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Rh BACON AS A PRACTICAL ADVISER

To create an ideal of life is a noble task; but to penetrate some of the perplexing realities of existence is as difficult and at least as serviceable. This Bacon does with supreme success. A lawyer, judge, and statesman, he knew the vicissitudes of life and the varieties of human character. He observed his fellow men with the eye of a genius, pondered their motives with the thoughtfulness of a student, and recorded his observations with the precision of a scientist. Time has wrought superficial changes in some of the social and political conditions he examined; but human nature and human intercourse are essentially immutable, and the impressive truth of his judgments is enduring. To this day he guides his readers in the conduct of life; and if it be too much to say that those who heed his advice will make no mistakes, it is certain that they will blunder less frequently than does the average man who knows him not.

HOW BACON TRAINS THE MIND

Bacon does more than enrich us with practical maxims applicable to particular situations; he trains us to think more wisely in the face of any and all occasions. He begins by informing, he ends by educating. His essays, valuable as discussions of special topics, are precious as exercises in a peculiar way of approaching all aspects of life. This way is one unusual and not inborn; it runs counter to the ways of the untrained mind. Just as children are apt to regard a person as either "nice" or "horrid," many of larger growth tend to look on anything as wholly good or wholly bad. Bacon methodically weighs advantages and disadvantages, and seeks to discover which predominate. In many of his essays he reasons somewhat after this manner: "This thing is good in this respect, but bad in that; it is useful to this extent, but harmful beyond; it will aid this kind of person, but will hinder that sort." For example, in describing youth and age he assigns distinct superiority to neither, but points out the special strength and the special weakness of each. Innovation, to the radical pure delight, to the conservative mere destructiveness, is to him neither the one nor the other. "Discriminate!" is his motto:


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296 things that men call by the same name are really of different values; "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." What he says about any given subject, we may forget; but by frequent recourse to him we shall form the judicious habit of mind.

HIS ESPECIAL SERVICE TO-DAY

Most of us can be judicious on a few occasions, especially on occasions in which we are not deeply interested; but to be so habitually has always been among the rarest of virtues. It probably never was more rare than in this country at this time. In approaching the intricate problems that confront us, we display boundless enthusiasm, aspiration, and self-confidence. The defects in human character, the fast-rooted evils in society, that have baffled the efforts of saints and sages from the beginning of history, we hope to dispel by the sheer energy of emotional fervor. We are too impatient to ascertain the exact facts that are to be dealt with, we heartily dislike those facts which disturb our preconceived notions; in plain words, we do not love truth and we distrust the intellect. To Bacon, the intellect was the indispensable aid to moral progress, whether of the individual or of society. He does not dry up enthusiasm, but he teaches us to make it effective by directing it into rational channels. In his day he helped to rescue science from superstition, and in our own he may save morality from sentimentalism.

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N THE history of education the seventeenth century is a period of much interest and importance. It is a time of earnest thought, of noble expression, and of zealous and faithful effort; yet throughout the century educational progress is at best sporadic. For education, it is a century of preparation. That the reformers of the period were thus pioneers whose endeavor bore, for the most part, little immediate fruit, was an almost inevitable consequence of the circumstances of their day.

Theirs was an age of reorganization in religion, in political life, and in philosophy and science. The Thirty Years' War and the Civil War in England were conflicts in which the basis of modern religious toleration was laid in suffering and desolation. In America the Colonies were begun. In England the continued struggle with the House of Stuart resulted in the assurance of political liberty, to be secured at length by an evolution without the price of blood which the Continent, and especially France, had later on to pay. On the Continent itself, despotisms, big and little, were strengthened, often to the direct detriment of education. Meanwhile modern science had its birth in the work of many a courageous intellectual adventurer, from Kepler and Galileo, astronomers, to Harvey, physiologist.

Francis Bacon was herald and journalist of that revolt against scholasticism which attacked mediæval error and superstition by the new method of observation, experiment, and inductive reasoning. With the writings of Descartes and his contemporaries began modern philosophy. In a century of such spiritual and material disturbance, what wonder that there should have been much inspiration to educational effort, with but little fixed accomplishment?

A new world of knowledge had already been partly explored; but the schoolmasters had not entered it, and it was only years


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290 afterward that science became even meagerly available for school purposes. A new method had also been discovered, a method not more important in the search for truth than in the attainment of intellectual freedom; but the schoolmasters did not know it, or thought less of intellectual freedom than of more obvious results in linguistic proficiency. A new need for universal education had begun to be foreseen; but to the schoolmasters of the seventeenth century democracy was not even a Utopian promise. Schools remained, therefore, narrow in curriculum and authoritative in method, and education the opportunity of the privileged. Writers on practical school keeping, such as John Brimsley and Charles Hoole, were more concerned over improvements in the teaching of the classics than over fundamental changes in programs of study, in the spirit of instruction and discipline, or in the extension of educational opportunity.

COMENIUS AND "THE GREAT DIDACTIC"

To dream, therefore, in that time, of an educational system, state-administered, state-supported, compulsory, and hence democratic; a system serving the varying need of all individuals, yet aiming in the education of each at a socially valuable result; a system culminating in great academies of research and experiment, with parallel graduate schools for professional training, including the training of teachers; a system, finally, in which all subjects were to be taught and learned by the mind-freeing method of science, and all schools, classes, and subjects to be ordered and managed in natural yet effective ways: this was an achievement, even among reformers. This dream and a life of effort to realize it must be credited to the greatest educator of the century, who was neither John Locke nor John Milton, but the Moravian bishop, John Amos Comenius.

SCOPE OF THE TREATISES OF LOCKE AND MILTON

It cannot be denied that neither Locke's "Thoughts on Education" nor Milton's "Tractate on Education" is a document of such historical importance as the chief work of Comenius, "


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Rh ." Indeed we might well wish that both Locke and Milton had studied this treatise and had written in the light of it. Their minds, better trained, both of them, than that of the Moravian, and more highly endowed by nature, might have given more permanently profitable form to his far-reaching projects. At it is, Locke does not refer to Comenius's work at all, and Milton refers to it only slightingly, as by hearsay. Accordingly, although we have in the "Thoughts" an essay on the education of a gentleman's son at home, with the improvements on current practice suggested by the sound sense of one of the first modern psychologists and one of the most clear-headed of moral philosophers, and in the "Tractate" a scheme for the education of the better classes under requirements suggested by the vigorous mentality of a great poet and an ardent patriot, we can find in neither much sympathy with the new movement for science nor any forecast of democracy in and through education.

Yet these works of Locke and Milton are still readable and profitable English essays, whereas the "Didactica Magna" (which was first written in Czech and later translated by its author into Latin) is now to be remembered chiefly as an important document in the history of education.

The power of Milton's prose, his generous vision, and his place in English literature and English history lend an interest to the "Tractate" aside from any present pertinence in Milton's practical suggestions. Locke's place in English philosophy and the insight and consistency of his views, especially as to the government of children in the home, give to the "Thoughts" a permanent value. If we read Milton's essay for the vigor and dignity of its style and for its general inspiration, admitting the present inapplicability of most of its detailed proposals, it will well repay us. If we take into account the avowed limitation of scope in Locke's treatise and make due allowance for the conditions of life and schooling in his day, we may still find his advice worthy of careful study.

MILTON ON AIM AND METHOD IN EDUCATION

The aim of education set forth in the "Tractate" is majestic: "I call therefore a compleat and generous Education that which fits a


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300 man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and publick, of Peace and War." It is plain that the complexity of modern life makes it hopeless for any individual now to realize this ideal. But it may be noted that Milton's conception of education agrees with the modern conception in that it is social. The individual is to be prepared for the duties of life, not cultivated merely for the possession of accomplishments or learning. Indeed the burden of the "Tractate" is that learning is to be put to use. Milton insists, therefore, that the first principle of that "better education in extent and comprehension far more large" for which he pleads, shall be emphasis on matter rather than on form. Education is to be primarily through literature and is to begin with Latin grammar—to this extent is Milton conventional; but it is to come rapidly to the place where the content and meaning of the books to be studied—"the substance of good things"—shall be chiefly the aim in view. This advice is as sound to-day as it ever was; and if it is less needed, it is still not without application. Abstractions and technicalities of form so easily encumber teaching that we may hardly expect ever to outgrow the warning not to give our pupils "ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge."

If, then, Milton's scheme of national academies wherein picked youths are to be brought to a mastery of every art, science, and profession be impracticable, we need not therefore fail to find in this brief but pithy essay an ideal to be cherished. It is a plea for sound learning. Learning to-day may be had from sources unknown to Milton, and many sources he esteemed highly are to-day quite unimportant; but sound learning, now as then, is learning which comes at the realities of life. The author of "Lycidas" and "Comus" can never be accused of forgetting the requirements of form. We may heed him the more, therefore, when he warns us against "intellective abstractions" for "young unmatriculated Novices" and the learning of "meer words or such things chiefly, as were better unlearnt." Happily it is one effort of modern education, from the first teaching of reading and arithmetic to the highest studies of the university, to make learning serve life and to make life illuminate learning.


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Rh LOCKE ON THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN

In Locke's "Thoughts" we have no such comprehensive scheme as is presented in the "Tractate." At another time Locke sketched in outline a national system of education; here he deals only with the home training of a gentleman's son. He scorns the schools of the day, and urges great care in the selection of a tutor. Since Locke's time schools have so improved that he might now revise his opinion on this point, as he might on others; for it must be confessed that Locke was not in the modern sense a student of child psychology, nor of mental and physical development in general. Thus his advice on the feeding of children, the general tenor of which is good, could hardly be followed with safety in detail. But for us the chief interest of Locke's essay is in his conception of the moral discipline of children by their parents and teachers; and since he was a man of keen observation, wide experience, clear principles, and much human sympathy, his remarks on this subject are worth careful study.

The gist of his counsel may be put thus: abandon the rod, except as a last resort; abandon scolding, threats, rules, rewards, arguments, and persuasion; train to right thinking and right action through the use of approval and affection, with all their normal accompaniment of benefits, when children behave properly, and of disapproval and coldness, with their natural consequences in the withdrawal of pleasures and companionship, when children misbehave. But above all, use this moral discipline morally—that is, with direct reference to your child's motives, to his will in the matter, not with reference merely to the outward effect of his actions. Locke urges, in reality, a steady, consistent, sympathetic, yet dispassionate moral pressure as the surest means of bringing children to good conduct. He would have them learn "to love what they ought to love and hate what they ought to hate" as a matter first of habit, to be approved by reason only as they mature: but from the beginning he would have children act not in mere conformity to external requirements, but with a willing adoption of standards always clearly revealed and, as time goes on, properly explained. He would use authority as a moral agent to induce purpose.


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302 There is wisdom in Locke's words. Even under more modern conceptions of child nature, parents can hardly find general principles better than those he gives for guidance in the concrete exigencies of moral training in the home. All moral training is difficult, because it demands character and judgment: it is truly as much a "training of parents" as of children. But although there is much to be learned from modern writing on many an aspect of child life of which John Locke was wholly ignorant, he put in his way certain essential truths which have often been put since in different terms but to the same effect.

As to learning, Locke agrees with the fundamental point in Milton's "Tractate." In Latin, he decries overemphasis on grammar and would substitute for it extended reading. He would also combine with literary study a training in handicraft, which parallels Milton's scheme of learning from workers in the various fields of practical activity. But the contrast between Locke's point of view, which is individualistic, and Milton's, which is national, is brought out by the fact that Milton would have practical men teach his young academicians with a view to the serious use of their knowledge and skill in public affairs, whereas Locke looks upon a handicraft chiefly as a good gentlemanly avocation.

On one point Locke has been generally misinterpreted. He has been held to be a typical advocate of the "doctrine of formal discipline"—the doctrine which asserts that studies are to be chosen not because of their objective usefulness but because of their supposed efficacy in the training of some intellectual "faculty" or in the production of an obscurely defined (and in reality wholly mythical) "general power." The passage on the training of memory, § 176, is clear proof that Locke held no such views as have been imputed to him. He did insist, to be sure, on the necessity of intellectual and moral discipline, but only on such discipline of specific habits of mind and will as is generally admitted to be possible and desirable.

These two essays were written some three hundred years ago. They reflect many customs, standards, and traditions foreign to modern thought. They name men and books most modern readers never heard of. Their authors were not even imbued with some


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Rh of the most forward-looking conceptions and ideals of their own day. But, these things admitted, we must also admit that the essays are essentially fresh and valuable still—and profit by their wisdom if we can.


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MONG the great voices that stirred England in the early years of the Victorian era, none were more eloquent than those of Newman and Carlyle—the one a suave ecclesiastic who lighted again the candles of the mediæval church; the other a volcanic Scots peasant who set the Thames on fire. We may still hear the sound of their voices, and note the vast difference in their appearance, their manner, their tone and method, their appeal to their generation. Matthew Arnold's description of Newman at Oxford remains forever in the memory:

"Who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music—subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him still, saying: 'After the fever of life, after weariness and sickness, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes and chances of this troubled, unhealthy state,—at length comes death, at length the white throne of God, at length the beatific vision.

Now the other man comes before us (noted by Caroline Fox in her journals):

"Carlyle soon appeared, and looked as if he felt a well-dressed London audience scarcely the arena for him to figure in as a popular lecturer. He is a tall, robust-looking man; rugged simplicity and indomitable strength are in his face, and such a glow of genius in it—not always smouldering there, but flashing from his beautiful gray eyes, from the remoteness of their deep setting under that massive brow. His manner is very quiet, but he speaks like one tremendously convinced of what he utters, and who had much—very much—in


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Rh him that was quite unutterable, quite unfit to be uttered to the uninitiated ear; and when the Englishman's sense of beauty or truth exhibited itself in vociferous cheers, he would impatiently, almost contemptuously, wave his hand, as if that were not the kind of homage which Truth demanded."

And this man flung forth such ringing words as: "Be no longer a Chaos but a World or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day: for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work."

NEWMAN AND THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

The careers of Newman and Carlyle were no more similar than their personalities. Newman spent his life in the heat of theological controversy. He was the leader and kindling spiritual force of the Oxford Movement, 1833–1845, often called the Tractarian Movement from "Tracts for the Times." This was a movement within the Church of England to revive the Catholic doctrines which had always been retained in the Prayer Book. These doctrines were the apostolic succession, the priesthood, the sacramental system, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Anglican Church was sadly in need of zeal. "Instead of heroic martyr Conduct," said Carlyle in 1831, "and inspired and soul-inspiring Eloquence, whereby Religion itself were brought home to our living bosoms, to live and reign there, we have 'Discourses on the Evidences,' endeavoring, with smallest result, to make it probable that such a thing as Religion exists." "Soul-inspiring eloquence" was just what Newman brought to the Movement. Sunday after Sunday, year after year, his sermons and tracts quickened the spirit of men. A mysterious veneration gathered round him. "In Oriel Lane light-hearted undergraduates would drop their voices and whisper, 'There's Newman. In his eyes the Christian Church was "the concrete representative of things invisible." The pageant of ritual was necessary to bring home the symbolism of the Church to the imagination. Dogmas, far from


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306 being barnacles on Scriptural tradition, were defenses erected by authority to preserve the spirit of primitive Christianity against barnacles. Newman had defended the Church of England as the Via Media—the middle road—between the theology of the Church of Rome and the theology of Calvinism. But he and his younger followers gradually came to believe that the weight of authority and permanence was on the side of Rome. Tract 90, on the Catholic doctrines in the Thirty-nine Articles, the bulwarks of the Protestant Church, raised a storm of opposition in that church. And finally in a dramatic scene at the Convocation of February 13, 1845, the Oxford Movement was snuffed out. Newman at once left the Via Media for the Via Appia and entered the Roman Catholic Church. Several years later, in 1864, he became involved in a controversy with Charles Kingsley, during which he wrote his religious autobiography, the "Apologia pro Vita Sua." This famous book, though it cannot be considered a convincing refutation of the charges which Kingsley brought against Rome, was a triumphant vindication of Newman's integrity and nobility of spirit.

CARLYLE AND HIS TEACHING

With Newman, Carlyle had little sympathy. "John Henry Newman," he said, "has not the intellect of an average-sized rabbit." Carlyle's own life was spent in writing the histories of great movements such as the French Revolution, and of great men such as Cromwell and Frederick the Great. He thundered forth denunciations of the evils of society. The gospel he preached was of Books, Silence, Work, and Heroes. "In Books lie the soul of the whole Past Time." "Silence is the eternal Duty of a man." "Work while it is called To-day." "Universal history is at bottom the history of the Great Men who have worked here." These doctrines you will find summed up in the Inaugural Address at Edinburgh. "Carlyle," wrote George Meredith in one of the most luminous estimates of the Sage of Chelsea, "Carlyle was one who stood constantly in the presence of those 'Eternal verities' of which he speaks.... The spirit


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Rh of the prophet was in him. … He was the greatest of the Britons of his time—and after the British fashion of not coming near perfection: Titanic, not Olympian: a heaver of rocks, not a shaper. But if he did no perfect work, he had lightning's power to strike out marvelous pictures and reach to the inmost of men with a phrase."

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

Could men so apparently antipodal as these in temperament, utterance, and life have a thought or doctrine in common? Yet it was the great paradox of the Victorian era that the heart of their mystery, the source and pivot of their teaching, was the same dominating idea. The same idea led one man to insist on the value of the oldest clothes, and led the other to insist on getting rid of them. This dominating principle was the "Doctrine of the Unconscious."

Carlyle first expounded this doctrine in his essay "Characteristics." "The truly strong mind," he says, "view it as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; here as before the sign of health is unconsciousness. In our inward, as in our outward, world what is mechanical lies open to us; not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of our thinking, we might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we shape into articulate Thoughts; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation; here, in its quiet mysterious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; here, if aught is to be created, and not merely manufactured and communicated, must the work go on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial; Creation is great, and cannot be understood." What is intuitive and spontaneous should be our guide. "The healthy understanding is not the Logical, argumentative, but The Intuitive." "The characteristic of right performance is a certain spontaneity, an unconsciousness; 'the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick. On this idea Carlyle bases his doctrines of Work and Heroes. By work the spontaneous self has a chance to reveal itself. Heroes are those Great Men who are spontaneous and sincere, those masters of their time who draw up into themselves the thoughts of masses of men.


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308 Newman's belief in the power of the unconscious was equally firm and thoroughgoing. In his sermon on "Explicit and Implicit Reason," he means by "implicit reason" "unconscious meditation." "Reasoning is a living, spontaneous energy within us, not an art." "Progress," he said later, "is a living growth, not a mechanism; and its instruments are mental acts, not the formulas and contrivances of language." "As each individual has certain instincts of right and wrong antecedently to reasoning, on which he acts—and rightly—so has the world of men collectively. God gave them truths in His miraculous revelations. … These are transmitted as the 'wisdom of our ancestors.' " It was Newman's staunch belief in what is intuitive and instinctive that made him accept the wisdom of the race as more trustworthy than the reason of the individual. Consequently he believed that Christian truth is preserved not by the reasoning of the individual but by the diversified powers, insight, and feeling which are found in a long-continuing society. For Newman, therefore, the Catholic Church was the articulate voice of the body of Christian believers in the past—"the concrete representative of things invisible."

These two great men, who did not understand each other, based their teachings on the same initial principle—the "doctrine of the unconscious." However far apart they were at the end, they insisted with graceful pleading or with tumultuous eloquence on these high moral truths: faith in what is spontaneous and sincere in one's own nature, and spontaneous and instinctive submission to those highly endowed men whose innate sincerity will redeem the world.


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UXLEY'S address on "Science and Culture" was delivered in 1880, at the opening of Mason Science College in Birmingham, England. Like many academic addresses, it not only celebrates a local event, but also deals with questions of the day, chosen to suit the occasion. Unlike most such addresses, however, it is of permanent value as a document in the history of a great epoch in English educational progress. The event which it celebrates marks "a crisis in the long battle, or rather of the long series of battles" which were fought over education during the nineteenth century; the discussion concerns two of the most significant educational reforms of that century; the speaker was a great leader in the struggle which brought those reforms to pass; the style of the address illustrates the "strenuous and attractive method of exposition" which characterizes all of Huxley's writings, and which was a powerful means of winning public support for his views.

The full significance of "Science and Culture" appears only when it is placed in its historical setting. To-day Huxley's views seem commonplace, because to-day everyone accepts them. Who, nowadays, disputes his proposition that the sciences are an essential element of modern culture? And who denies that "the diffusion of a thorough scientific education is an absolutely essential condition of industrial progress"?

In England in 1880, however, these ideas seemed shockingly radical to a very large majority of the people who were doing the thinking of the country and managing its affairs; and the advocates of scientific 309


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310 studies faced a powerful opposing party composed of two groups—the practical men of business, and the men of liberal education.

Scientific education was despised by practical business men because it seemed not only unnecessary, but actually harmful as a preparation for business. English industries had flourished amazingly without the aid of the sciences, and the captains of industry saw no reason to believe that "rule of thumb," by which they had succeeded, would not continue to suffice for their needs. They failed to see the importance of the connection between scientific education and the industries; but it was even then perceived in Germany, that "land of damned professors," with the result that Germany rose, in the next twenty-five years, from industrial insignificance to the position of England's leading industrial competitor.

A further result was a general outcry in England for the kind of training which Huxley advocated.

The entrance of the sciences into the circle of liberal studies also met powerful opposition. School and university men in general doubted, and most of them denied, that the sciences—physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and the like—were at all essential to culture. And Huxley's conviction that, "for the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effective as an exclusively literary education" was as shocking to the academic world of that day as the advent of a band of shooting cowboys would have been to an English garden party. Huxley states very fairly the working ideal of culture which was held by "the great majority of educated Englishmen" of 1880, and which had shaped the whole course of liberal education during the three centuries preceding: "In their belief," he says, "culture is obtainable only by a liberal education; and a liberal education is synonymous, not merely with education and instruction in literature, but in one particular form of literature, namely that of Greek and Roman antiquity. They hold that the man who has learned Latin and Greek, however little, is educated; while he who is versed in other branches of knowledge, however deeply, is a more or less respectable specialist, not admissible into the cultured caste. The stamp of the educated man, the


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Rh degree, is not for him." The best-trained university men undoubtedly took a more liberal attitude than this, but schoolmasters in general, and university men of mediocre quality, often maintained this position with patronizing, not to say insolent, superiority.

(3) THE THEOLOGIANS

Another group of educated men also opposed scientific studies—especially biology—on religious grounds. Since the appearance of Darwin's "Origin of Species" in 1859 there had been "endless battles and skirmishes" between scientists and theologians over the doctrine of evolution. It is almost impossible for readers of this generation to realize the bitterness of the feelings aroused over this doctrine, or the violence with which, during the sixties and early seventies, evolution and its champions were attacked. To clergy and the devout laity alike it seemed to undermine theology and to sap the very foundations of Christian belief. Scientists who defended it—Huxley chief among them—were regarded as the deadly enemies of religion, as rationalists, materialists, atheists beyond redemption. Naturally, scientific studies were opposed on the ground that they were anti-religious in their effect, the breeders of atheism, and the destroyers of faith. The stormiest period of the debate had passed by 1880, but the feelings which it aroused were still strong. And, although Huxley does not directly address these opponents in "Science and Culture," some reminiscences of the conflict may be traced in its pages.

Under these circumstances, the address was hardly the tame affair which it seems to readers of the younger generation. On the contrary, it was the challenging utterance of a champion in the warfare of science, at the crisis of the battle.

As above suggested, the two great reforms for which Huxley contended in this address, and elsewhere, were, first, the diffusion of scientific education as a benefit to industrial workers and an aid to the industries themselves; second, the revision of the program of liberal studies to include modern studies, especially the natural sciences, as well as the traditional Latin and Greek. Thus he confronted two of the three groups of opponents of scientific studies—the practical men of business, and the men of liberal culture.


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312

The first thing to note in reading the address is the skill with which Huxley meets each of these antagonists. To the practical men he appeals in a practical way. His appeal, summarized, is this: I won't try to reason you out of your opposition to scientific education. But consider what Sir Josiah Mason, the founder of this College, has done. He is a practical man like yourselves, and yet he believes in scientific education enough to spend a great part of his fortune in providing it for young men and women who are to enter the industries of Birmingham. No one is better qualified to judge than he. This College is his practical answer to your practical objections. I can say nothing which will add to its force. Toward the close of the address Huxley returns to the charge with evidence that the general sciences are of practical value to the industries, and with the further remark that considered as culture alone they are of practical value, for they both ennoble character and increase and improve in quality the variety of desires which are satisfied by the products of industry.

HIS APPEAL TO THE UNIVERSITY MEN

Huxley's method of dealing with the second group of antagonists is very different from this. Here his appeal is to reason. He begins with a definition of culture which hardly anyone could refuse to accept. Next, he points out that the real matter on which they disagreed is the answer to the question, How is culture to be obtained? Why do we differ so sharply on this matter? he asks. History tells us why. The studies which have been supposed to give culture have changed from age to age. In the Middle Ages theology was the sole basis of culture, because it furnished the best ideals and standards then available for the criticism of life. In the fifteenth century the great body of classical literature was revealed to western Europe. This in turn became the basis of culture, displacing theology, because in many ways it furnished better ideals and standards—especially in literature, sculpture, and above all in the use of reason. But since the fifteenth century vast new sources of culture have developed—the modern literatures, modern music, modern painting,


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Rh and above all the great structure of modern science, which gives us ideals and standards of judgment drawn from a new field, the book of Nature herself. The reason why we differ is clear. You still live in the views of the fifteenth century, and you take no account of the vast changes in our knowledge since that time. But if culture is to be an effective criticism of modern life—as we agree—is it not clear that the ideals and standards given by these new fields of learning must form a part of any scheme of complete culture? Thus by clear definition, and by reasoning based on the historic facts, Huxley drives home his conclusion with telling power.

HIS STYLE AND PERSONALITY

The style of the address deserves notice. It is characteristic of all Huxley's writings. Perfect clearness and simplicity are its most obvious qualities. So clear and simple is it, indeed, that one constantly forgets that the printed page is before one. One seems to be looking directly at the thought expressed rather than at the words themselves, just as one looks through a clear window at a landscape. At the same time, the style is never dry. The "bottled life" which, according to a reviewer, Huxley always "infused into the driest topic on which human beings ever contrived to prose," is evident here as in all his writings. Forcible and interesting, as he always is, Huxley also makes this address pungent by picturesque phrases and keen thrusts at his antagonists.

A last word must be given to Huxley as a man. He was one of the most distinguished and striking personalities of his day in England. Hardly any character will better repay study. Let the reader turn to his "Collected Essays," and especially to the two volumes of his "Life and Letters," edited by his son. There he will find a portrait, sharply drawn. It is the portrait of a passionate seeker of truth, fearless in its defense against all odds, and at any cost to himself—a man ruggedly honest and straightforward, big of mind, broad of vision, the soul of simplicity, sincerity, and honor.


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 218 to its members, I felt it was right, a feeling shared by the Director of the Society and by the Editor of, that these should have the opportunity of seeing what I had to say in my defence.

I may be permitted to add a few general considerations upon the criticism of the Grail romances. No theory concerning the origin and signification of the legend can be acceptable which does not explain the relation to one another of the various romances, which does not account in a fairly intelligible manner for the development of the ideas and incidents contained in them. Nothing is easier than to pick out, as Dr. Gaster has done, this or that feature in this immense body of romance, to adduce parallels to it, and to fancy the problem solved; nothing harder than to fit all the features of all the versions into an orderly scheme of development.

At the same time no theory can, I think, be successful which makes any one existing version the fons et origo of the whole cycle. Even if we had not positive statements, which there is no reason to disbelieve, we should be compelled to assume an earlier written stage than any we now possess. Behind this written stage we discern an oral stage in which the incidents of the legend were singularly vague and formless, but in which they still hung together. I conjectured that they did this because they came to the French wandering minstrels or story tellers, to whom the first spread of the legend in France was due, mainly from one source and connected with one group of personages. The facts that the majority of these personages bear Celtic names, some perfectly recognisable, others greatly disfigured, and that the scene of their exploits is, in the main, lands dwelt in by Celtic-speaking populations, seemed to me to warrant the conclusion that the traditions underlying the romance came to the French from Celts (whether Bretons or Welshmen is indifferent), and were essentially Celtic, i.e., had passed through the mind of Celts (whether


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 Rh mediæval romance need no assurance that not a writer of the period ever acted as Dr. Gaster postulates half-a-dozen having acted.

Is there, then, nothing at all in the series of parallels brought forward by Dr. Gaster? Just this much. One version of the Grail quest, that of Wolfram von Eschenbach, does undoubtedly show traces of Oriental influence, as he himself states. Whether these are due to Wolfram himself or to the French model he followed it is impossible to say. The nature and origin of the Oriental traits in Wolfram are well worth discussing, and Dr. Gaster has brought together some valuable illustrative material. But it must be clearly understood that light is thus thrown, not upon the origin of the Grail legend, not upon the nature of the Grail, but simply and solely upon the special secondary form of the legend found in Wolfram.

I have thought it best to deal at once with the only solid portion of Dr. Gaster's argument, and to show how baseless it is. Because I say nothing of the other points which he adduces, I would not have it thought that I have no objections to urge against them. As a matter of fact I do not think there is a single definite conclusion of his concerning the Grail legends to which I do not take exception, not one which I could not, if space were allowed me, show to be improbable if not impossible.

At the end of this number of will be found the reprint of an article which appeared in the last number of the Revue Celtique, to the courtesy of whose director. Monsieur H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, I am indebted for its appearance here. In it I defend myself against the strictures passed upon my "Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail" by three eminent German scholars. As the Folk-lore Society did me the honour of issuing my work


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HE term Economics, as originally used by the Greeks, meant the art of household management, or the principles which govern the wise management of the household. Xenophon's treatise on this subject is a description of the management of a simple agricultural household where problems of revenue and expenditure, of business and home life, are not very sharply separated. In modern times, particularly in urban life, the business, or the source of income, is so sharply separated from the home, where the income is utilized, that we now have two distinct branches of the subject instead of one. To one branch we now give the name business economics, business management, or business administration. The other is known by such names as home economics, household economics, household


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Rh management, domestic science, etc. That these two branches are now so sharply separated as to seem unrelated is a commentary on how far we have departed from the simple conditions of the self-sufficing rural household, and how thoroughly we have divorced business from life.

Xenophon also wrote a treatise on the Revenues of Athens. While this cannot be regarded as a general treatise on public finance, it serves at least to show that he had some interest in that field, which may not inaptly be called public housekeeping. Every government, considered as a corporate body, has needs of its own apart from those of the people whom it governs. Whether it be a city, a state, or a smaller governing unit, it must solve the problems of revenue and expenditure just as a private household. Later writers applied the term economics mainly to this group of problems to which we now apply the name public finance, rather than to that group which in the diagram above are included under Private Economics. In a monarchy the providing of revenues for the king's household, and the expenditure of those revenues in the support of the household, may approximate very closely to the character of private economics, as when the chief source of revenue is the royal demesne, or to public economics when the chief source of revenue is taxation, and the king is regarded merely as a public official to be supported as other public officials are.

EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS

In the mediæval and early modern period, the chief interest in economics had shifted from the private to the public aspects of the science, but was still centered mainly in problems of public revenue and expenditure, or, as we should now say, public finance. The chief students in this field were the finance ministers, who were charged with the office of raising revenue for the royal household and the enterprises both constructive and military of the king. It was soon apparent that the amount of royal revenue was strictly limited by the wealth of the people. If larger revenues were needed, the people must be made more prosperous in order that they might pay heavier taxes. From that time forward students gave increasing attention to the problems of national prosperity, until, at the present time,


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 216 realise in what way the author of x went to work. Having before him the French romance of Aubry, he picked out a particular episode upon which absolutely no stress whatever is laid, which is but one of twenty or thirty other episodes, all possessing equal interest of conception and detail; he carefully eliminated all traces of the original personages and locale, he then modified every detail, and finally worked it into the Arthurian cycle. As Aubry's 100 lines did not give him enough matter, this 12th century writer went back to Julius Valerius and to Pseudo-Callisthenes, and spiced his narrative with a miscellaneous assortment of features, selected now from one now from the other. But even then he was not content, but went on a roving expedition through the Talmudic and Midrashic literature of the day, culling what he thought would fit in with his plan. All this while, with the severest self-denial, he rejected the many marvellous episodes which must have come before him in the course of his reading, and scrupulously refrained from retaining anything that could betray the Eastern origin of his narrative.

The assumption of x is a sufficient tax upon our credulity, but nothing to what is involved in the after development of the legend according to Dr. Gaster's theory. The legend writers fall into two classes: (i) the oldest of them all, Chrestien; (2) all the later writers. But these latter contain a host of details not to be found in Chrestien, argal they must have been present in x, for I do not suppose that Dr. Gaster imagines there was a bevy of writers at the close of the 12th century capable of harmonising Pseudo-Callisthenes and the Talmud. Now, how did these later writers act? They would seem to have gone upon the principle—when in doubt, consult x. For while in the main their presentment of the legend is that of Chrestien, each writer picked out some special feature of x which took his fancy, and added it to Chrestien's account.

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316 that is the primary object of interest, problems of public revenue and expenditure being strictly subordinated. That is to say, instead of trying to promote national prosperity in order that there may be more taxes and other forms of public revenue, the modern policy is to promote general prosperity for its own sake, and to raise revenue for the government only when, and to the extent that, it is necessary to do so in order to promote the general welfare.

MERCANTILISTS AND PHYSIOCRATS

Even when students began to focus their attention upon general economic prosperity, it took them some time to develop a really broad view of that problem. One school, known as the mercantilists, emphasized commerce, particularly foreign commerce, to such an extent as to make it seem that they identified prosperity with foreign trade. Writers of this school, for example, were accustomed to point out that an abundant supply of cheap labor was one factor in the development of foreign trade, because with cheap labor the country could compete with rival nations in international trade. This was obviously not intended to promote the prosperity of the laborers who were to supply the cheap labor. Another school, the physiocrats, emphasized the importance of agriculture as the industry which really produced a surplus over and above the cost of production.

Both these schools made the mistake of assuming an analogy between public prosperity and private prosperity. A private business which sells more than it buys, or takes in more money than it pays out, is said to be prosperous. The mercantile school assumed the same to be true of the nation at large, overlooking the fact that in the nation at large what is profit to one man may be cost to some one else, as in the case of the merchants who exported goods at a profit because they paid the laborers so little for their work. Again, a private business may be said to be prosperous when its products are greater than its costs. In agriculture there is the rent of land, which is not, strictly speaking, a cost, but a surplus income to the owner. This surplus income is the surplus value of the produce over and above the cost of producing it. Since very little rent was produced by the handicraft manufacturers of the day, the physiocrats assumed that these were not very profitable industries for the country at large,


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Rh but that its main prosperity came from agriculture, where the main surplus, namely rent, accrued. Like the mercantilists, they overlooked the fact that this surplus might be the result, in part at least, of the poverty of the farm laborers. With a given efficiency, the cheaper they would work the lower the cost of growing crops and the higher the rent of the land.

It was not until Adam Smith's epoch-making work, the "Wealth of Nations," was given to the world that students began to take a really broad and comprehensive view of the problems of national welfare. Different students naturally have different special interests, but they generally realize the bearing of their specialties upon the larger problem. It has seemed at times that too many were focusing their attention upon production or exchange, and too few upon problems of distribution. For the last twenty-five years the problem of distribution has attracted more attention than all the others; but now the idea is beginning to dawn that consumption is the most important field of all, though it has been receiving the least attention of any.

THE MEANING OF WEALTH

Now that economics is definitely focusing attention upon problems of national prosperity, it is important that the student should understand clearly the leading concepts of the science before proceeding to study its literature. The leading concept is that of wealth, but this is a term with two distinct but closely related meanings. In the first place, it is the name of a condition of well-being, in which sense it is not very different from the Saxon term weal, from which it is descended. In the second and more usual sense, wealth is the collective name for a category of goods. Goods are the means of satisfying desires, but not all goods are wealth. Only those goods are wealth upon which the satisfaction of desires depends in a very special and practical sense. People desire air, sunlight, and a number of other things which do not constitute wealth. But if they not only desire a thing, but desire more than they have, or more than there is to be had at once, then that thing is wealth. Their state of satisfaction is definitely affected by the question of more or less of this


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318 thing. More of it, more satisfaction; less of it, less satisfaction. Though we could not live at all without air, yet we do not ordinarily desire more than we have. There is enough to go around and satisfy everybody. We should not notice the difference if there were a little less. If special conditions should arise in any time and place where there was not enough air for everybody, so that people should desire more than they had, air would then and there be wealth.

Wealth may also be defined, tentatively, as the name of those goods upon which weal or well-being depends, in this immediate and practical sense. If our weal is increased by having more of a certain class of things, and decreased by having less of them, those things therefore constitute wealth. They become the objects of conscious and active human desire and therefore of conscious and active human endeavor. More bread, more weal; less bread, less weal. Because we can say that, bread is wealth. Broadly speaking, everything to which we can apply that formula in any time and place is then and there wealth. Nothing is wealth which cannot be brought under that formula.

This statement calls for one qualification, namely, that men may not know upon what their weal or well-being depends. That upon which they think that their well-being depends they will regard as wealth. In other words, if they desire a thing, and desire more of it than they have, that indicates that they think their weal, or state of satisfaction, would be increased by having more of it. The fact that they want more, and try to get it, either by producing or purchasing it, indicates that they regard it as wealth, or as the means to well-being. Therefore it sometimes happens that the student is compelled to include some things under wealth which he regards as not only useless but deleterious and immoral—the means of satisfying vicious appetites, such as opium, tobacco, and alcohol. If one were to make much of this qualification, he would probably choose to divorce the word wealth from well-being, and define it as scarce means of satisfying desires.

Any of these definitions will be found to harmonize perfectly with another that has had some currency, namely, that wealth is the collective name for all goods which have value or power in exchange; for only those things which are desirable and scarce will have power


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Rh in exchange, or value. In fact they are evaluated, bought and sold, solely because they are scarce and some one wants more than he has.

THE MEANING OF ECONOMY

The idea of scarcity as an essential to the concept of wealth suggests, next, the meaning of economy, which is another fundamental concept of the science of economics. Economy suggests the adjusting of means to ends, making a little go a long way, or, in the last analysis, choosing among one's desires and sacrificing the less important in order that the more important may be satisfied. This choice is forced upon us by the fact of scarcity, without which such choosing would be unnecessary, since we could, if everything were sufficiently abundant, satisfy all our desires without sacrificing any. It is in the utilization of those things which are scarce that economy is called for. These things which, being scarce, need to be economized in the interest of the largest satisfaction or well-being constitute economic goods, for which wealth is only another name. These are the things which have to be appraised, evaluated, and compared with one another with respect to their utility, in order that the limited supplies may be meted out and made to go as far as possible in the satisfaction of human desires, and in order that they may satisfy the greater rather than the lesser desires.

The economizing of scarce goods cannot be dissociated from such outstanding facts as production and exchange. The things toward which we must practice economy come to be esteemed or evaluated in a very direct and practical sense which is not true of anything else. When we desire a thing and desire more than we have, we not only try to get more, either by purchase or by production, but the more intensely we desire more of it the more we will give in exchange for a given unit of it, or the harder we will try to produce more of it. This process of evaluation gives such a thing power in exchange in proportion to its scarcity, or rather in proportion to the intensity of our desire for more. It also determines the direction in which the productive energies of society will be turned. Whether a given individual himself desires more of a thing or not, if there is somewhere in the community such a desire for more as will give the thing a high power in exchange, or a high value, that value will


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320 serve as effectively to induce the individual to produce it as though he desired the thing itself.

THE LAW OF VARIABLE PROPORTIONS

The process of production, in turn, calls for a new exercise of economy, because the means of production are scarce in some cases and abundant in others. In the last analysis, all industry consists in moving materials from one place to another. That is all that the moving-picture machine, or the human eye as a mechanical device, would reveal. But the mind sees plans, purposes, and laws back of this process of moving materials. One of the great generalizations of the scientific observer is that all this moving of materials is for the purpose of getting things together in the right proportions. Of course there are purposes back of all this, but the observed fact is that every industrial purpose is carried out by getting materials together in the right proportion. All this moving of materials which the eye sees is dominated by the law of proportionality, and the skill of the producer consists first in knowing the right proportions in which to combine materials, and, second, in his ability to bring them together.

This applies everywhere from a chemical experiment to the irrigation of a desert, from the work of the artist in his studio to that of the farmer in his field. The chemist, however, works under a law of definite proportions, under which chemical elements have to be combined in exact mathematical ratios, whereas the greater part of the work of production is under the law of variable proportions. In the irrigation of a piece of land, for example, there are variable quantities of water which may be used in the growing of a crop. One cannot say that an exact quantity of water must be applied, otherwise there will be no crop at all, or that the slightest variation either way would utterly ruin the crop. Within fairly wide limits of moisture a crop can be grown, though within these limits the crop will vary somewhat—but not exactly—according to the quantity of moisture provided.

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Rh varies; but the product will seldom vary in exact proportion as any single factor is varied. Adding one-tenth to the quantity of moisture in the soil will seldom, and only accidentally, result in the increase of exactly one-tenth to the crop. The same may be said with respect to fertilizer, or to any single element of fertility, with respect to the labor of cultivation, or with respect to any other single factor which enters into the determination of the size of a crop. Moreover, all this can be repeated with respect to any productive plant, say a factory, and of the factors of production which have to be combined in it.

The work of assembling the factors of production in any productive establishment, whether it be a shop, farm, factory, or transportation system, calls for a degree of knowledge and care comparable with that of the chemist in the assembling of chemical elements, though, as stated before, the chemist must follow definite formulae with mathematical precision, because of the law of definite proportions.

This law of variable proportions is difficult to state concisely, but the following formulae may serve to give a fairly accurate notion as to its meaning and import. Let us assume that three factors, x, y, and z, are necessary to get a certain desirable product, which we will call p.

If it should be found by experiment that the addition of one unit of x resulted in (1) more than 110 p, or (2) 110 p, that would indicate that the proportion of x to the other factors y and z was too low. Since an additional unit of x will result in such a large increase in the product, it is evident that more of x will be strongly desired, as compared with more of y and z, for if there is too little of x in the combination there must be too much of y and z. If, however, it were found that the addition of one unit of x resulted in (4) 100 p—that is, no increase at all—or (5) in less than 100 p—that is, less


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322 than was produced before—it is obvious that the proportion of x to the other factors is too high. Consequently, more of x will be little desired as compared with y and z, because if there is too much of x in the combination there must be too little of y and z. But if the increase in x results in an increase of five units of product proportional increase, in the product, then the factors are nearing the right proportions. Whether it is better to increase x by one unit will then depend upon the cost of x and the value of the increased product. Let us suppose that the increase in x results in an increase of five units of product (105 p). If one unit of x cost less than five units of p, it will be profitable to increase the factor x from 10 to 11; otherwise it will not.

Of course the formula and all that comes after it could be repeated with respect to y or z, as well as of x, if either were regarded as the variable factor. x, y, and z may represent labor, land, and capital in industry in general; they may represent different grades of labor in any industry; they may represent nitrogen, potash, and phosphorus in the soil; or they may represent any group of factors anywhere combined to get any product. The essential thing to remember is that in any combination the scarcest factor is the limiting factor, and the product will vary more directly with that than with any other. Since the variation in the product follows more sharply the variation in this scarce factor than that of any of the more abundant factors in the combination, it is not uncommon to speak of the scarcest factor as having the highest productivity. Whether that be an accurate use of terms or not, there is not the slightest doubt that it will be most highly prized, will command the highest price, and will need to be economized most carefully. This formula and the remarks under it will serve to bring out the underlying physical fact of productivity upon which the law of supply and demand is based.

THE CONFLICT OF INTERESTS BETWEEN MAN AND MAN

That utility and scarcity, and these alone, are the factors which give value to a thing, whether its utility consists in its power to satisfy wants directly or indirectly, that is, whether it be an article of consumption or a factor of production, is now perhaps sufficiently


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Rh clear. That the factor of scarcity creates the necessity for economy is also fairly obvious. That it is the source also of the conflict of human interests out of which most of our moral and social problems grow may not be quite so obvious, but the following considerations will show it to be true. The fact of scarcity means that man has wants for which nature does not spontaneously provide. This in turn implies a lack of harmony between man and nature, which it is the purpose of productive industry to restore.

That phase of the disharmony between man and nature which takes the form of scarcity gives rise also to a disharmony between man and man. Where there is scarcity there will be two men wanting the same thing; and where two men want the same thing there is an antagonism of interests. Where there is an antagonism of interests between man and man, there will be questions to be settled, questions of right and wrong, of justice and injustice; and these questions could not arise under any other condition. The antagonism of interests is, in other words, what gives rise to a moral problem, and it is, therefore, about the most fundamental fact in sociology and moral philosophy.

This does not overlook the fact that there are many harmonies between man and man, as there are between man and nature. There may be innumerable cases where all human interests harmonize, but these give rise to no problem and therefore we do not need to concern ourselves with them. As already pointed out, there are many cases where man and nature are in complete harmony. There are things, for example, which nature furnishes in sufficient abundance to satisfy all our wants, but these also give rise to no problem. Toward these non-economic goods our habitual attitude is one of indifference or unconcern. Where the relations between man and nature are perfect, why should we concern ourselves about them? But the whole industrial world is bent on improving those relations where they are imperfect. Similarly with the relations between man and man; where they are perfect, that is, where interests are all harmonious, why should we concern ourselves about them? As a matter of fact we do not. But where they are imperfect, where


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 Rh Dr. Gaster, the passages he has quoted form a part, a statement for which there is absolutely no foundation whatever. This is an addition, probably of Jewish origin, to the account given by the Greek and Latin writers, and, according to M. Paul Meyer (Alexandre le Grand, ii, 49), may be ascribed to the first half of the 12th century. It has been edited in Latin by Zacher in 1859, and in French by M. Paul Meyer (Romania, xi, pp. 228-241), and is in Lamprecht's German version of Aubry (verses 6438 ad finem). The contents are briefly as follows: Alexander having conquered the known world, full of presumption, sets forth to exact tribute from Paradise. He embarks on the Ganges, and after a month's journey comes to a walled city; one of the inhabitants hands the king a jewel in the form of a human eye, and bids him begone. The stone is of this nature which none but an aged Jew can explain; it outweighs any amount of gold, but is itself outweighed by a handful of dust; it is a symbol of human desire which no gold can satisfy, but which at last must be content with a little earth. Alexander humbles himself, repents, and in due course dies an edifying death.

It will be admitted, I think, that it would be difficult to pick out two legends which have less fundamental kinship or less similarity in detail than the story of Alexander's fruitless attempt on Paradise, and the story of Percival's or Gawain's visit to the Grail castle.

The reader has now before him the facts necessary for the appreciation of Dr. Caster's hypothesis; but even if these testified in its favour, I fail to see how any theory of development could be based upon them. We must assume, in fairness to Dr. Gaster, a stage intermediate between the Alexander romances and Chrestien, the oldest of the Grail legend writers. Let us call this stage x, and try and


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324 are antagonistic and trouble is constantly arising, we are compelled to concern ourselves whether we want to or not. As a matter of fact, we do concern ourselves in various ways; we work out systems of moral philosophy and theories of justice, after much disputation; we establish tribunals where, in the midst of much wrangling, some of these theories are applied to the settlement of actual conflicts; we talk and argue interminably about the proper adjustment of antagonistic interests of various kinds, all of which, it must be remembered, grow out of the initial fact of scarcity—that there are not as many things as people want.

That underneath all these disharmonies there is a deep underlying harmony of human interests is the profound belief of some. But this belief, like that in a harmony between man and nature, is not susceptible of a positive proof. It rests upon philosophical conjecture—and faith. To be sure, it is undoubtedly true that most men, even the strongest, are better off in the long run under a just government, where all their conflicts are accurately and wisely adjudicated, than they would be in a state of anarchy, where everyone who was able did what he pleased, or what he could if he was not able to do what he pleased. This might possibly be construed to imply a harmony of interests, in that all alike, the strong as well as the weak, are interested in maintaining a just government. But the argument is violently paradoxical, because it literally means that interests are so very antagonistic that in the absence of a government to hold them in check there would be such a multiplicity of conflicts, wasting the energies of society, that in the end everybody would suffer, even the strongest. This is an excellent argument in favor of the necessity of government, but it is the poorest kind of an argument in favor of the universal harmony of human interests.

Fundamentally, therefore, there are only two practical problems imposed upon us. The one is industrial and the other moral; the one has to do with the improvement of the relations between man and nature, and the other with the improvement of the relations between man and man. But these two primary problems are so inextricably intermingled, and they deal with such infinitely varying factors, that the secondary and tertiary problems are more than we can count.


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Rh THE CONFLICT OF MAN WITH NATURE

But whence arises that phase of the conflict with nature out of which grows the conflict between man and man? Is man in any way responsible for it, or is it due wholly to the harshness or the niggardliness of nature? The fruitfulness of nature varies, of course, in different environments. But in any environment there are two conditions, for both of which man is in a measure responsible, and either of which will result in economic scarcity. One is the indefinite expansion of human wants, and the other is the multiplication of numbers.

The well-known expansive power of human wants, continually running beyond the power of nature to satisfy, has attracted the attention of moralists in all times and places. "When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?" is the point of view of The Preacher. It was the same aspect of life, obviously throwing man out of harmony with nature, which gave point to the Stoic's principle of "living according to nature." To live according to nature would necessarily mean, among other things, to keep desires within such limits as nature could supply without too much coercion. Seeing that the best things in life cost nothing, and that the most ephemeral pleasures are the most expensive, there would appear to be much economic wisdom in the Stoic philosophy. But the pious Buddhist in his quest of Nirvana, overlooking the real point—that the expansion of wants beyond nature's power to satisfy is what throws man inevitably out of harmony with nature and produces soul-killing conflicts—sees in desire itself the source of evil, and seeks release in the eradication of all desire.

Out of the view that the conflict of man with nature is a source of evil grow two widely different practical conclusions as to social conduct. If we assume that nature is beneficent and man at fault, the conclusion follows as a matter of course that desires must be curbed and brought into harmony with nature, which is closely akin to Stoicism, if it be not its very essence. But if, on the contrary,


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326 we assume that human nature is sound, then the only practical conclusion is that external nature must be coerced into harmony with man's desires and made to yield more and more for their satisfaction. This is the theory of the modern industrial spirit in its wild pursuit of wealth and luxury.

Even if the wants of the individual never expanded at all, it is quite obvious that an indefinite increase in the number of individuals in any locality would, sooner or later, result in scarcity and bring them into conflict with nature, and therefore into conflict with one another. That human populations are physiologically capable of indefinite increase, if time be allowed, is admitted, and must be admitted by anyone who has given the slightest attention to the subject. Among the non-economizing animals and plants, it is not the limits of their procreative power but the limits of subsistence which determine their numbers. Neither is it lack of procreative power which limits numbers in the case of man, the economic animal. With him also it is a question of subsistence, but of subsistence according to some standard. Being gifted with economic foresight, he will not multiply beyond the point where he can maintain that standard of life which he considers decent. But—and this is to be especially noted—so powerful are his procreative and domestic instincts that he will multiply up to the point where it is difficult to maintain whatever standard he has. Whether his standard of living be high or low to begin with, the multiplication of numbers will be carried to the point where he is in danger of being forced down to a lower standard. In other words, it will always be hard for us to make as good a living as we think we ought to have. Unsatisfied desires, or economic scarcity, which means the same thing, are therefore inevitable. It is a condition from which there is no possible escape. The cause lies deeper than forms of social organization: it grows out of the relation of man and nature.

THE INTERNAL CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

These considerations reveal a third form of conflict—perhaps it ought to be called the second—a conflict of interests within the individual himself. If the procreative and domestic instincts are freely gratified, there will inevitably result a scarcity of means of


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Rh satisfying other desires, however modest those desires may be, through the multiplication of numbers. If an abundance of these things is to be assured, those instincts must be only partially satisfied. Either horn of the dilemma leaves us with unsatisfied desires of one kind or another. We are therefore pulled in two directions, and this also is a condition from which there is no possible escape. But this is only one illustration of the internal strife which tears the individual. The very fact of scarcity means necessarily that if one desire is satisfied it is at the expense of some other. What I spend for luxuries I cannot spend for necessaries; what I spend for clothing I cannot spend for food; and what I spend for one kind of food I cannot spend for some other kind. This is the situation which calls for economy, since to economize is merely to choose what desires shall be gratified, knowing that certain others must, on that account, remain ungratified. Economy always and everywhere means a three-fold conflict; a conflict between man and nature, between man and man, and between the different interests of the same man.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

This suggests the twofold nature of the problem of evil. Evil in the broadest sense merely means disharmony, since any kind of disharmony is a source of pain to somebody. But that form of disharmony which arises between man and nature has, in itself, no moral qualities. It is an evil to be cold or hungry, to have a tree fall upon one, to be devoured by a wild beast, or wasted by microbes. But to evils of this kind, unless they are in some way the fault of other men, we never ascribe any moral significance whatever. It is also an evil for one man to rob another, or to cheat him, or in any way to injure him through carelessness or malice; and we do ascribe a moral significance to evils of this kind—to any evil, in fact, which grows out of the relations of man with man. But, as already pointed out, this latter form of evil—moral evil—grows out of, or results from, the former, which may be called non-moral evil. Any true account of the origin of moral evil must therefore begin with the disharmony between man and nature.

Let us imagine a limited number of individuals living in a very favorable environment, where all their wants could be freely and


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328 fully gratified, where there was no scarcity nor any need for economy. Under a harmony with nature so nearly perfect as this, there could arise none of those conflicts of interests within the individual, since the gratification of one desire would never be at the expense of some other; nor could there arise any conflict of interests among individuals, since the gratification of one individual's desire would never prevent the gratification of another's. There being no conflict of interests either within the individual or among different individuals, there could never arise a moral problem. That would be paradise. But suppose that wants should expand, or new wants develop; or suppose that, through the gratification of an elemental impulse, numbers should increase beyond any provision which nature had made. Paradise would be lost. Not only would labor and fatigue be necessary, but an antagonism of interests and a moral problem would arise. Human ingenuity would have to be directed, not only toward the problem of increasing the productivity of the earth, but toward the problem of adjusting conflicting interests. Questions of justice and equity would begin to puzzle men's brains.

It would be difficult to find in this illustration any suggestion of original sin or hereditary taint of any kind. The act which made for increase of numbers, instead of being a sinful one, for which punishment was meted out as a matter of justice, would, on the contrary, be as innocent of moral guilt as any other. But the inevitable consequence of it would be the destruction of the preexisting harmony, giving rise, in turn, to a conflict of human interests. Nor does the illustration suggest or imply any "fall" or change in human nature, but rather a change of conditions under which the same human qualities would produce different social results. Moreover, the illustration does not depend for its validity upon its historical character. That it to say, it is not necessary to show that there ever was a harmony between man and nature so nearly complete as the illustration assumes to begin with. The fundamental basis of conflict is clearly enough revealed by the illustration when it is shown to be inherent in the nature of man and of the material world about him.

This theory of the origin of evil is already embodied in a well-known story, which need not be interpreted as having a historical basis in order to have a profound meaning—more profound,


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Rh, than its most reverent students have seen in it. Once upon a time there was a garden in which lived a man and a woman, all of whose wants were supplied by the spontaneous fruits of the earth. There was no struggle for existence, no antagonism of interests; in short, that was paradise. But the gratification of a certain desire brought increase of numbers, and increase of numbers brought scarcity, and paradise was lost. Thenceforward man was to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow. The struggle for existence had set in. Man had to contend against either natural or human rivals for the means of satisfying his wants, and every form of greed and rapacity had a potential existence. When his eyes were opened to these inherent antagonisms, that is, when he became a discerner of good and evil, of advantages and disadvantages, both near and remote, he became an economic being, an adapter of means to ends; a chooser between pleasures and pains. In short, the process of industrial civilization, of social evolution, had made its first faint beginning. The human race was caught in a network of forces from which it was never to extricate itself. It was adrift upon a current which set irresistibly outward—no man knew whither.

THE ORIGIN OF INSTITUTIONS

In this antagonism of interests, growing out of scarcity, the institutions of property, of the family, and of the state, all have their common origin. No one, for example, thinks of claiming property in anything which exists in sufficient abundance for all. But when there is not enough to go around, each unit of the supply becomes a prize for somebody, and there would be a general scramble did not society itself undertake to determine to whom each unit should belong. Possession, of course, is not property; but when society recognizes one's right to a thing, and undertakes to protect him in that right, that is property. Wherever society is sufficiently organized to recognize these rights and to afford them some measure of protection, there is a state; and there is a family wherever there is a small group within which the ties of blood and kinship are strong enough to overcome any natural rivalry and to create a unity of interests. This unity of economic interests within the group is sufficient to separate it from the rest of the world, or from other similar groups among


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330 which the natural rivalry of interests persists. Saying nothing of the barbaric notion that wives and children are themselves property, even in the higher types of society it is the desire to safeguard those to whom one is bound by ties of natural affection, by sharing the advantages of property with them, which furnishes the basis for the legal definition of the family group.

THE FUNDAMENTAL POSITION OF ECONOMICS

Closely associated with the right of property—as parts of it in fact—is a group of rights such as that of contract, of transfer, of bequest, and a number of other things with which lawyers occupy themselves. It would be difficult to find any question in the whole science of jurisprudence, or of ethics, or politics, or any of the social sciences for that matter, which does not grow out of the initial fact of economic scarcity and the consequent antagonism of interests among men. This reveals, as nothing else can, the underlying unity of all the social sciences, that is, of all the sciences which have to do with the relations between man and man; and it shows very clearly that the unifying principle is an economic one. Even the so-called gregarious instinct may very probably be the product of the struggle for existence, which, in turn, is the product of scarcity—the advantage of acting in groups being the selective agency in the development of this instinct. But that question, like a great many others, lies beyond the field of positive knowledge. This does not necessarily constitute economics as the "master science," with the other social sciences subordinate to it; but it does signify that, if there is such a thing as a master science, economics has the first claim to that position among the social sciences. The economic problem is the fundamental one, out of which all other social and moral problems have grown.

ECONOMIC COMPETITION

This conflict of man with man, when uncontrolled by society, either through moral codes or legal procedure, does not differ materially from the struggle for existence among brutes. But there is no human society which does not control the struggle in some way. In fact the one purpose for which organized society exists is that of


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Rh controlling the struggle and directing it into productive channels. The self-interested individual cares nothing for production as such. What he is interested in is the acquisition of things which are scarce. If the easiest method of acquisition is that of production, then he will produce. If there is some easier way, he will pursue that way. The purpose of the law and government is to make it difficult and dangerous to acquire by any other method than that of production, or free and voluntary exchange of products, which means the same thing. In so far as the state succeeds in this attempt and thus forces all individuals to acquire by methods of production, it is justifying its existence.

When the struggle for existence is thus turned into productive channels, when every individual finds that he can acquire desirable things only by producing them, or by offering the producer something of equal value in exchange for them, then the brutal struggle for existence is transformed into economic competition. Perfect economic competition is merely a system under which each individual finds it most advantageous to acquire by productive or serviceable effort of some kind, and so, in Adam Smith's words, "to promote the public good while trying to promote his own."

When we consider that the individual's value to the rest of society is measured by the excess of his production over consumption, while his position in industry is determined by his rate of accumulation, which is merely his acquisition minus his consumption, we shall see how important it is that acquisition and production should be identified. This may be expressed by means of the following formulæ:
 * The value of a man=his production—his consumption.
 * His competing power=his acquisition—his consumption.
 * When acquisition=production
 * Then his value=his competing power.
 * The purpose of the state is to make acquisition=production.


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 II. THEORIES OF GOVERNMENT IN THE RENAISSANCE

VERY small number of books on political and social subjects have exerted a profound and continuous influence both upon the development of thought and upon the determination of the policies adopted regarding public questions. Aristotle's "Politics" and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" are notable works belonging to this exceptionally distinguished group. A much greater number of political writings had a potent influence at the time of their composition but now possess little other than historical significance.

Among such works may be mentioned Luther's "Address to the German Nobility" and "Concerning Christian Liberty," and Rousseau's "Social Contract." Machiavelli's "Prince" and More's "Utopia" do not fall exactly within either of these categories. They were not the starting points from which great and fruitful advance in knowledge has been made, and at no time have they been powerful factors in determining the legislation or policy of any nation. Both are indeed highly significant and characteristic products of the age in which they were written; compared with the writings of Luther, they were immensely less influential in shaping contemporary opinion; but they are quite as representative of the thought of the time and so possess great historic interest. Moreover, although the specific conclusions of Machiavelli and of More have never been followed closely in practice, they do exemplify in their work the two strikingly different attitudes, one or the other of which invariably appears in the methods and conclusions of writers upon political and social problems.


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The "Prince" and the "Utopia" were both written in the second decade of the sixteenth century, at the time when those various influences which made the Renaissance period in history were being most completely exemplified in education, art, morals, and indeed in virtually every field of human activity and aspiration. In almost every direction the human spirit had freed itself from mediæval traditional limitations; political and social arrangements among others were subjected to philosophic analysis and investigation unrestrained by ancient concepts and regardless of the revolutionary conclusions that might be the outcome. Among the political writers of the period, Machiavelli and More exhibited in pre-eminent measure the working of the Renaissance spirit. Machiavelli subjected governmental machinery and policy to the test of facts. More subjected not only political but also social arrangements to the test of what he deemed ideally desirable. Both are in agreement that nothing in the social order is necessarily perfect even at the moment and certainly not for all time. Institutions and customs are to be judged by results, and all may be changed if something better can be devised. This is distinctly the modern point of view. It is quite as essentially the Renaissance point of view. Modern history begins with the Renaissance.

In an age like the present, marked by swift advance in the exact sciences, the test of fact is apt to seem the one promising method of approach to the investigation of political and social problems. The test of the ideal exemplified in the "Utopia" has given the language an adjective, "Utopian," which connotes the impractical, the visionary, and even the fanciful. The test of fact exemplified in Machiavelli has also, however, yielded an adjective, "Machiavellian," of even more damning connotation. If the test of fact is to be a true test, all significant facts must be considered, and ideals are facts of vast importance in the development and maintenance of social arrangements. Machiavelli's method was scientific in its general character; but his low estimate of human nature, founded as it was


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334 upon an assumption contrary to fact, rendered much of his analysis fundamentally inexact and unscientific.

Even within the field of the kind of facts to which he attaches significance, Machiavelli's analysis was far from being comprehensive. At the time he wrote, and indeed for a century and more before, Italy had been split up into a large number of political entities, most of which were in a chronic state of political instability not unlike that of many Central American countries to-day. Few Italian rulers were secure from either domestic or foreign foes. Machiavelli made much use of the comparative method in his analysis, and properly; but as he was mainly concerned with the means of securing and maintaining personal rule under conditions which at best could not provide a solid basis for governmental authority, his conclusions seldom possess general validity. They were not applicable to the centralized governments of large territorial areas then in process of development north of the Alps, where the ruling dynasties were already strongly entrenched in power. It is even more evident that his analysis affords little of practical value in the solution of modern problems of government. Possibly there is some analogy between the conditions described by Machiavelli and the struggle for political power carried on upon a low plane between rival bosses in misgoverned municipalities. One would, however, search the pages of the "Prince" in vain for a remedy for such ills of democratic government. In the field of international politics, Machiavelli's analysis has undoubtedly been measurably in accord with practice in his own time and since. Ethical restraints have been relatively weak in the dealings of the nations one with another; and it is a significant fact that nowhere has Machiavelli found so many close readers as among those statesmen who have been mainly concerned with foreign affairs. After making every qualification, it must still be recognized that in the "Prince" Machiavelli took a long step in advance toward the development of a sound method of analyzing political problems. His example was, however, not followed very generally by writers


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Rh on government in his own and the two succeeding centuries. Questions of divine right and theories of natural rights and natural law rather than the facts of government absorbed the attention of most publicists. In the nineteenth century more exact methods have been adopted in this as in other fields of knowledge; but in bringing about this desirable change little or no direct influence can be attributed to the work of Machiavelli.

With the exception of Plato's "Republic," the "Utopia" is the best instance of the use of the device of an imaginary society as a vehicle for analysis, and indeed arraignment, of social and political conditions. During the mediæval period, uniformity of ideals and conditions throughout Europe was too great to suggest writings of this character, but the discoveries in the New World disclosed the existence of societies which had never been in touch with the European world. The assumption of the finality of European arrangements was consequently somewhat weakened, at least for men of a reflective cast of mind. In placing his "Utopia" somewhere in the New World, More must have greatly heightened the imaginative effect of the work to readers of his own time. The sense of illusion thus given at the outset is remarkably well maintained throughout. No other creator of imaginary societies has been so successful in directly impressing the reader with the feasibility of his scheme of social betterment. Later writers of Utopias have been commonly too anxiously concerned to put together a society which should meet the criticisms of experts in economics, sociology, and government. To attempt this, is to miss the true aim and lose much of effectiveness in this style of composition. It is certain that society will never be suddenly transformed into something quite different which may be worked out in advance by thoughtful investigators. Quite evidently also the exact course of social evolution in the distant future cannot be foreseen. Books like the "Utopia" are effective means of weakening the feeling of complete satisfaction with the existing social order, a state of mind which is neither helpful nor conducive to human betterment. Effectiveness is far from being in direct ratio to the scientific


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336 of the imaginary society described. The imaginary society is simply the vehicle for satire and criticism of things as they are, In other words, it is as literature and not as a scientific treatise that ideal commonwealths should be considered. The possession of literary qualities has made a few of them effective. More's "Utopia" meets this test admirably and is, therefore, properly included among the Five-Foot Shelf of Books.

Some acquaintance with social conditions and politics in the time of More adds much to the significance and interest of the book; but society, and even more human nature, changes so slowly from age to age that much of it can hardly fail to prove full of stimulating suggestion even to readers familiar only with present conditions. Speaking generally, our own society is no nearer that depicted in the "Utopia" than was that of More's own period. In some respects it is further removed from Utopian conditions, notably in the greater relative importance of manufacturing and commercial as contrasted with agricultural activities. In some directions changes have taken place which all would agree are for the better, though they are contrary to the Utopian ideal. The government of "Utopia" was distinctly aristocratic. To a modern idealist the best of all conceivable societies would certainly be democratic in form and in practice. Slavery, though of an ameliorated sort, was an essential foundation of the Utopian polity. No better illustration may possibly be found of the difficulty experienced in getting away from the blinding influence of one's own environment, even when gifted with an exceptionally humane spirit and a powerful imagination. One may hazard the hope, in this connection, that in the distant evolution of society a higher level of improvement may be reached than can now be foreseen.


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 III. ADAM SMITH AND "THE WEALTH OF NATIONS"

ROM 1752 to 1764 the author of "The Wealth of Nations" occupied the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow College, and his writings were the natural outgrowth of the lectures delivered to his college classes. Following an unbroken tradition received from Greek philosophy, Smith conceived the province of moral philosophy to be as broad as the entire range of human conduct, both individual and social. "Wherein," says Smith, "consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an individual, but as a member of a family, of a state, and of the great society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral philosophy proposed to investigate." Smith's own lectures followed substantially this plan of treatment.

THE UNDERLYING THEORY OF SMITH'S PHILOSOPHY

At Smith's hands, however, many of the traditional subjects received new treatment and development. In 1759, Smith published his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," a treatise on ethics which immediately won for him international fame as a philosopher. This work presented the doctrine that the moral judgment is, in the last analysis, an expression of impartial sympathy with the motives and result of human action. From sympathy Smith derives the sense of justice, which is "the main pillar of the social structure." Underlying the book is the common eighteenth-century theory of a beneficent natural order, by which it was held that a benevolent Creator had so ordered the universe as to produce the greatest possible human happiness. In this view of the matter the problem of philosophy, including politics and economics, is to discover the natural laws which make for the happiness of God's creatures. Of