ch. Dupin, Forces productives, p. 82. See infra, § 230.

101.

Compare Meidinger, Das britische Reich in Europa, pp. 79, 238, 261.

102.

Davenant considers an increase in the number of houses, ships and stocks of goods, as the surest sign of an increase in the national wealth; and on the other hand, a high rate of interest, a low price of land, small wages, a decrease of population, and an increase of uncultivated land, as the signs of national impoverishment. (Works, I, pp. 354, seq. II, p. 283.) Sir M. Decker, Essay on the Causes of Decline of Foreign Trade (1744), 3, gives as the signs of impoverishment, the following: a wretched condition of the poor and of manufactures, a low price of wool, long credit to retail dealers, frequent cases of bankruptcy, exportation of the metals, unfavorable exchange, few new coins, many cases of unpaid rent of leased land, and high poor rates.

103.

Storch, Handbuch, I, 45. Compare infra, § 187.

104.

On the difference between human and animal economy, see Schön, Neue Untersuchungen der N. Œkonomie, (1835), 4.

105.

Compare Schäffle, System, III, Aufl. I, 2, 28.

106.

Knies, in his Polit. Œkonomie vom geschichtl. Standpunkte, 1853, p. 160 ff., shows, very happily, how the love of one's self,—which must, indeed, be distinguished from self-seeking—is not in conflict with the love of one's neighbor; but that, in healthy natures, it is found allied with a feeling of equity, and of the common good. See, also, F. Fuoco, Saggi economici, Pisa, 1825, Nr. 7. Schutz, Das sittliche Element in der Volswirthschaft: Tübinger Zeitschrift für Staatswissensch. 1844, p. 132, ff.

107.

“That they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him.” (Acts, 17, 27. Compare Matthew, 6:33, also I. Timothy, 5:8.) Adam Müller in his Nothwendigkeit einer theolog. Grundlage, 49 seq., is a strong advocate of all this, but a rather narrow one. The farmer, he says, should first work for the love of God, then for the fruit, that is, for the gross product, and lastly for the net product. His work is a trust. Müller considers the business relations of men, as they exist at present, as “the comfortless mutual slavery of all.” (Nothwendigkeit einer theolog. Grundlage, 49 ff.) The economist, Ch. Perin, who writes from the Catholic politico-economical standpoint, substitutes for conscience, renoncement, as the force antagonistic to intérêt, an expression inappropriate, because merely negative, although in perfect harmony with the ascetic religiousness of the middle ages. (De la Richesse dans les Sociétiés chrêtiennes, 1861, II vol., passim) Compare Roscher in Gelzer's Protestant. Monatsblättern, Jan. 1863. Puchta, Institutionen, I, f. 8, opposes to individualism—or the impulse to distinguish ourselves from others, and which, when uncontrolled, leads to egotism, pride and hate—love and right, which are controlling powers over the former.

108.

Even the ancients conceived Eros as a world-building principle. According to Schön's expression, loc. cit., which it is not difficult to misconstrue, the feeling of the common interest manifests itself, both as law and force. And, in reality, it is necessary that, in order not to permit the drowsy conscience to fall too far behind self-interest, which is always awake, it should create lasting institutions and regulations above and beyond the caprice of the individual or of the moment; for instance, in the family, marriage, education etc.

109.

The more private interest ceases to be momentary, and becomes life-long and even hereditary, the better does it harmonize with the feeling of the common interest.

110.

Perin says (1, 93), that the conflict of interest is reconciled in the seeking for the attainment of the supreme good, that is God, “who gives himself to all in equal measure, and yet always remains the same, and out of whose fulness all may draw, and yet no one's share grows less.” But the same is true of all ideal goods, and of every form of the feeling for the common interest, the highest of which is, indeed, religiousness.

111.

According to Kant, Anthropologie, p. 239, the desire of comfort and well-being, and the inclination to virtue, when the former is properly restrained by the latter, produce the highest degree of moral, united to the highest degree of physical, good. It is well known, that during the middle ages, in all countries except Italy and, even up to the seventeenth century, the moral sciences were under a one-sided theological influence, whose ascetic condemnation of self-interest may have been well enough during a period of violence. By virtue of a very natural reaction, and as a protest of individualism against the constraint of absolute monarchy, the materialists of the eighteenth century endeavored to discover, even in the most exalted phenomena of human society, only the expression of an enlightened self-interest. See Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, or private Vices public Virtues (1723), but especially, Helvétius, De l'Esprit (1758). Voltaire says, that, in all the celebrated maxims of De Rochefoucauld (1665) there is but one truth contained, que l'amour propre est le mobile de toutes nos actions. (But see, per contra, Pufendorf, Jus Naturæ et Gentium, 1672, II, 3, 15.) This tendency was opposed, especially by the English, who could not be blind to the influence exerted in public life by the feeling for the common good. David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature (1739), III, 54, is of opinion that the interests of others are, on the whole, in the case of nearly every man stronger than even his own self interest. Hutcheson, System of Moral Philosophy (1755), speaks of the innate principle of benevolence. Man is not a perfect whole; a part belongs to his own person, part to his family, part to the nation, part even to all humanity. Burke, Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), distinguishes two fundamental principles of action, that of self-preservation and that of society. On the former is based the sense of the sublime; on the latter, of the beautiful. According to Ferguson, History of Civil Society, (1767), I, 3, 4, the “sense of union” is frequently strongest where the advantage drawn from the connection is smallest; for instance, it is weakest in highly cultured commercial countries. Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1768), has been as one-sided in reducing everything to “sympathy,” as he has been in his Wealth of Nations in reducing everything to “self-interest;” but not without the consciousness, that to explain the reality, it is necessary to take both into consideration (Buckle). It would, indeed, be just as preposterous to base economy on self-interest alone, as to base marriage merely on the sexual appetite. Recently, Hermann, Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen, 1st ed., part 1st, discovers in self-interest, and in the feeling for the common good, the two springs of all economy. He would even base the so-called theoretic Political Economy, on the study of self-interest, its practice in that of the common good. M. Chevalier, Cours d'Economie politique, 1844, II, 412 ff., understands something very like this by the contrast between liberty and centralization. The antagonisme and association of Bazard, Exposition de la Doctrine de Saint Simon (1829), p. 144 ff. Closer investigation will show, however, that self-interest, which must not be confounded with egotism, and the common interest, are neither coördinate nor exhaustive opposites. Compare the beautiful contrast drawn by Goethe (Pocket edition of 1833, vol. 46, 97), between “Pietät” and “Egoisterei.”

112.

Paul, I. Corinth. 12, gives the most beautiful model description of a social organism. Compare, however, the fable of Menenius Agrippa in Livy, II, 32.

113.

Excellent beginnings of a general theory of economies in common in Schäffle, N. Œkonomie, II, Aufl., 62 ff., 331 ff.

114.

The French and English, with their strong political bias, use the expressions respectively economie politique and Political Economy. In Germany, where the terms the people (Volk) and the state (Staat) are much less nearly coextensive, the words Volkswirthschaft and Nationalökonomie are preferred. But even Hufeland, who first gave currency to the term Volkswirthschaft (Grundlegung, I, 14), called attention to the peculiarity “that the term economy suggests that there is one who economizes and guides, an economist in chief, and that such a one is, even according to the most correct opinion, wanting in the public economy of a people.”

115.

According to Th. Cooper, Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy, (1726), 1, 15 ff. 117, the wealth of society is nothing but the aggregate wealth of all the individuals that compose it. Each individual looks out best for his own interests, and, hence, that nation must be the richest, in which each individual is most completely left to himself. (If this were so, savage nations would be the richest!) Cooper goes so far as to disapprove of the protection afforded to commerce on the high seas by a national navy; no naval war is worth what it costs, and merchants should protect themselves. He says, too, that the word “nation” is an invention of the grammarians, made to save the trouble of circumlocution, a nonentity! Adam Smith is, as might be expected, far removed from such absurdities. (Compare Wealth of Nations, IV, ch. 2, and the end of the fourth book.) But, even he is of opinion that men, in the study of their own advantage are led “naturally, or rather necessarily” (IV, ch. 2), to the employment which is most useful to society. But here Adam Smith overlooks the fact, that every individual nation strives after earthly immortality, and is, in consequence, frequently compelled to make immediate sacrifices for the sake of a distant future, a thing which can never be to the private interest of the mortal individuals who compose it. And thus, D. North, Discourses upon Trade (1691), 13 seq., says, that in commercial matters, different nations stand in precisely the same relation to the whole world, that individual cities do to the kingdom, and individual families to the city. Similarly, Boisguillebert, Factum de la France, ch. 10, 327, Daire's edition. Benjamin Franklin (ob. 1790), Political Papers, § 4. And J. B. Say, Traité d'Economie politique (1802) I, 15: every nation is, in relation to neighboring nations, in the situation of a province in relation to neighboring provinces. Unfortunately, such doctrine is only too palpably refuted by every war! J. Bentham's saying: Les intérêts individuels sont les seuls intérêts réels (Traité de Législation, I, 229). Infra § 98. Among those who, in antiquity, most energetically maintained that the idea of national economy is not a merely nominal one, is Plato (De Republ., IV, 420, I, 462); more recently, Fichte (Der geschlossene Handelstaat, 1800), although, in general, the socialists attach as little importance to nationality as their most decided opponents. Adam Müller is a writer who deserves recognition for his advocacy of national economy, and of the state as a whole, paramount to individuals, and even generations. He gives war the credit of causing the scientific knowledge of the state to cast deeper roots, and of enlightening individuals in the most forcible way, that they are parts of one great whole. (Elemente der Staatskunst, 1809, I, 7, 113). He calls public economy, as a whole, the product of all products. What, he inquires, is the use of all wealth, if it does not guarantee itself? And this, it can do, only through the organization of the whole people, that is, through the nation (I, 202). Adam Smith's theory of labor would be correct if it considered the entire national life of a people itself as one huge piece of labor. (II, 265). And so, Müller directs his polemics against Adam Smith's premise of a merely mercantile world-market. (II, 290). Similarly, the protective tariff theoreticians, Ganieh, Théorie de l'Economie politique (1822), II, 198 ff. and Fr. List, Nationales System der politischen Oek. (1842), I, 240 ff. Colton, Political Economy of the United States, 1853. Sismondi, Nouveaux Principes (1819), I, 197, ridicules the opinion which resolves the public interest into merely private interests: It is A's interest to rob B; B, the weaker, is equally interested to let himself be robbed, that he may fare no worse. But the state—?!

116.

National wars are really no mere operations of the will of the state! Since 1800, Ireland, and, since 1858, even British India, constitute one state with England, and yet how different are the economic tendencies of these different countries of which the individual husbandman or business man must take cognizance!

117.

One might also deny the reality of a stream, considered as a whole, since its bed, no one calls a stream, and its watery contents change every moment. And yet, it is well known to scientific geography that every stream has its own individual character.

118.

This would be to be guilty of explaining ignotum per ignotius. And yet, there are a great many modern writers who imagine that they have said something all-sufficient, when they have told us that the state is an organism. As early a writer as Hufeland (N. Grundlegung, I, 113), enters his protest against such abuses. The person who would operate with this notion, should, at least, have read the acute observations, so well calculated to dissipate preconceived opinions, made by Lotze, in his Allgemeine Physiologie des körperlichen Lebens, 1-165. The organic conception of national life, the life of a whole people, where the individual organs are free and rational beings, is evidently a much more difficult one to form than that of the animal or human body.

119.

I first called attention, in my work on the life-work and age of Thucydides, to the fact that that great historian always accounts for causes in the following manner: A. is produced by B., and B. by A. (Roscher, Leben Work und Zeitalter des Thukydides, 199 ff.; compare especially Thucyd., I, 2, 7, seq.) Such a circle is not a vicious one. All first class historians have thus explained historical phenomena. The one-sided deduction of A. from B., and B. from C., etc., which the so-called pragmatic writers like Polybius, for instance, is the result of overlooking all reciprocal action. Scialoja, Principii (1840), p. 60, makes a somewhat similar observation for Political Economy.

120.

Whether we call the unknown and inexplicable ground back of all analysis, and which our analysis cannot reach, vital force, generic form, spirit of the nation, or God's thought, is for the present a matter of scientific indifference. All the more necessary are the self-knowledge and honesty, in general, which admit the existence of this background, and which do not, by denying it, deny the connection of the whole, which is, for the most part, much more important than the analyzed parts. But I must at the same time, enter my energetic protest against the imputations of heresy made by those who do not comprehend the sacred duty of science, by never ceasing investigation, to push farther back the bounds of this inexplicable background.

121.

When Hildebrand, for instance, objects to the application of the expression “natural law” to the economic actions of man, for the reason that it conflicts with human freedom and man's capacity for progress (Jahrbücher der N. Œek. und Statistik., 1863, Heft., I), I cannot agree with him. I use the expression “natural law” wherever I observe uniformity, explicable in its broader connections, and not dependent on human design. That there are such uniformities there can be no question. I need only mention the philological law of the so-called “permutation of consonants,” which individuals follow when speaking—certainly not through compulsion,—and, by means of which, the progress of the speaking aggregate is made manifest. Or, I might call attention to the well known fact, that, in populous countries marriages and crimes, which are for the most part free, are divided among the different age-classes in a proportion much more uniform, from year to year, than are deaths, which are not free. I adhere all the more firmly to the expression “natural law,” because no one takes offense at or objects to the expression, “nature of the human soul.” But to this very nature of the human soul belong the freedom and responsibility of the individual, as well as the capacity of the species for progress. Compare A. Wagner, on Law in the Apparently capricious Actions of Man (Die Gesetzmässigkeit in den scheinbar willkürlichen menschlichen Handlungen, 1864, p. 63 seq.), in which, however, he only goes so far as to show that law and freedom coexist side by side as indubitable facts, while the seeming contradiction between the two remains. Drobisch's Moralische Statistik und die menschliche Willensfreiheit, 1867, is an important contribution to the literature of this question.

122.

Whately, in his fourth lecture (Lectures, 1831), shows in a very clear way, how London is supplied and provisioned by men with no object in view but their own personal interest, each of whom is possessed of but a very limited knowledge of the aggregate wants of its inhabitants, and yet they work into one another's hands, in the interests of the whole, purely instinctively, and infinitely better, perhaps, than the operations of the most skillful governmental commission, organized for the same purpose.

123.

Alphonsus of Castile, the king astrologer of the thirteenth century, is reported to have said, that the universe would have been much better constituted, if the Creator had asked his advice beforehand. Astronomers like Newton and Gauss have, certainly, judged otherwise.

124.

MacCulloch remarks, that there is an essential difference between the physical and the moral and political sciences in this, that the principles of the former apply in all cases, those of the latter, only in the greater number of cases—a thought very ably developed by Knies, loc. cit., passim. If, with Newmarch, (London Statistical Journal, 1861, p. 460 seq.), we could grant, that there is no “law,” except where it is possible to predict each individual occurrence under it, there would be no such thing even as the “laws” of the probability of life. The word “element,” also, means something very different in Political Economy from what it does in chemistry: a combination which might be broken up, but which that science leaves it to other sciences to do. The “element” of Political Economy is Man. Compare Pickford, Einleitung in die politische Œk., 1860, 17.

125.

It is in this sense that Aristotle (Polit., I, p. 1, 9 Schn.) says: φανερὸν, ὅτι τῶν φύσει ἡ πόλις ἐστὶ, καὶ ὅτι ἄνθρωπος φύσει πολιτικὸν ζῶον. According to L. Stein, Lehrbuch der Volkswirthschaft, 1858, 33, the political economy of a people begins at the point where the overplus of individuals begins.

126.

Compare K. L. von Haller, Restauration der Staatswissenchaft, I, p. 446 ff.

127.

As Sallust characterizes the political apogee of the Romans: Optimis moribus et maxima concordia egit populus Romanus inter secundum atque postremum bellum Carthaginiense. See Augustin (Civ. Dei II, 18). Puchta (Institutionen, I, f. 83), with a great deal of good sense, distinguishes in every people their individual character from that which they share in common with all mankind. The latter exists among savage nations, only as a germ buried under the overpowering weight of that which is special to them. The period of the perfect equilibrium of both elements is coincident with that of a people's real culture. In the further course of development, the latter, more general element becomes gradually over-powerful, destroys the individual, and thus dissolves nationality.

128.

Thus formulated, the principles of the two great parties, evidently, no more contradict one another than their ordinary watchwords, “freedom” and “order,” are in contrast with one another. Hence all the great statesmen of the best periods of history have adopted the middle course recommended by Aristotle.

129.

See Lotze, Allgemeine Pathologie, 1842. Ruete, Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Therapie, 1852. These analogies, obviously, should not be pushed too far. One of the most essential differences between the two consists in this, that in the diseases of the body politic, physicians and nurses are themselves part of the diseased organism.

130.

See Ahren's very beautiful exposition, Organische Staatslehre, 1850, I, 77. National economy (Nationalökonomie=public economy); national economics (Nationalökonomik=the science of public economy). The latter term was first proposed, in Germany, in 1849, by Uhde; the former was naturalized therein 1805: v. Soden, Nationalökonomie, 1805; Jacob, Grundsätze der N. Œk., 1806. In Italy, G. Ortes used it as early as 1774, in his Dell Economia nazionale, and in England it was employed, even in 1867, by Ferguson, History of Civil Society, III, p. 4. Holland. Volkshuyshoudkunde. As a rule, outside of Germany, the term political economy, économie politique, one which is somewhat calculated to mislead the student, is used. (Thus Montchrêtien sieur de Vatteville, Traité de l'Economie politique, 165; later J. J. Rousseau, Discours sur l'Economie politique, later yet the Traités d'E. p., Maillardère, Page and J. B. Say, 1801-1803). Political Economy (Sir J. Stewart, Inquiry into the principles of P. E., 1767); also Public Economy (Petty, several Essays, 1682, 35); Economia politica or pubblica (the latter by Verri and Beccaria). The title Economia civile (Genovesi, Lezioni, d'Ec. civ. 1769), has found few adherents. It has, however, been used recently by Cernuschi: Illusions des Sociétés coöperatrices (1866). The term, Economie sociale has been used all the more in France (Dunoyer, Nouveau Traité d'Ec. soc., 1830), since recommended by J. B. Say, and employed by Buat (Des vrais Principes de l'Origine et de la Filiation du Mot Economie politique, in the Journal des Economistes, 1852.)

131.

Stein, Lehrbuck der V. W., prefaces his “Science of Public Economy” (pp. 329-358), by a “Science of Economy” (pp. 96-328), which, however, treats individual economies only as the elements of the national economy. A science of household or isolated individual economy could, of course, treat only of the economic relations of anchorites. Those who object that Political Economy is not a real whole will be satisfied with the definition of it given by F. I. Neumann: “The Science of the bearing of household or separate economies to one another, and to the state as a whole.” (Tüb. Zeitschr., 1872, 267.)

132.

In so far as these various institutions are concerned, with objects beyond the human, or supernatural, only the manner in which they are accepted, or in which they are made use of, is an expression of national life.

133.

Thus, J. Tucker thinks that religion, the state and commerce, are only the parts of one same general plan: no institution, therefore, can be called appropriate, within the limits of the province of any one of these, if it be clearly in opposition to the other two, because the harmony of God's work can not be broken up. (Four Tracts and two Sermons on political and commercial Subjects, 1774, Serm. I.)

134.

Riedel (National Œkonomie, 1838, I, p. 178 seq.), gives a good illustration of the difference between the manner in which law and Political Economy look at the same question. The law (to avoid strife, or to settle controversies) looks upon the debtor as the owner of the capital, and lets him run all the risk; Political Economy, on the other hand, looking deeper into the nature of the contract, reaches an entirely opposite result. The mere jurist has a dangerous tendency to undervalue the reign of the laws of nature; the mere political economist, just as readily, undervalues the element of free will. (Arnold, Cultur und Recht I, 97.) In this respect, the two sciences complement each other very well. Roesler (Hildebrand's Jahrb., 1868, II, and 1869, I.) shows, and he does not exaggerate the fact, that political economists have made altogether too little use of the results of the science of law.

135.

Jurists will always experience the want of divesting their isolated ideas of their purely accidental character, by grouping them together in such a manner as to make them constitute a complete and independent whole. One must be possessed of profound knowledge to perceive their necessary connection from an historico-juridical point of view. Political Economy, with its characteristic accuracy and practical utility, can best take its place, at the present time. It is in the greater number of legal questions, the systematically elaborated science of “the nature of the thing.” See the able beginnings of a policy of legislation and higher history of law, based on Political Economy, by H. Dankwardt: N. Œk. und Jurisprudenz, 3 Hefte, 1857, and my preface to Dankwardt's Nationalökonomisch-civilistischen Studien, 1862.

136.

The intellectual power of a people depends upon the vigorous and harmonious development of all seven spheres of life.

137.

Montecuccoli, Besondere und geheime Kriegsnachrichten (Leipzig, 1736). A very similar judgment by Cæsar in Dio Cass., XLII, 49.

138.

Bülan, Handbuch der Staatswirthschaftslehre, 1835.

139.

Thus v. Justi, Staatswirthschaft 1755. Kraus, Staatswirthschaft, published by Auerswald, 1808; Schmalz, Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft, 1808. More recently, Hermann, Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen, 1832. In France, the expression économie de l'état, is very seldom used. Gavard, Principes del'E. d'Etat, 1796.

140.

Pölitz, Staatswissenschaften im Lichte unserer Zeit, II, 3. Compare Lotz, Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft (2d ed., 1837), I, 10 ff.

141.

Our view of Political Economy holds a middle place between opposed extremes. The view expressed by Whately, Lectures on Political Economy (1831), No. 1, and covered by the proposed term “catalactics,” is by far too narrow. Similarly, Macleod, Elements of Political Economy, 1858, I, 11. A like objection may be raised to the earlier title of Pritzwitz's book: Die Kunst reich zu werden,—the art of growing rich. On the other hand, Dunoyer, Liberté du Travail (1845), L. IX, ch. I, goes too far altogether: “not only in what manner a nation grows rich, but according to what laws it best succeeds, in the execution of all its functions.” And so Storch, Handbuch, translated into German by Rau, I, 9. Many modern writers define Political Economy simply as the theory of society; for instance, Scialoja, Principj. dell'Economia sociale, 1840. Cibrario, E. polit. del medio Evo, III, 1842.

142.

For the many and various definitions of the police power, see von Berg, Handbuch des Polezeirechts, I, 1-12; Butte, Versuch der Begründung eines System der Polezei (1807), 6 ff.; Rosshirt, Ueber den Begriff der Staatspolizoi (1817), 34 ff. One of the principal difficulties is, that the practical domain of the police power is, in consequence of the successive grades of civilization through which a people passes, subject to greater modifications than any other state power. We call attention especially to the expressions “without mediation, to prevent,” and “external order,” in our definition. The church, the school, the administration of justice etc., act mediately towards the prevention of such disturbances; and there are many other institutions which offer immediate protection to order of a higher and more intellectual nature.

143.

See the great number of earlier definitions collected in R. von Mohl, Gesch. und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften III, pp. 637 ff. There are two principal groups of them, the one of which considers it as the science of things of political note, the other as the science of actual or past conditions.

144.

See Dufau, Traité de Statistique, 1840; Moreau de Jonnès, Elements de Statistique, 1847; Knies, Die Statistik als selbstständige Wissenschaft, 1850. B. Hildebrand, in his Jahrbüchern, 1866, I etc., but especially Quetelet's works. For the contrary view, see Fallati, Einleitung in die Wissenschaft der Statistik der St., 1843; Jonak, Theorie der Statistik, 1856, and Heeren, in the Gött. Gelehrten Anzeigen, 1806, No. 84, 1807, 1302.

145.

So thinks v. Rümelin (Tübinger Zeitschr., 1863, 653 ff.); and he recommends in place of statistics an independent branch of learning bordering on history and geography, to be called demography. His statistics is a science auxiliary to all the experimental sciences of man, just as criticism and hermeneutics are a methodological science auxiliary to many sciences, otherwise different. It would be difficult to justify the use of the name statistics for such a science, as such a science corresponds to neither of the two meanings of the word status (state—condition).

146.

The ancients understood by the term καμάρα camera, covered places such especially as were vaulted, also vaults of the most varied kind. Compare Herod, I, 199; Diod., II, 9; Strabo, XI, 495; Arrian, Exp. Alex., VII, 5, 55; Dio Cass. XXXVI, 32; Sallust, B. C., 55; Cicero, ad Q. fratrem III, 1; Plin., H. N. XXX, 27; Seneca, Epist., 86; Tacit. Hist. III, 47; Sueton, Nero, 34. During the middle ages, the meaning treasure-chamber (Schatzkammer) became predominant: camera est locus, in quem thesaurus recoilligitur, vel conclave, in quo pecunia reservatur (Ocham, Cap. Quid sit Scaccarium). It gradually became synonymous with finance,—from the time of Charlemagne, or at least since Louis II. (Charter of 874). See Ducange, Glossarium, v. Camera, and Muratori Antiquitt. Ital., I, 932 ff.

147.

“A husbandman must plow and manure his land if he would reap a harvest from it. He must fatten his cattle if he would slaughter them; and furnish his cows with good fodder if he would have them give good milk. In like manner, a prince should begin by assuring his subjects healthy and abundant food, if he would take anything from them.” von Schröder, Fürstl. Schatz-und Rentkammer (1686), preface, § 11. Von Horneck before him, Oesterreich über alles wann es nur will, p. 220, ed. of 1707, had expressed the idea that the watchful solicitude for the public economy of the country was no parergon, no appendix, to the council (Kammer), but its real basis, and that it embraced many subjects which had nothing in common with the cameralia (“Cameralien”).

148.

Morhof, Polyhistor (1688), III. Thomasius, 1728, Cautelæ circa præcognita Jurisprudentiæ (1710), ch. 17. (Cautelæ circa studium œconomicum.) Also, in his lectures on Seckendorff's “Teutschen Fürstenstaat.” Compare Roscher, Gesch. der N. Œk. in Deutschland, 328 ff.

149.

While Dithmar (1731) distinguishes economy-police and cameralistic sciences and restricts the latter to finance and taxation; Darjes (1756) comprises under the name of cameralistic science, economy (municipal and rural), and police, as well as cameralistic subjects in the strict sense of the term, that is, the public, domain and regal rights. While Nau (1791), in his “Ersten Linien der C.,” treats only of the branches of private economy, Schmalz, (1797) treats also of national or public economy, and Rössig (1792) divides cameralistic science into the doctrine of the public demesne and regal rights (cameralistic science in the narrower sense), and the doctrine of taxation and police.

150.

Thus, for instance, all that concerns domestic economy, book-keeping and private financial administration.

151.

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), I, p. 25, draws a distinction between the physical conditions which influence the economic situation of a people, and the moral and psychological conditions; which last have their origin in social institutions or in the fundamental principles of human nature. Only the latter belong to the domain of Political Economy. According to J. B. Say, Traité, Introd., this science embraces at once agriculture, manufactures and commerce, but only in their relation to the increase or diminution of wealth, and does not concern itself with the means employed to reach the desired end. As a rule, says Arndt (Naturgemässe Volkswirthschaft, 1851, p. 16), it takes into consideration not so much things themselves as their exchange value. Lotz (Handbuch, I, p. 6 seq.), in like manner, defines Political Economy—the science of the one activity which constitutes the basis of all industries etc. F. G. Schulze (Ueber volkswirthschaftliche Begründung der Gewerbswissenschaften, 1826), characterizes Political Economy as the science of the fundamental conditions of the well-being of a people, in so far as they lie in human nature. When Adam Smith (book IV, c. II) says that the government in respect to matters of economy is inferior to the first best person engaged in industrial pursuits, he is right only from a technic point of view. And when Stewart, on the other hand, vindicates for the state the office of a pater-familias (book II, ch. 13), he evidently means only in national economical matters.

152.

See also Rau (Ueber die Cameralwissenschaft, Entwickelung ihres Wesens und ihrer Theile, 1825); Baumstark (Cameralistische Enclycopädie, 1835).

153.

Xenoph. Œconom. I, 8 ff. Cyrop. VIII; 2, 23. He saw with equal clearness the moral light and shade of wealth. (Œcon. XI. 9. Conviv. 4. Memor. I, 6. Cyrop. VIII, 3, 35 ff. Hiero 4.)

154.

Thomas Aquinas values earthly goods according to the end they are made to serve; when used for a good purpose, they have a mediately true value. Hence it was an error of the stoics to despise them under all circumstances. (Summa Theol. II, 2. Qu., 50, 3. 58, 2. 59, 3. 125, 4.)

155.

Whateley considers the savage much beneath the materialist, instead of superior to him. The latter possesses, although he frequently abuses it, the faculty of self-control and forethought, which is entirely wanting in the former. (Lectures, No. 6.) Dunoyer, De la Liberté du Traväil, liv. IV, ch. I, 8, an apology for the moral wholesomeness of civilization, since promotive of military prowess, favorable to the development of the sciences, and even poetical. Baudrillart, Manual d'Œkonomie politique, 1857, 24. See Fallati, Ueber die sogennannte materiellen Tendenz der Gegenwart, 1842.

156.

See the inscription on the tomb of Sardanapalus: ταῦτ᾽ ἔχω, ὄσσ᾽ ἔφαγον καὶ ἐφύβρισα καί μετ᾽ ἔδωτος τέδπν ἔπαθον. (Strabo, XIV, 672.) Isaiah, 122, 13, 56, 12, and the book of wisdom (2) characterizes the view of the fallen Jewish people. In Greece, the Cynic and Epicurean schools were only different phases of the same degeneration. “Thirst, for money, and nothing else, will be the ruin of Sparta!” (Cicero, De Offic, II, 22, 77.) See the magnificent description by Demosthenes, in which he shows the over-estimation of material things to be the principal cause of the decline of Athens, and in which he lays great stress on the fact, that Athens, on its decay, had a larger population, more wealth, ships, and evidences of external power, than in its golden age. (Phil., III, 120 seq.) Also Phil., IV, 144, cautions us against the Manchester criterion of national prosperity. See Plato, De Rep., VIII. In Rome, the principle ommia venalia esse was a chief element in the total decline and fall of the republic. (Sallust, Cat., 10 ff., Jug., 8 ff.) In an age when people think they can do everything with money, the ruin of all things is the last end of mercantile, financial and political speculation. (Condillac, Le Commerce et le Gouverment, 1776, II, 18.)

157.

Under Pericles, the Athenian treasury of the state contained at most 9,700 talents. (Thucyd. II, 13.) On the other hand, Alexander the Great had a treasure of 180,000 talents accumulated in the citadel of Ecbatana. (Strabo, XV, 731); Ptolomy II. left after him 740,000 talents. (Appian. præf. 10, Droysen, Geschichte des Hellenismus II, 44 ff.) In Nero's time there was many a freedman's daughter who owned a looking glass worth a greater sum than the senate had appropriated as a dowry to the daughter of the great Scipio. (Seneca, Quæst. Natur. I, 17. Compare Cons, ad Helviam, 12.) McCulloch says that an intelligent despotism can enrich a nation as well as freedom. (In his Discourse on the Rise, etc. of Polit. Econ., 1825, 77 seq.)

158.

Bacon (Sermones, 56) says that youthful states distinguish themselves specially by their warlike instincts; mature states in literature; old and decaying ones in industry and commerce. Davenant very happily remarks, that the development of commerce among a people has an ambiguous value. It, indeed, increases wealth, but, at the same time, it may introduce luxury, covetousness and fraud, destroy virtue, do away with simplicity of manners and customs, and then it inevitably ends in internal or external slavery. (Works II, 275.) The simplicity of the patriarchal state, however, cannot last always, if for no other reason, because of the emulation of foreign nations. (1, 348, ff.) The impoverishment of even the wealthiest nation is certainly inevitable when its morality declines. It is especially true, that the public economy of a people can be prosperous only where political liberty obtains, and this, independent of the fact that wealth without freedom has no value. (II, 336 ff., 380, ff., 285.) According to Ferguson, private wealth, honestly acquired, used rightly and with moderation, managed with a sense of independence, may be to those who possess it, an element of self-confidence and of liberty, provided they loosen their purse strings not through vanity or for their personal gratification, but for commendable party purposes. But in periods of decay, even a greater amount of wealth is very far from producing these results. (History of Civil Society, VI, 5.) Whately, on the contrary, maintains that only personal wealth—never national wealth—has a disastrous influence on morals. Lectures, No. 2.

159.

“The method of a science is of much greater importance than any individual discovery, however wonderful.” (Cuvier.)

160.

Thus, for instance, G. Biel (ob. 1495), the “last of the schoolmen,” gives us his doctrine of Political Economy, in a work on Dogmatic Theology, in the chapter on Penance, his starting point being the inquiry, how the economic damage caused by the sinner may be repaired. Roscher, Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutchland, 1074, I, 23. The Melittotheologia, Arachnotheologia of later times! A recent attempt in this direction has been made by Ad. Müller, Nothwendigkeit einer theologischen Grundage der gesammten Staatswissenschaften und der Staatswirthschaft insbesondere (1819), i.e., “necessity of a theological basis for all political science, and especially for Political Economy.” He divides political science into two parts: the science of law, and the science of wisdom, embracing under the latter denomination, politics, Political Economy, etc. Law emanates from God, as supreme judge; the science of wisdom from God, as our Supreme Father.

161.

Abstraction is indulged in on a large scale, when a number of elements which are always found combined in life, are here separated and examined apart. It is precisely thus that anatomy proceeds, dissecting each member of the human frame, separating the bones, ligaments and muscles from one another, thus becoming the necessary preparatory school to physiology.

162.

Thus, for instance, Canard, Principes d'Economie politique (1801). Also Kröncke, in several of his works, and Count Buquoy, in his Theorie der Nationalwirthschaft (1816), p. 333 ff.; Lang, Grundlinien einer politischen Arithmetik, Charkow, 1811, and more especially v. Thünen, Der isolirte Staat, vol. I (1842), vol. II, 1850. See my criticism of his method in Birnbaum's Georgika, 1869, 77 ff. Voa Thünen's first volume is an essay towards a geometrical exposition of the science. See also Rau, Lehrbuch I, § 154, appendix; von Mangoldt, Grundriss der Volkswirthschaftslehre (1862); Cazaux, Elements d'Economie privée et Principes mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses (1838); F. Fuoco, Saggi economici (1827) II, 61 ff. Walras, Eléments d'Econ. politique pure (1874). Jevons has recently endeavored to give Political Economy a mathematical basis by reducing the objects of which it treats to the calculable feelings of pleasure (+) and pain (-). The duration of a feeling is treated as an abscissa, its intensity as the ordinate of a curve, and its quantity as the area. Future feelings are reduced to present ones, by allowing for their distance, and the uncertainty of their occurrence. All this, however, is rather curious than scientifically useful.

163.

Herbart, Ueber die Möglichkeit und Nothwendigkeit, Mathematik auf Psychologie anzuwenden; Kleinere Schriften, II, 417.

164.

How detrimental it is to ignore the psychological nature of Political Economy is evident from the errors of Karl Marx, who personifies things in a manner almost mythological. Thus, according to him, modesty should be ascribed to a coat which exchanges for a piece of linen, and purpose to the linen, etc. (Das Kapital, 1867, I, 19, 22, seq.) The greatest fault of this intelligent but not very acute man, his inability to reduce complicated phenomena to their constituent elements, is greatly increased by his way of thus looking at things.

165.

Compare J. B. Say, Traité I, introd. Thus, it would be certainly possible to describe every individual's physiognomy by means of a very complicated mathematical formula, and yet there is no one who would not prefer the usual mode of taking pictures. The simple motions of the heavenly bodies, on the contrary, are always treated mathematically. (Lotze, Allgemeine Physiologie, 322 ff.)

166.

When Fawcett says that all “principles of Political Economy are describing tendencies instead of actual results” (Manual of Political Economy, 1863, p. 90), our method, the historical, would give also the theory of the latter.

167.

This was lost sight of by most writers during the second half of the eighteenth century, because they looked upon that equality as the really oldest condition, and its restoration the ideal to be striven for. How much of this still clings to the present free-trade school; see in Roscher, Gesch. der N. Œk. in Deutschland, 10, 17 ff.

168.

Thus, for instance, Ricardo examines, almost exclusively, the actual condition of things, while the socialists confine themselves, still more exclusively, to the investigation of how things should be. It has been very usual in Germany since Rau wrote, to draw a distinction between theoretical and practical Political Economy. There are many who think that a good manual of practical Political Economy, dropping the introduction, demonstrations etc., would be also a good code of law, of universal application. Mercier de la Rivière has said that he wished to propose an organization which should be necessarily productive of all the happiness which can be enjoyed on earth. (Ordre essentiel et naturel (1767), Disc. prélim.) Compare, also, Sismondi, N. Principes, I, ch. 2.

169.

The word method is used in an essentially different sense, when the inquiry is, whether the inductive or deductive method is followed in Political Economy. J. S. Mill calls Political Economy, and, indeed, all “sociology,” a concrete deductive science, whose a priori conclusions, based on the laws of human nature, must be tested by experience, either by comparing them with the concrete phenomena themselves, or with their emperical laws. It, in this, resembles astronomy and physics. (System of Logic VI, ch. 9. Essays on some unsettled questions of Political E., No. 5.) According to this, an economic fact can be said to have received a scientific explanation only when its deductive and inductive explanations have met and agreed. “Only those principles which, after they have been obtained by the one, are confirmed by the other method, can be said to have a scientific basis.” (von Mangoldt, Grundriss, 8.) While I agree to this view, it seems necessary to me to mention points wherein caution is necessary: A. Even the deductive explanation of economic facts is based on observation, namely, on the self-observation of the person accounting for them, who, consciously or unconsciously, must always inquire: If I had experienced or accomplished the same fact, what should I have thought, willed and felt? The man who cannot translate himself into the souls of others, will give a wrong explanation of most economic facts. In the question, for instance, of the determination of the price of an article, the person who can look into the mind of one of the contracting parties only, will give a one-sided explanation of the facts. B. Moreover, every explanation, that is, satisfactory connection of the fact seeking explanation with other facts which are already clear, can be only provisional. The wider our horizon grows, the deeper should our solution of all questions become. A hundred years hence, should science increase in the mean time, the solutions which are satisfactory to us will be looked down upon by our posterity, as the speculations of our fathers antecedent to Adam Smith's time are looked down upon by us.

170.

Tanquam e vinculis sermocinantur, says Bacon (De Dignit. et Augm. Scient., III, 3), of those who have written in a not non-practical way on the laws. Hugo, also (Naturrecht, 1819, p. 9), calls attention to the resemblance of the so-called laws of nature, to the positive law in force at the time. As to political idealism, see Roscher: De historicæ doctrinæ apud sophistas majores vestigiis (Gött. 1838, 26 ff.). The only exceptions to this rule are the eclectics, who form their own system from the blossoms of all foreign ones, a system, indeed, without root, and which therefore must soon wither.

171.

In this place, naturally, such an assertion can be made only as a programme to be carried out, the proof whereof is to be sought in the rest of the work. By “the people,” we do not mean the governed, to the exclusion of the governing classes, but both classes together. We attach to the expression the most extensive meaning possible. We do not limit it to the present generation, but intend it to cover all the generations from the beginning of a people's history to its end.

172.

The custom, which has become general, of calling all democratic movements, and them only, revolutions (thus Stahl: Was ist Revolution? 1852, and many other writers of an entirely opposite tendency, especially in France), is not warranted. It is true that democratic (and imperial) revolutions are more frequent than others in our times, just as aristocratic revolutions were in the middle ages, and monarchical at the beginning of modern history. The essence of revolution, however, is in the operation of change contrary to positive law, acknowledged as such by the consciousness of the people.

173.

Compare, especially, the first pages of Sir J. Stewart, Principles of Polit. Economy.

174.

See Colton, Public Economy of the United States, p. 28, who, indeed, unwarrantedly, refers to the whole of Political Economy, what properly belongs to its precepts.

175.

Je n'impose rien, je ne propose même rien: j'expose. (Ch. Dunoyer). Cherbuliez, Précis de la Science économique, 1862, p. 7 ff., has exaggerated this idea in a strangely non-practical manner. That the historical method does not differ essentially from the statistical as recently recommended, see Roscher, Gesch. der Nat. Œk., 1035 seq.

176.

Storch, Handbuch, II, 222.

177.

Ad. Müller, an essentially mediæval mind, is guilty of this same braggadocio in an opposite direction, when he calls the “present with its political disorders simply an intermediate state,—the transmission of the natural or unconscious wisdom of the fathers, through the inquisitiveness of their children to the rational acknowledgment of that wisdom by their grandsons.” (Theorie des Geldes, 1816, pref.)

178.

Thus, for instance, it can not be said that a model university is better than a model public school; and yet the former is higher, because the age to which it is adapted is doubtless intellectually higher.

179.

Knies (Polit. Œk., 256 seq.) remarks, that it would be a great mistake, and it is the mistake of the majority, to consider what has been achieved or striven for in the present, as the absolute non plus ultra, and thus to look upon all future generations as called upon to play the parts of apes and ruminators; a remark worthy to be taken to heart.

180.

I have, myself, no doubt, that up to the present time, mankind, as a whole, has, from the beginning of historical knowledge, always advanced. In individual cases, their movement has been interrupted by so many pauses, and even by so many occasional retrogressions, that great care must be taken not to infer superior excellence from mere subsequency.

181.

Buckle writes of people whose knowledge is about limited to that which they see going on under their eyes, and who are called practical, only because of their ignorance; and he adds that, although they assume to despise theory, they are in fact slaves of theory, of others' theories.

182.

Compare this whole chapter with Roscher, Leben Werk und Zeitalter des Thukydides, 1842, pp. 25, 239-275; Roscher, Grundries zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirthschaft nach geschichtlicher Methode, 1843, preface; Roscher Geschichte der Nat. Œk. in Deutchland (1874), 882 f., 1017 seq., and D. Vierteljahrsschrift, ff. See also J. Kautz's learned and accurate Theorie und Geschichte der N. Œkonomik, vol. I, 1858, II, 1860. I find no real contradiction between the views here expressed and those of Kautz, when he (I, pp. 313 ff.) introduces history and ethico-practical reason with their ideals as sources of Political Economy, to the end that the science may be something more than simply a picture, namely, a model of economic life. Apart from the fact that it is only the ethico-practical reason that can understand history at all, the ideals of a period constitute one of the most important elements of its history. The aspirations of an age find in them their best expression. The historical political, economist as such, is certainly not disinclined to form plans of reform, nor can it be said that he is not adapted to the performance of such a task. Only, he will scarcely recommend his reforms as absolutely better than what they are intended to supplant. He will confine himself to showing that there is a want which may, probably, be best satisfied by what he proposes. See Sartorius, Einladungsblätter zu Vorlesungen über die Politik, 1793.

183.

“There is a book which youth may use to grow old, and the old to remain young—History.” (K. S. Zaccharia).

184.

Especially when natural science begins to be “a practical science.” (L. Stein).

185.

The difference between the broader and narrower sense of production, corresponds essentially with that of gross and net income (§ 145). Compare also §§ 206, 211 ff.

186.

Von Mangoldt distinguishes the coming into existence of free values of the production undertaken for an economic purpose. (Grundriss, 9.)

187.

Gioja, Nuovo Prospetto delle Scienze economiche (1815), I, 49 ff. Besides positive production, there is a latent production, which prevents the decay of goods. It is not possible to make as exact an estimate of the latter as of the former; and much more depends in the latter case than in the former on continuity and proper extension. Hence, latent production is especially a state concern. (Knies, Telegraph als Verkehrsmittel, 1857, 232.)

188.

See Schäffle, in the Tübinger Univ. Programm, September 27, 1862, on the disastrous effect on the community of idleness. The leading of a happy life the Greeks called very appropriately, εὐπράττειν (Garve).

189.

We use the expression “external nature” through the whole of this work in contradistinction not only to the soul, but also to man's body, designating his entire physico-intellectual activity by the term “labor-force” (Arbeits kraft).

190.

By the expression “natural forces,” we designate the economically useful changes of matter, changes of place as well as of composition, which are made without man's cooperation; for instance, the gigantic machinery which supplies the greater part of mankind with water to drink, for domestic and other purposes—the evaporation of the sea, the formation of clouds, rain, springs, rivers etc. See Bastiat, Harmonies, 277. Thus the sun's rays are indirectly the cause, not only of vegetation, but also of all wind and steam forces.

191.

Spite of this “freedom,” it may well happen that these gifts of nature can be utilized, in many cases, only on condition of some expenditure. The photographer can compel the sunlight to work for him only by means of a camera obscura, and the smithy the atmosphere, only by means of a bellows. But neither will ever successfully make an item, in their accounts with their customers, of the services of the sun or air.

192.

The most important ocean currents may be explained by two causes: the flowing of the water from the polar seas to the equator (polar current), and the revolution of the earth about its axis (equinoctial current); besides which, there are the reflex currents produced by the horizontal form of the coast-lands. Thanks to these natural ocean highways, England is nearer to almost all the important mercantile coasts of the world by 300 geographical miles than the Eastern States of the American Union. The only exception is the Atlantic coast of America north of the Equator. North Americans to pass the line, or to double one of the two great capes, are obliged first to traverse the ocean as far as the Azores. On the other hand, the western coast of South America is very widely separated from Mexico, for instance, by its ocean currents. The colonization of America by Europe, instead of by China, is a consequence of the direction of ocean currents, as is also the fact that America has now the fairest prospect of influencing the civilization of China and Japan. What an influence the warm gulf stream has on the mild climate of north-western Europe!

193.

While the Mississippi has no ebb or flow whatever, the influence of the ocean is felt in the Hudson, which is 60 geographical miles long, a distance of 29 miles from its mouth.

194.

Thus, A. Young, Travels in France I, 293 ff., has defined, with approximate accuracy, the limits within which the vine, maize and the olive grow. And so von Cancrin, Dorpater Jahrbuch IV, 1, distinguishes the ice zone, the reindeer-moss (a lichen on which the reindeer live in winter) zone, the forest zone, the zone within the limits of which cattle are raised; that in which the culture of rye begins, that in which it becomes permanent; the wheat, fruit-tree, vine, maize, olive, sugar cane and silk-worm zones. The United States are divided into cattle-raising, wheat-raising, cotton-raising, rice-raising and sugar-raising zones. Even in Europe, beyond the 60th parallel of north latitude, wheat can scarcely be cultivated; the polar limits of rye raising extend, at most, six or seven degrees farther. Towards the north, barley extends sometimes as far as the 70th degree. Here agriculture almost ceases, and the inhabitants are compelled to confine themselves to animal substances for food. On the other hand, these three cereals are not adapted to a tropical climate, while the bread-fruit tree, for instance, does not thrive at more than 22 degrees from the Equator, nor the banana at more than 35. Compare Grisebach, Die Vegetation der Erde nach ihrer klimatischen Anordnung. II, 1871.