of others. The following, quoted by Mill from Von Humboldt, illustrates the idea that he has in mind: "Among men who are really free, every form of industry becomes more rapidly improved—all the arts flourish more gracefully,—all sciences become more largely enriched and expanded. Among such men emulation naturally arises," and (speaking of education), "tutors better befit themselves, when their fortunes depend upon their own efforts, than when their chances of promotion rest on what they are led to expect from the State." " Mill would not agree with the unbounded optimism that this statement reveals, but he would agree with it in principle. In economics, as we shall see, this points to competition in the technical sense and to economic liberalism; in political theory it lies behind Mill's emphasis on the value of opposition between different political parties. And this is where liberty comes in. Without freedom of expression, freedom of development for different points of view and different ways of life, there would be no chance for that give and take which is such an important factor in increasing the variety and interest in human life, and so essential for the progressive development of individuality. This idea of the importance of developing individuality is the conception which lies behind all that Mill wrote on the social problems of his day. It represents a long step in advance of the formal individualism which characterized Mill's teachers, and in behalf of which he himself started out to conquer the world. It is true that his interest in the formulation of scientific principles remained, but the interest in personality came first, and was the dominant factor in his philosophy. How this works itself out in his political economy, his philosophy of government, and his treatment of the more general problem of the limits of the authority of the social group over the individual, will be seen in the following chapters. Chapter V. Individuality and Political Economy. I. Mill's Principles of Political Economy appeared in 1848. It was a very different kind of book from the works on political economy which had been written in the years preceding. In the first place it undertook to examine the philosophical foundation of the classical political economy, particularly the status of the so-called economic laws. In the second place, as the subtitle of the work indicates, in addition to the "principles of political economy," the work includes "some of their applications to Social Philosophy." The political economists immediately preceding Mill had not thought very much about the problems involved in either of those points. They were so busy working political economy out on the model of mathematics that they did not concern themselves much either with its foundations or its social implications. Nassau Senior was typical. Gide and Rist say of him that he "removed from political economy every trace of system, every suggestion of social reform, every connection with a moral or conscious order, reducing it to a number of essential, unchangeable principles. Four propositions seemed essential for this new Euclid, all necessary corollaries being easily deducible from one or other of these. Senior's ambition was to make an exact science of it, and he deserves to be remembered as one of the founders of pure economics.” In the sense of political or social program. > Y The four principles were: The Hedonistic Principle; The Principle of Population; The Law of Increasing Return in Industry; and The Law of Diminishing Return in Agriculture.' Gide and Rist over-simplify, perhaps, but in any case it is sufficiently clear that the main interest of this group of economists was on the theoretical side. They were so deeply interested in developing their economic theory that they simply failed to see the social implications which this theory involved. John Stuart Mill, on the other hand, had had for a long time a real concern for the people at the bottom of the social heap. In the debates with the Owenites, who regarded the "political economists" as "their most inveterate enemies," he must have learned a good deal, not only about the condition of the working people, but also about what they thought of the solutions which the political economists offered for their troubles. He was much impressed by the report of the Poor Law Commissioners in 1833, the condition of the agricultural workers, and the lot of the Irish peasants. In addition to a real interest in economic theory for its own sake he wanted to make it an instrument for bettering these conditions. 2 A particular fallacy into which the doctrines of the older political economists led them was the belief that their so-called "economic laws" were laws of nature. Ruthless profiteering and the oppression of laboring people were defended as necessary results of the “natural law" of competition. Clearly if these were "laws" that could not be modified, the plight of the common people was sad indeed. Economics might well be called the dismal science. But Mill saw that there was more to be said on this matter and that there was need for a closer analysis of the relation between "economic laws" and "natural law." His solution of this problem, which is linked up with the whole of his philosophy of nature and 1 1 Gide and Rist, History of Economic Doctrines, p. 350. of the laws of nature, is of fundamental importance for the understanding of his political economy. In the Essay on Nature he says: "Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes which produce them, including not only all that happens, but all that is capable of happening." But he goes on to say this definition "corresponds only to one of the senses of this ambiguous term." It conflicts, for instance, with the common use of nature as opposed to art, and natural as opposed to artificial. Art, in this sense, is but a part of nature in its proper sense. "Art is but the employment of the powers of nature for an end." In all "artificial operations," man's part is a "very limited one; it consists in moving things into certain places. We move objects and, by doing this, bring some things into contact which were separate, or separate others which were in contact; and by this simple change of place, natural forces previously dormant are called into action, and produce the desired effect." The injunction to "follow nature," if it means anything, means simply to study nature and make use of the laws of nature: "Though we cannot emancipate ourselves from the laws of nature as a whole, we can escape from any particular law of nature, if we are able to withdraw ourselves from the circumstances in which it acts. Though we can do nothing except through laws of nature, we can use one law to counteract another. According to Bacon's maxim, we can obey nature in such a manner as to command it. Every alteration of circumstances alters more or less the laws of nature under which we act; and by every choice which we make either of ends or of means, we place ourselves to a greater or less extent under one set of laws of nature instead of another." This passage throws light on the distinction in the Politi 'Three Essays on Religion, p. 5. cal Economy between production, a matter of natural laws, and distribution, which "depends on the laws and customs of society."' In his Autobiography, in the passage in which he tells of the influence of Mrs. Mill, Mill speaks of what he considers the greatest contribution of the Political Economy. He says that it lies in "making the proper distinction between the laws of the Production of Wealth, which are real laws of nature, dependent on the properties of objects, and the modes of its Distribution, which, subject to certain conditions, depend on human will. The common run of political economists confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort; ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely co-extensive with these." This was a sort of magna charta for the individual, hitherto governed inexorably by the iron law of wages, and other "laws" equally forbidding. For if the laws of distribution could be ordered by men for their own well being, there was opened up a vast region of possibilities of relief and emancipation for that miserable multitude of men and women and children who found themselves at the bottom of the pile in the economic order of those days, and who thought, if they thought at all, that immutable economic laws compelled them to stay there. This distinction at the beginning of the Principles of Economics was, for those who had eyes to see it, a ray of hope in a dark land, over which the gloom of the dismal science brooded like the smoke from the factory chimneys over the city of Manchester. And the rest of the Principles is an effort to ascertain how, men being thus free, the laws of distribution can best be ordered for the well-being of mankind. 'Political Economy, Vol. I. p. 258. |