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The unity of law; as exhibited in the rei

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THE

UNITY OF LAW;

AS EXHIBITED IN THE

RELATIONS OF PHYSICAL, SOCIAL, MENTAL, AND MORAL SCIENCE.

BY

H. C. CAEEY.

"Variety in unity 13 perfection."

Old Proverb.

PHILADELPHIA:

HENEY OAEEY BAIRD,

■INDUSTEIAL PUBLISHEE,

406 WALNUT STREET.

1872.

B/%^

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by H. C. CAREY, ^ ^'^^ in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

COLLINS, PRINTER, 705 JATNE STREET.

TO

Professok EUGEN'E DiJHRIN'G—

WOKTHY SirCCESSOK 01"

FEEDBEIO LIST

IN THE

GREAT WORK OF PROVING TO THE GERMANIC NATION

THAT

DOMESTIC INTERDEPENDENCE, NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE,

PUBLIC PEACE, AND PRIVATE HAPPINESS,

TEND ALWAYS TO MARCH HAND IN HAND TOGETHER —

IS DEDICATED IN TOKEN OP ITS AUTHOR'S HIGH RESPECT.

Professor Duhring's field of action is that of the University of Berlin. Of his many works none have yet been reproduced in the English language, and therefore does the author deem it vrell to call to the attention of the reader the two most recent, as follows: —

First of these is, "A Critical History of Political Economy and Social Science" (Berlin, 1871) ; a work remarkable for its critical acumen, and as furnishing a more thorough exhibit of the course of sociological science, from its earliest days, than any that, until now, has been given to the world. It is much to be desired that it should be here translated.

Second. "A Critical History of the General Principles of Mechanical Science from the days of Galileo to the present time." This work, not yet published, was prepared in response to a public invitation from the University of Gottingen, and was honored, March, 1872, by an award of the highest prize that had been offered ; that award, too, accompanied by

( iii )

IV DEDICATION.

a report, in which the faculty of that renowned institution state, that " not only are the essential points discussed in a manner evincing a thorough mastery of the subject, and an extraordinary amount of accurate literary knowledge," but that thereto had been added sundry dissertations on others less important; the whole bearing witness to the "great love and care" given to the work. In conclusion, they congratulate themselves on having called into existence " a beautiful performance;" one far surpassing any anticipation they could have farmed when adopting the measures that had led to its production.

It is rare to find such varied knowledge combined with such extraordi- nary industry as has been exhibited by Professor Diihring throughout the last decade.

CONTENTS.

Chap. I A Science Based tjpon Assumptions .

II. — Or Science and its Methods III — Oe Man, the Subject of Social Science IV. — Or THE Physical and Social Laws Y — Of the Sooietary Organization VI. — Op Matter and Mind VII. — Oe Matter and Mind, continued VIII. — Op Matter and Mind, continued IX. — Op Matter and Mind, continued X. — Op Mind and Morals XI. — Op Mind and Morals, continued

XII. — Op Civilization

XIII. — Op Scientipic Relations .

XIV. — Depinitions

PAGE 1

33

n

116 130 148 114 198 234 294 308 345 374 3T5

APPENDIX.
A. — The Law of Distribution .	. 379
B. — Occupation of the Earth	. 382
C. — Statistical Facts ....	. 392
D.— The Opium Trade	. 395
E. — Effects of an Exclusive Agriculture .	404
P.— The Proletariat	. 406

(V)

PEEPACE.

Desiring fully to understand and properly to appre- ciate the men around us, we study their antecedents, thereby in some measure qualifying ourselves for predicting their probable future. So, too, is it with nations. That we may understand the direction in which they are moving, whether toward civilization, wealth, and power, or toward barba- rism, poverty, and weakness, it is needed that we compare their present with their past, and satisfy ourselves as to whether tbeir course of action bus tended in the direction of developing the qualities which constitute the real man, the being made in the image of his Creator, fitted for becoming master of nature and an example worthy to be followed by those around him ; or those alone which he holds in common with the beasts of the field, and which fit him for place among men whose rule of conduct exhibits itself in the robber chieftain's motto, " that they may take who have the power, and those may keep who can." That it is proposed now to do ; but preparatory thereto, the author asks the reader's attention to a brief exhibit of the very gradual steps by which, and almost insensibly, he has been led to arrive at the idea of an unity OF LAW, necessary complement as it is of that great idea so recently developed, but already so universally accepted,

that of UNITY OF FORCE.

So far as regards Societary Science — the link con- necting physical with mental science — the first step ever made in that direction consisted in furnishing a theory of

( Vii )

yfii PREFACE.

value so simple that, in the words of one of the highest authorities in economical science, "there could arise no case in which a man should determine to make an exchange in which it would not be found to apply." Here, as every where, simplicity and breadth marched hand in hand together; the law embracing every commodity or thing m reference to which the idea of value could be predicated, and thus contributing largely toward demonstration of the universality of natural laws ; the value of land having been ascribed by all previous economists to causes widely different from those which gave value to its products*

Till then, amid the many suggestions as to the " nature, measure, and causes of value," there had been none, to quote again from the same high authority, that had not proved itself "liable to perpetual exceptions." The law then furnished was that of the labor saved; the limit of

* " Carey, and after him Bastiat, ha-ve introduced a formula dpotteriori, that I believe destined to be universally adopted; and it is greatly to be regretted that the latter should have limited himself to occasional indica- tions of it, instead of giving to it the importance so justly given by the former. In estimating the equilibrium between the cost to one's self and the utility to others, a thousand circumstances may intervene ; and it is desirable to know if there be not among men a law, a principle of univer- sal application. Supply and demand, rarity, abundance, etc., are all insufScient, and liable to perpetual exceptions. Carey has remarked, and with great sagacity, that this law is the labor saved, the cost of reproduction — an idea that is, as I think, most felicitous. It appears to me that there cannot arise a case in which a man shall determine to make an exchange, in which this law will not be found to apply. I will not regard it as equivalent, unless I see that it will come to me at less cost of labor than would be necessary for its reproduction. I regard this formula as most felicitous ; because while on one side it retains the idea of cost which is constantly referred to in the mind ; on the other it avoids the absurdity to which we are led by the theory which pretends to see everywhere a value equivalent to the cost of production ; and, finally, it shows more perfectly the essential justice that governs us in our exchanges." — Ferraka: Biblioteca delV Economista, vol. xii. p. 117. ~

PREFACE. ix

value being found in the cost of reproduction* Subsequently adopted by an eminent French economist,t it has been made known to tens of thousands who had never seen, or even heard of, the work in which it first appeared.

Consequent upon this, was the discovery of a general law of distribution, embracing all the products of labor- whether that ^plied to cultivation or conversion — to change of place or change of form. According to the theories then most generally received, the profit of one was always attended with loss to another — rents rising, as labor became less productive, and profits advancing, as wages retrograded; a doctrine said to come as natural consequence of a great law instituted by the Deity for man's government ; but which, if true, tended to the pro- duction of universal discord.^

Directly the reverse of this, however, was the law that was then announced, and now is reproduced ;§ proving, as it did, that both capitalist and laborer profited by every measure tending to render labor more productive, while losing by every one that tended to render it less so — and thus establishing a perfect harmony of interests.

Likewise adopted by M. Bastiat, and characterized by him as "the great, admirable, consoling, necessary, and

* Cabey. Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. Philad., 1837.

■}• Bastiat. Harmonies Economiques, Paris, 1850.

J " Low wages, as a consequence of competition for the sale of labor, reduce the prices of the things to. the production of which that labor is applied ; and it is the consumers of those products, the whole society, that reap the profit. If, then, as a consequence of low wages, the latter find themselves obliged to contribute to the support of the poor workman, they are indemnified therefor by the reduced prices at which they obtain his products." — J. B. Sat; TraitS d^ Economic Politique, t. ii., p. 292.

It is here supposed that society profits by a state of things that impove- rishes the workman, and sends him to the hospital. The real and perma- nent interests of the employer and his workmen being one and the same, such a state of things can not exist.

g See Appendix A. Seo also pp. 66, 67.

X PEEFACE.

inflexible law of capital,"* it constituted a second step in the direction of proving that in each department of the social relations there was perfect unity; and, that the whole were as much subjected to law, absolute and inflexible, as were those of inorganic matter.

Thoroughly convinced of the truth of the laws then pre- sented for consideration, the author felt not less certain that the really fundamental principle remained yet to be discovered; and, that until it could be brought to light many societary phenomena must continue unex- plained. In what direction, however, to seek it, he could not tell. He had already satisfied himself that the theory presented for consideration by Mr. Eicardo, not being universally true, had no claim to be so considered; but, it was not until ten years later he was led to remark the fact, that it was universally false. The real law, as he then was led to see, was directly the reverse of that which had been propounded; the work of cultivation having, and that invariably, been commenced on the poorer soils, and having passed to those more rich as wealth had grown and population had increased. Here was the great fundamental truth of which he before- had thought; the one, too, that was needed for perfect demonstration of the truth of those he previously had exhibited. Here, too, was further proof of the universality of natural laws — the course of man, in reference to the earth at large, being thus shown to have been the same that we see it now to be in reference to all the instruments into which he fashions parts of the great machine itself. Always com- mencing with the poorest axes, he proceeds onward to those of steel ; always commencing with the poorer soils, he proceeds onward toward those capable of yielding larger returns to labor; increase of numbers being thus

* Harmonies Eoonomiques, Paris, 1850.

PREFACE. XI

proved to be essential to increase in the supply of food. Here was a unity of law leading to perfect harmony of all real and permanent human interests, and directly op- posed to the discords taught by Mr. Malthus.*

This great law was first announced nearly a quarter of a century since.f While engaged in its demonstration, the author found himself constantly impelled to the use of physical facts in illustration of social phenomena, and hence was led to remark the close affinity of physical and social laws. Eeflecting upon this, he soon was brought to expression of the belief, that closer examination would

* Adam Smith having assumed that the work of cultivation commenced always with the richest soils, Mr. Malthus adopted the idea as basis for a law of population requiring that large numbers of men, women, and chil- dren should "regularly die of want." Mr. Ricardo next perfected th9 system, furnishing a theory of rent by means of which he sought to establish that precisely as it became necessary to cultivate the poorer soils, and as labor became less and less productive, the landlord's share of the products increased, leaving steadily less and less for the unfortunate laborer ; the tendency toward absolute enslavement of the latter becoming necessarily greater with each successive hour. From that time forward, all the distress, all the pauperism, of England, was treated as natural result of a necessity for cultivating the "inferior soils." So far' indeed was this idea carried out, that it was not unfrequently suggested that the remedy for existing difficulties would be found in throwing out of cultivation all such soils.

The time arriving, however, when the theory was shown to be wholly without foundation, it came then to be discovered, that this fundamental question — as important in furnishing a standpoint in Social Science as had been that of Copernicus in the astronomical one — was wholly unimportant* and might be left entirely uBconsidered ; the essence of the Ricardo- Malthusian doctrine being, however, still retained in that assumption which constitutes the basis of the existing system, to wit: that the return to agricultural labor, when population and wealth increase, is a constantly diminishing one (see post pp. 17, 18) ; than which no assertion could by any possibility have less of even the appearance of support from facts. That the reader may judge for himself of this, as well as of the accuracy of the views now presented, the history of the earth's occupation is here reproduced in appendix B.

t The Past, the Present, and the Future, Philad., 1848.

xii PREFACE.

M

lead to development of the great fact, that there existed but a single system of laws ; those instituted for the gov- ernment of inorganic matter proving to be the same by which that matter was governed when it took the form of man, or of communities of men.

In the work then published, the discoveries of modem science proving the indestructibility of matter were, for the first time, rendered available to social science — the difference between agriculture and all other of the pur- suits of man having been there exhibited in the fact, that the farmer was always employed in mahing a machine whose powers increased from year to year; whereas, the shipmaster, and the wagoner, were always using machines whose powers as regularly diminished. The whole busi- ness.of the former, as there was shown, consisted in making and im proving soils ; his powers for improvement growing with the growth of wealth and population. To fully develop the law of the perpetuity of matter, in its bearing upon the law of population, was, however, reserved for the author's friend, Mr. E. Peshine Smith, an important passage from one of whose works will be found at page 150 of the present volume.*

Further reflection having confirmed him in the belief that the laws thus far exhibited were but parts of a per- fectly harmonious system instituted for the government of matter in all its forms, whether those of coal or iron, fish or birds, clay, corn, oxen, or men; that the Creator of the Universe had not been obliged to institute different laws for government of the same matter; that the physical and social laws must, therefore, be in harmony with each other ; and, that the idea of unity of law must be as clearly susceptible of proof as was that of unity of force; he availed himself in a further work,+ of the familiar pheno-

* See also Manual of Political Economy, New York, 1858. t Principles of Social Science, 8 vols. Philad., 1867-59.

PREFACE. ' XUl

mena of heat, motion, and their effective forces in the physical world, for illustration of corresponding facts and forces in the societary one; the result having been that of showing that, with societies as with individual men, physical and mental development, health, and life, had always grown with growth in the rapidity of circulation and declined as .the circulation had been arrested or de- stroyed.

Since then, there have been many and important sci- entific discoveries, chief among which are those by means of which it has been definitively established that —

" Power or energy, like matter, can neither be created nor de- stroyed : though ever changing in form, its total quantity in the uni- verse remains constant and unalterable. Every manifestation offeree must have come from a preexisting equivalent force, and must give^ rise to a subsequent and equal amount of some other force. When, therefore, a force or effect appears, we are not at liberty to assume that it was self-originated, or came from nothing ; when it disappears we are forbidden to conclude that it is annihilated : we must search and find whence it came and whither it has gone ; that is, what pro- duced it and what effect it has itself produced. These relations among the modes of energy are currently known by the phrases Cor- relation and Conservation of Force." *

The law thus exhibited might, as we are assured —

" Well have been proclaimed the highest law of all science — the most far-reaching principle that adventuring reason has discovered in the universe. Its stupendous reach spans all orders of existence. Not only does it govern the movements of the heavenly bodies, but it presides over the genesis of the constellations ; not only does it control those radiant floods of power which fill the eternal spaces, bathing, warming, illumining and vivifying our planet, but it rules the actions and relations of men, and regulates the march of terrestrial affairs. Nor is its dominion limited to physical phenomena ; it pre- vails equally in the world of mind, controlling all tha faculties and processes of thought and feeling. The star-suns of the remoter galaxies dart their radiations across the universe ; and although the

* Youmans. Correlation and Conservation oj Forces, p. xiii.

Xiv PEEFACE.

distances are so profound that hundreds of centuries may have been required to traverse them, the impulses of force enter the eye, and impressing an atomic change upon the nerve, give origin to the sense of sight. Star and nerve-tissue are parts of the same system— stellar and nervous forces are correlated. Nay more ; sensation awakens thought and kindles emotion, so that this wondrous dynamic chain binds into living unity the realms of matter and mind through mea- sureless amplitudes of space and time."*

Spanning, as we are here assured it does, "all orders of existence" the paramount law thus exhibited must, of course, embrace within its field of operation that force which enters- into man's composition, and by so doing gradually fits him for that elevated position for which, from the first, he had been intended. That it is so embraced, will become obvious to the reader after consideration of the following facts: —

From the days of Caesar to the present time, a period of almost 2000 years, there has been but slight, if indeed any, increase in the numbers of mankind.! Nevertheless, the quantity of human force has so much increased, that single individuals now accomplish service that before had re- quired hundreds; and, that even the weaker sex has so far grown in power as to be largely aiding in maintaining throughout the world an interchange of ideas which but half a century since could not have been maintained by the united efforts of all mankind. Whence, now, has come the wonderful force that we see to be thus exerted? For answer to this question we have the certainty that, as " force can be neither created nor destroyed ;" as " every manifestation of force must come from a pre-existing equivalent force ;" human force, whether physical, mental, or moral, results necessarily from conversion to human use of forces that have existed from all time ; and, that there is, in this respect, no difference between man and

*Ibid. p. xU. ■]■ See note to page 407.

PREFACE, XV

the trees wliicli adorn our parks; the cotton-plant which furnishes the material of our clothing ; or the shrub from which we derive our fruits.

Throughout the inorganic world the variety in the mani- festations of force is but very small indeed, great as is its power in whatsoever shape it comes to be presented. When, however it enters into organized forms it finds them each and all to have been so constructed as to give occasion to that almost infinite variety in the modes of manifestation which exhibits itself in both the vegetable and animal world, from the bramble to the oak, and from the ascidian to the horse, the dog, and the almost-speaking elephant.

Thus far, differences have been generic or specific only; individuals of a species being little more than a reproduc- tion each of every other. Man, however, now coming on the stage of life, we find individual differences almost as numerous as are those of the human countenance ; there being scarcely any two members of the human family pre- cisely alike in their capacities for absorbing and convert- ing the force that everywhere awaits demand. In one, the power of absorption is of a character tending to fit him for practice of the law, while around are others whose organs fit them for becoming farmers, merchants, physicians, chemists, traders, and so on throughout the thousand other pursuits of life. It is in variety there is unity, and the more that each and every of these men is enabled to absorb and convert the force supplied, the greater is the tendency toward that association in whose absence the being known as MAN can have no existence whatsoever.

Looking now to the early man, as he is being exhibited to us by geologists, we see him to have been almost wholly powerless in face of the wonderful forces in whose pres- ence he had been placed. Tracing him thence onward, we find him gradually obtaining power for their direction, until at length he is enabled to compel light and heat,

Xvi PREFACE.

Steam and electricity, to perform labors that would have required the united eflforts of hundreds, if not even thou- sands, of millions of unassisted men. At each and every stage of progress the force thus converted to his use be- comes part and parcel of himself; his various faculties absorbing their several portions, and the man of power coming gradually on the stage prepared to direct the already acquired force to further development of the yet latent powers of the earth, and further conversion thereof to his own use and service.* As numbers increase, men are more and more enabled to combine together, and at each such stage their faculties become more and more strengthened for absorption of further aliment ; the pro- cess here being precisely the same with that observed as consequent upon steady exercise of the physical powers with which the human animal has been endowed.

* A dozen hours from the delivery of a presidential message its contents have been made known throughout the civilized world. Whence had come the force by whose means this wonderful work had been accomplished ? From the types, the paper, the poles, or the wires, that had been employed ? Certainly not, all these having been perfectly quiescent. — The forces of the pistol, the engine, and the telegraph, are in the men who control and direct them, and not in the machines by which the work is done. — A horse's force is said to be the equivalent of that of nine average men. The man who subjugates him adds that force to his own, doing now ten times his original work. — The force of the banker's millions, of the essayist's pen, and of the astronomer's telescope, is in those who direct them, and not in the instru- ments directed. — That of the orator, or actor, who moves multitudes to action, or to tears, differs only in its modes of manifestation from that of the engineer who explodes the charge, and sends other multitudes to their last account. — Aided by his sling, David felled Goliath to the ground. Altogether unaided, Samson levelled the pillars of the temple. — One man levels his opponent with a blow of his fist. Another does the same by aid of a club. A third accomplishes the same object by means of a well-con- trived trap. The force thus used is always the same ; and so it is in those larger operations which involve the use of the monster cannon, the ocean steamer, or the fast-flying locomotive. — The soldier's knapsack doubles his carrying power. Is the new force in him, or in the machine?

PREFACE. XVH

Side by side witli the forces thus converted travels always the first of the great laws above referred to, providing, as it does, that growth of force shall be ac- companied by changes in the distribution of labor's pro- ducts; present mental and moral force claiming a con- stantly increased proportion as compared with that appro- priated to the merely material force resulting from accu- mulations of the past; labor thus tending to an equality with capital, and man becoming from hour to hour more free. In the whole range of law there is nothing more beautiful than this; nothing furnishing more thorough proof that that High Intelligence to which man stands in- debted for the wonderful mechanism of each and every part of his physical form, had not failed to provide for the societary body laws fully fitted to prepare him for becoming master of nature, master of himself, and prompt to unite with his fellow-men in all measures tending to thorough development of the highest faculties with which he and they had been endowed.

Looking around, however, we see that throughout by very far the largest portion of the earth there exists little but poverty and wretchedness amiong the millions, selfishness, extravagance, and waste among those by whom their movements are directed ; the rich becoming richer, and the poor poorer, from year to year. As a consequence of this, the world at large presents for observation little beyond a constant series of wars, rebellions, and revolu- tions, with terrific waste of mental and physical force ; of property and of life. Seeking now to understand the cause of a state of things so sad and so destructive, the inquirer looks naturally for information to the works of leaders of opinion in that country which claims to follow in the footsteps of Adam Smith; there to find, however little beyond the assertions, that their science is limited to the consideration of material wealth alone, to the entire 2

xviii PREFACE.

exclusion of mind and morals, skill and taste ; tbat buy- ing and selling constitute the chief end and aim of life ; that "to enable capital to obtain proper remuneration, labor must be kept down ;"* that carrying goods back and

* Huskisson. — For present confirmation of the idea that was' then pre- sented, the reader may take the following passages from two of the most respected of British journals, and one of the most eminent of British au- thors.

" The English land system, as it exists at present, necessitates over the greater part of England the misery of the peasant. Just as the events of the period which is comprised within the outbreak of the Continental war and the abolition of the corn laws, were based on the starvation of the people, BO if the present mode of letting and hiring land is to remain in force, it is necessary that the agricultural laborer should be underpaid, underfed, miserably housed, and so immovable as to secure to the tenant farmer a constant supply of cheap labor." — British Quarterly Review, July, 1872; Article: " Agricultural Labor' s Strike."

" From these classes we hear already a. protest against emigration. Keep our people at home, they say, we shall want them when trade re- vives. There may be no work for them at present. Their wives and little ones may be starving with cold and hunger. They may be roaming the streets in vagrancy, crowding the casual wards, or besieging the doors of the poor-houses ; but still keep them,— all will be well by and by. Mean- time let the poor-rate rise ; let the small householder in Whitechapel, him- self struggling manfully for independence on the verge of beggary, pay six shillings in the pound to feed his neighbor who has sunk below the line. The tide will turn ; labor will soon be in demand again. Our profits will come back to us, and the Whitechapel householder may console himself with the certainty that his six shillings will sink again to three." — Froude. Short Studies on Great Subjects, London, 1872, p. 164.

"The kindly feeling, as they call it, in the counties— that is, the half contemptuous pity on one side and reverential deference on the other

which has for centuries marked the semi-feudal relations of village labor

has already died away, and the farmers are determined that the men ehall know what ' contract' is like. They will not take the Bishop of Glouces- ter's advice, and duck the lecturers, because the laborers being ten to one, and being told by a bishop that physical violence is a proper weapon to employ, might duck the farmers. . . . They will endeavor this winter to put the unions down, and we shall have all over the country villages in which ten or fifteen farmers, angry, unreasonable, and well fed, will stand face to face with a hundred or a hundred and fifty laborers, angry, unrea- Bonable, and without food. The unionists will be looked out in heaps, and

PREFACE. XIX

forth is beneficial because it makes demand for ships ; and that, to the end of increasing such demand, it is right and proper to employ the physical force at their command to prevent elsewhere the growth of that domestic commerce so highly valued by the great founder of their science; that commerce by means of which alone can man be ena- bled to convert to his use the great forces so infinitely abounding, and waiting but his demand to grant the aid of which he stands so much in need.

Need we now wonder that a system so thoroughly materialistic should have given rise to a school from which we learn, that " survival of the fittest," and crushing out of those less " fitted," constitute the bases of all natural arrangements for promoting advance in civilization ; and, that it is in clear defiance of nature's laws to interfere in any manner, whether by vaccination, by succoring of

wlien they apply to the parish 'will be told by the guardians that, as they can have work at will, by 'merely' giving up the union, they must take the work. . . . The man has been, so to speak, morally whipped for six months. He has found no friend anywhere, except in a press he can neither read nor understand. . The duke has deprived him of his allot- ment; the bishop has recommended that his instructor should be ducked; the squire has threatened him with dismissal in winter ; the magistrate has fined him for quitting work, which is just, and scolded him for listening to lectures, which is tyranny; the mayor at Evesham has prohibited him from meeting on the green — and the lawyer — witness a recent case near Chelms- ford—has told him that any one who advises and helps him to emigrate is a hopeless rascal. He has been denied the most ordinary privileges of free- men— the right of listening to lectures he approves, the right of emigrat- ing from county to county, the right of combining to improve his condition; and this by men who, as he sees, listen to every lecture on their own side, who emigrate whenever they please, to the ends of the earth, and who form open and strict combinations to keep him in his place." — Spectator, August 24, 1872.

The reader who may desire to see for himself how far the tendency in regard to skilled labor has been in accordance with the policy announced by Mr. Hnskisson, and with that above exhibited in reference to agricul- tural labor, will find himself enabled so to do by turning to page 408 of the present volume.

XX PREFACE.

the maimed, or by aid of those who are deformed, to prevent, or even to arrest, that "process of elimination" by means of which the strong of body, and the rich in purse, are to be enabled to rid the world of those who are weak, poor, and incapable of self defence?* Assuredly not. From the days of Malthus such has been the tend- ency of the teachings of the British school, and we have but arrived at the goal toward which they have always been directed^that of self -creation and self -worship ; this latter more and more exhibiting itself as the former idea becomes more and more established. At what other, by aid of such instructors, would it be possible that we should arrive ? As the Giver of all good, man has been accus- tomed to venerate the Creator of the Universe. Assured now, however, that in accordance with His laws it is re- quired that millions shall "regularly die of want;"t that floods and famines, wars and revolutions, are but parts of the machinery by means of which He works ; that, to the end that His laws may be fully carried out, it is needed to refrain from acts which, beyond all others, tend toward developing the best and highest feelings of the heart,

* " With savages, the 'weak in body or mind are soon eliminated ; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to checli the process of elimination ; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the eiok; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak con- stitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attend- ed to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race ; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." Darwin, Descent of Man vol. l,p. 161.

I James Mill. Elements of Political Economy, p. 42

PREFACE. XXI

assured, we say, of all these things, can be be otherwise than led to doubt, if not even to deny, the existence of a Being all of whose laws, as now generally exhibited, tend toward reducing the millions to a condition of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for those few who are en- couraged to eat, drink, and make merry, while providing measures for securing, at the earliest moment, the "elimi- nation" of those who, being poor and uninstructed, are in- capable of self-protection ? Most certainly not I

Such having been the sad results of a persistent use of the d priori method of reasoning in reference to the most important of all the sciences, it may now, we think, be hoped, that at no distant day it will come to be admitted that, in common with all other organized bodies, science develops from within and never from without ; that the tree of science grows from the roots upward ;* and, that its various branches are all co-operating for accomplishment of one great object, to wit : that of giving to man increased power for control of the great natural forces, and for de- velopment of those faculties, mental and moral, whose germs have been incorporated into the system of every individual of the race. When it shall have come, the world will cease to be mystified by economic "assumptions" that are wholly without a base on which to stand ; and so little compre- hended by even their very teachers, that these latter fail totally^when seeking to make them comprehensible by those who would be taught.

* See p. 47, post.

XXU PEEFACE,

NOTE.

As this sheet is passing through the press, the author has received the inaugural Address of the new President of the British Association, Dr. Carpenter, and finds therein such coincidence in the views above expressed, that he is led to place the closing paragraphs before his readers, as follows : —

"Thus we are led to the culminating point of man's intellectual inter- pretation of Nature — hia recognition of the unity of the power, of which her phenomena are the diversified manifestations. Towards this point all scientific inquiry now tends. The convertibility of the physical forces, the correlation of these with the vital, and the intimacy of that nezus between mental and bodily activity, which, explain it as we may, cannot be denied, al! lead upward towards one and the same conclusion; and the pyramid of which that philosophical conclusion is the apex, has its foundation in the primitive instincts of humanity.

"By our own progenitors, as by the untutored savage of the present day, every change in which human agency was not apparent, was referred to a particular animating intelligence. And. thus they attributed not only the movements of the heavenly bodies, but all the phenomena of Nature, each to its own deity. These deities were invested with more than human power ; but they were also supposed capable of human passions, and subj ect to human oaprioiousness. As the uniformities of Nature came to be more distinctly recognized, some of these deities were invested with a dominant control, while others were supposed to be their subordinate ministers. A serene majesty was attributed to the greater gods who sit above the clouds, whilst their inferiors might 'come down to earth in the likeness of men.' With the growth of the scientific study of Nature, the conception of its harmony and unity gained ever-increasing strength. And so among the most enlightened of the Greek and Roman philosophers, we find%, distinct recognition of the idea of the unity of the directing mind from which the order of Nature proceeds, for they obviously believed that, as our modern poet has expressed it —

All are but parts of one stupendous whole. Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul.

"The science of modern times, however, has taken a more special direc- tion. (Fixing its attention exclusively on the order of Nature, it has sepa- rated itself wholly from theology, whose function it is to seek after its cause.) In this, science is fully justified, alike by the entire independence . of its objects, and by the historical fact that it has been continually ham-

PREFACE. XXlll

pered and impeded in its Bearoh for the truth as it is in Nature, by the restraints which theologians have attempted to impose upon its inquiries. But when science, passing beyond its limits, assumes to take the place of theology, and sets up its own conception of the order of Nature as a suffi- cient account of its cause, it is invading a province of thought to which it has no claim, and not unreasonably provokes the hostility of those who ought to be its best friends.

"For whilst the deep-seated instincts of humanity and the profoundest researches of philosophy alike point to mind as the one and only source of power, it is the high prerogative of science to demonstrate the unity of the power which is operating through the limitless extent and variety of the universe, and to trace its continuity through the vast series of ages that have been occupied in its evolution."

rniLADELPHIA, OCTOBEB, 1872.

THE UNITY OF LAW.

CHAPTER L

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS.*

§ 1. Discoursing of the wealth of nations, Adam Smith clearly showed his high appreciation of the importance of the moral and mental elements. Rejecting the views thus presented, his Ricardo- Malthusian successors have assured their readers that their — so called — science limited itself, and necessarily, to an exhibition of causes affecting the production, distribution, and consumption of mate- rial wealth alone, the economist allowing " neither sympathy with indigence, nor disgust at profu- sion or avarice — neither reverence for existing institutions, nor detestation of existing abuses — to deter him from stating what he believed to be the facts, or from drawing from them what appeared to him to be the legitimate conclusions." Narrow and contracted as was the science thus described

* " Political economy is a science based upon assumptions." — Saturday Review.

Political economy "necessarily reasons i from assumptions, and not from facts."— J. S. Mill.

(1)

2 THE UNITY OF LAW.

more than thirty years since by Mr. Senior, one of the then most eminent of British economists, the tendency from that time to the present has been toward further contraction, until at length it has come to be generally understood that it concerns itself little, if at all, with any societary operations outside of those of the mere trader — things that cannot be bought and sold being thus wholly ex- eluded from consideration. Moving onward in that direction, Mr. J. S. Mill advises his readers that " the greater part in value of the wealth now exist- ing in England," farmhouses, factories, a few ships and machines, being, as he says, the only exceptions, "has been produced by human hands within the past twelve months;" thus excluding from consideration not only the moral and mental elements, but also nearly all the accumulations of ages now existing in the form of farms, parks, roads, canals, viaducts, bridges, streets, mines, galleries, museums, buildings public and private, the money value of these count- ing by thousands of millions of pounds. Following closely in his footsteps, journalists — foreign and domestic — fondly speak of raisers of corn and cotton, miners of coal and smelters of ores, spinners and weavers, tailors, shoemakers, and the like, as being the sole "wealth producers;" thus wholly rejecting the claims to consideration of men like Watt and Stephenson, Morse and Henry, Liebig, Faraday, and thousands of others to whom the world stands most of all indebted for the wonderful growth of

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 3

wealth and power that marks the period in which we live*

Of all economic terms there is none that is just now more frequently both used and abused than is the apparently very simple one to which the reader's attention has here been called. Of all, there is none of greater real breadth ; yet, of all, there is none that has been so much narrowed and belittled ; that, too, having been done by men who, while claiming to be disciples in his school, have carefully repudiated the most essential portion of the teachings of Adam Smith.

Of what, now, does wealth really consist 1 Let us see !

Crusoe having made a bow, had thus acquired wealth ; that wealth exhibiting itself in the power obtained over certain natural properties of wood and muscular fibre, thereby enabling him to secure increased supplies of food with greatly diminished expenditure of labor. Having made a canoe, he found his wealth much increased, his new machine enabling him to obtain still further increase of food, and of the raw materials of clothing, at still decreased cost of personal eflfort. Erecting a pole on his canoe, he now commands the services of wind, and with each and every step in this direction finds himself

* " Scientific wealth," says Sir William Thomson in his recent ad- dress as President of the British Association, "tends to accumulate according to the law of compound interest." Further even than this, it carries with a higher rate of interest than any other kind of property ; yet is it wholly excluded from consideration by economists of the modem trading school.

4 THE UNITY OF LAW.

advancing, with constantly accelerated rapidity, to- ward becoming master of nature, and a being of real wealth and power.

The picture here presented of the doings of an isolated individual is being now reproduced on a scale of wonderful magnificence by men engaged in erecting the poles, and stretching the wires, by means of which the thousand millions of the world's people are being enabled on the instant to commu- nicate with each other, time and distance being in this manner almost annihilated. We have here a growth of wealth and power the value, moral and material, of which is almost beyond calculation; yet, according to the teachings of Mr. Mill and his fellow-economists of the British school, no wealth has been thus created except so far as is made mani- fest in certain poles and wires distributed over the earth's surface, or in certain other wires submerged beneath the ocean. *

But recently a British army was saved from ruin by the fortunate presence of a little machine of American invention, by means of which the services of water, then greatly needed, had been almost at once obtained. Here, as a consequence of growing power over nature, we have wealth of almost ines- timable money value; yet does it find no place in the eyes of British economists beyond the mere commercial estimate of the little machine itself. Still further, the great men to whose successive discoveries we have been indebted for knowledge that has led to the production of such a machine.

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 5

must, according to Mr. Mill, be classed as non-pro- ducers of wealth, for the reason that, however bene- ficial their labors, an " increase of material products forms no part of that benefit."*

The landholder sinks a shaft upon his property by means of which there are brought to light large deposits of that material a single ton of which, dur- ing the period of its combustion, does the work of thousands of men. Having thus obtained control of a vast reservoir of force, he parcels it out among his neighhors, claiming of them a royalty utterly trivial when compared with the labor that by his aid is now economized, thereby adding largely to the wealth of all. Furnaces and mills next taking their places in the neighborhood of the fuel thus developed, other natural forces are brought to the aid of man, and now the farmer more and more obtains power for diversifying his cultivation, substituting green crops, which yield so largely and pay so well, for the exhaustive white ones by means of which his land

* Discoursing of mind and matter, Mr. Mill defines the latter as being a "perpetual possibility of sensation" — sensitive power being thus placed in the chairs on which we sit, and not in those who occupy them. Precisely the same erroneous transposition here again occurs — matter in the form of a machine being, as we are assured, to be regarded as wealth, wholly without reference to the knowledge how to use it. To the man who roams over South American pampas there is, nevertheless, more wealth in the possession of a single lasso than he could find in ownership of a thousand locomotives. In all these cases sensation is to be sought in the man who controls the matter, and not in the mat- ter that is controlled.

6 THE UNITY OF LAW.

had been so much impoverished. Released thus from all dependence on distant markets, his eman- cipation from the tax of transportation exhibits itself in growing power to subdue to cultivation the richer soils, and in great increase of the exchange- able value of the land itself; and here it is we find the most important element of that rapidly growing wealth which now exhibits itself in a duplication of the money value of our material property in the last decade. How such power of accumulation as is thus exhibited can be made to accord with the assertion of Mr. Mill, that nearly all the wealth of such a country as Britain had been " the product of human hands in the last twelve months," it is for that gentleman, or his disciples among ourselves, to explain.

The extent to which time and labor have been economized by the use of steam employed in trans- ferring, by land and water, both men and things, can scarcely here be estimated ; yet does the growth of wealth thus exhibited find no recognition at the hands of British economists, except so far as repre- sented by the mere machinery by means of which the saving is effected.

§ 2. Wealth consists in the power to command the always gratuitous services of the great forces of nature. That power grows as men are more and more enabled to combine their efforts for nature's subjugation. That such combination may be ef- fected, there must be that diversification in the de- mands for human power which results from variety

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 7

in the modes of employment. The more thorough this becomes, the greater is the tendency toward pro- duction of men like Fulton, Morse, Davy, Faraday, Bessemer, Scott, and Dickens, greatest of all the " wealth producers," although wholly excluded from consideration by men who restrict the domain of economic science to material wealth alone.

The object of protection to domestic industry is that of bringing about the diversification of employ- ment above described. Without it, men cannot combine together. Without it, they must remain slaves to nature, and the societies of which they are parts must exhibit the same weakness now so clearly obvious in all those communities which, like Ireland, India, Portugal, Turkey, and Carolina, find themselves limited to the work of exhausting the soil in raising rice, corn, and cotton, for the supply of foreign markets. With it, there must be daily increasing economy of muscular force, attended with growing development of that brain power to which we stand now indebted for the fact that eaich individual in these Northern States may claim to command the services of several willing slaves engaged in supplying him with food, clothing, and shelter, while consuming nothing whatsoever beyond a trivial portion of the fuel that they themselves had brought to light. Southern men, throughout the war, could, on the contrary, command little beyond the services of negro slaves for whose maintenance there was required a large proportion of the things

8 THE UNITY or LAW,

produced ; and hence the weakness that throughout the South was manifested.

The more thoroughly the great natural forces are subjected to human control, and the more numerous those unconsuming slaves, the greater becomes the power of production, and the greater the tendency toward that accumulation of wealth which manifests itself in the physical, mental, moral, and political improvement of a people.

Such, very briefly stated, is sociological science as derived from careful study of facts presented through- out the world for consideration. What is the nature of that other science which has " assumptions" only for its base, and which so entirely rejects the enlarged and liberal views given to the world by the illustrious author of the "Wealth of Nations," it is proposed now to show, placing before the reader a brief view of its actual condition, and thus enabling him to judge for himself what are its claims to be admitted to a place side by side with the sciences cultivated abroad by Grove, Helmholz, and Carpenter, and among ourselves by such men as Henry, Agassiz, Pierce, and Lesley.

§ 3. First among the requisites of any and every branch of science is a clear understanding among its teachers of the precise value of the terms in use ; the indispensable preliminary to making others comprehend them being that they themselves com- prehend each other. That such has been the course of proceeding elsewhere is proved by the fact that the vocabulary of Hipparchus and Ptolemy now

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 9

makes part of that of Herschel and Le Verrier, as that of Dalton and Lavoisier is embraced in those of Huxley, Tyndall, and their associates. The lan- guage of physics is one and the same for France and England, Germany, Russia, and these United States, perfect exactness being its essential charac- teristic.

Precisely the reverse of this is what we see to be the case with regard to that so-called science to which the reader's attention has now been called, its professors having never yet determined the real value of any single one of all its terms. That this is so, was shown by the late Archbishop Whately, one among the most eminent of its professors, when telling his readers that " the great defect of Adam Smith, and of our economists in general, is the want of definitions," proof of this being given in the nu- merous and widely different significations attached by the most distinguished teachers to the highly important terms, Value, Wealth, Labor, Capital, Rent, Wages, and Profits; then showing that for want of clear conceptions the same word is used by the same writer at one time in a manner totally in- consistent with that in which he uses it at another. To that list he might, as he most truly says, add many others " which are often used without any more explanation, or any more suspicion of their requiring it, than the words ' triangle' or ' twenty' " — as a consequence of which it is that words of the highest importance are used by distinguished writers

10 THE UNITY OF LAW.

as being entirely synonymous, when really express- ing not only different, but directly opposite, ideas.

Since the publication of the Archbishop's work many years have elapsed, very many additions bav- ins meanwhile been made to British economic lite- rature ; but, as yet, scarcely even an attempt has been made at correction of the error he there had indicated. In a very recent work intended for use in one of the chief English colleges, and highly lauded, we find not even a suggestion of definition. The fundamental question of value, the pons asino- rum of the science, has been by one eminent writer recently discussed at length, with the result of ena- bling him to assure his readers that " the value of a thing means the quantity of some other things, or of things in general, which it exchanges for." By a second, we are told that " labor is the cause of value ;" a third, equally eminent, meantime assuring his readers that " labor, in no case whatever, is a cause of value;" and, that the idea of value, even, can have no existence except when commodities or things are bought and sold.

Mr. Mill tells his readers that "the question of value is fundamental;" that "there is nothing in its laws which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up;" that "the theory of the subject is complete;" and then leaves this "fundamental question" precisely where it had stood at the date at which Dr. Whately gave to the world the per- fectly accurate view of economical deficiencies above referred to. Professor Jevons holds that in so say-

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 11

ing Mr. Mill had been "rash," value in his own be- lief depending "entirely on utility;" this conclusion having been arrived at in face of the greatest of the facts of our age, to wit: that as the utility of elec- tricity has been more and more developed, its value has so steadily declined as to have already brought its services within reach of the common laborer de- sirous of communicating with his absent wife and children.

Other varieties of opinion and expression might here be furnished, all tending to prove the entire accuracy of one of the writers above referred to, when speaking with his readers of " the utter con- fusion of opinion, and inconsistency of conception of the very nature of the subject, which prevails among writers ;" his own vpork, meanwhile, furnish- ing no reply whatsoever to the simple but funda- mental questions — Whence comes the idea of value? Of what does value itself consist % (See McLeod, Elements of Political Economy,^. 8.)

So long as those questions shall remain unanswered economists must continue to occupy a position closely analogous to that occupied by astronomers throughout the Ptolemaic regime, having no stand- point from which to make their observations ; and so long must the "confusion and inconsistency" above described continue to exist. That such a point may be obtained, they need to seek their old friend Crusoe, standing alone on his desert island, asking his views on this important question. Doing this, they will learn that so high had been the value

12 THE UNITY OF LAW.

attached by him to the idea of moving on the water, that he had expended many months in the effort to obtain a mere canoe ; that to other things he had more or less attached the idea of value in the pre- cise ratio of his estimate of the obstacles standing in the way of their production or reproduction ;* that values greatly declined so soon as he and Friday had come together, and had been enabled to exchange with each other services and their products ; that their experience furnished proof conclusive that exchanges tended to diminish, and not, as now con- stantly assumed, to increase the value of such pro- ducts. Turning their eyes now homeward with a view to test the accuracy of this idea, our inquirers would find that when, a few centuries since, the English people numbered less than three millions, and when exchanges had but slight existence, labor had so little value that two hundred and twelve per- sons stand recorded as having been hired for a day to cut and bind fourteen acres of wheat ; that food had then so high a value as to cause deaths from famine closely comparing with those so recently

* Value is the measure of the obstacles above described, of the power of nature over man ; as wealth consists in the power to compel nature to do man's work. Mr. MoLeod (p. 9) assures us that by reason of the fact that all their exchanges were made among themselves, "no such idea as value could enter the miuds" of the Highlanders of olden times. Nevertheless, those people so highly valued the cattle of their lowland neighbors as to be always willing to peril liberty and even life in their efforts to obtain possession of them. That idea came into the world with the first man, and Eve gave proof of its existence when she attached to the possession of an apple so high a value as to dispose her to give the joys of paradise in exchange therefor.

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 13

observed in Ireland; that with a population of 20,000,000, and rapidity of exchange, agricultural labor had become so much more productive that half a dozen persons did the work that before had required hundreds; that famines, such as had oc- curred even so late as the sixteenth century, had wholly disappeared; that home experience thus fur- nished perfect proof of the accuracy of Crusoe's views ; and, finally, that all experience, home and foreign, combined to prove that the greatest foe to value, as this latter exhibits itself in its relations to lab^r, is to be found in the rapidity of exchange which always accompanies that diversity in the de- mands for human service to which the civilized peo- ple of our age stand indebted for such development of their various faculties as has, more or less, made thepa masters of those great physical forces by which their predecessors had been so entirely en- slaved; wealth and power growing always with most rapidity as the commodities and things needed for man's use tend more and more to decline in value, and to become as gratuitous as is the air we breathe.

To enter upon the inquiry here indicated would, however, require reasoning upward from facts to principles, a course of proceeding most distasteful to those who so long have held, with Mr. Mill, that the a priori method of reasoning downward from " assumptions" to facts, " is the only certain or sci- entific method of investigation.

§ 4. As a necessary result of the total absence above described of a recognized economic language.

14 THE UNITY OF LAW.

it is, that the economic world presents to view a mass of confusion, each and every of its members wishing to be heard, and scarcely any two of them using precisely the same terms when desiring to present the same ideas.

Of all those in the common use the broadest and most expressive is that of Commerce, embracing, as it does, exchanges of ideas, personally or by letter ; exchanges of services or commodities ; exchanges in the family or the state ; in fine, the whole range of human relations. Of all, perhaps the narrowest and most contracted is that which brings before us the mere teadee, the man of one idea, always intent on buying cheap and selling dear, and quite too often overreaching both those of whom he buys and those to whom he sells. The more frequent the vicissitudes of trade, the more numerous, as he knows, are his chances for accumulating fortune. The farmer, the planter, and the miner, on the con- trary, desire steadiness, needing, as they do, to make their arrangements for years ahead. The cotton mill requires much time for its construction, and for the collection and organization of the people required for work therein. The preparation of the mine, the furnace, or the rolling-mill, demands long periods of exertion and large expenditure before, their owners can begin to reap reward. The trader, on the contrary, buys and sells from hour to hour ; and the greater his power to produce changes in the prices of wheat, cloth, and iron, the greater is the probability that he will ultimately enter upon pos-

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 15

session of the land of the farmer, the mill of the manufacturer, the furnace of the maker of railroad bars, or the road of the man who has invested his fortune in a great improvement ; and at half the cost at which the machinery had been constructed. Trade and commerce thus look always in opposite directions, the one desiring, and producing, frequent and rapid changes, the other seeking and promoting regularity of movement. Of all the terms in use among men there are no two representing more opposite ideas; yet are they, without exception, used by economists as being entirely synonymous, and rightfully interchangeable Avith each other.

Having thus provided for the world's use a science without a recognized language ; one whose pro- fessors cannot understand each other; one that, being merely "abstract or hypothetical," demands, as we are assured, that we " reason from assumptions, and not from facts" — the next step, as will now be shown, has been that of assuming the existence of a being in human form, but deprived, as far as possible, of all human qualities, the modern political economy requiring that we —

" Do not treat of the whole of man's nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to acquire wealth, and who is capable of judging of the comparative effi- ciency of means for obtaining that end. It predicts only such of the phenomena of the social state as take place in conse- quence of the pursuit of wealth. It makes entire abstraction of eveiy other passion or motive ; except those which may be re- garded as perpetually antagonizing principles to the desire of

16 THE UNITY OF LAW.

wealth, namely — aversion to labor, and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences. These it takes, to a certain extent, into its calculations, because these do not merely, like other desires, occasionally conflict with the pursuit of wealth, but accompany it always as a drag or impediment, and therefore inseparably mixed up in the consideration of it. Political eco- nomy considers mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth, and aims at showing what is the course of action into which mankind, living in a state of society, would be impelled, if that motive, except in the degree in which it is checked by the two perpetual counter-motives above adverted to, were absolute ruler of all their actions." — J. S. Mill.

, Happily for mankind, the animal here exhibited is as fanciful as is the Giant Despair of the " Pil- grim's Progress," its existence, according to Mr. Mill himself, being an assumed and not a real one.* § 5. Ptolemy having assumed that the sun revolved around the earth, his disciples at a later date fur- nished a planetarium, or instrument by vphich, as they then asserted, the movements of all the celes- tial bodies could, in perfect harmony with their master's great idea, readily be explained. Mr. Mal- thus having, in like manner, assumed that man had always commenced the work of cultivation on the richest soils, and that with increase of numbers it had been, and always must be, necessary to have recourse to those of an inferior description, with steadily diminishing returns to labor, Mr. Eicardo followed the theory up by assuming that constantly

* " Not that any political economist was ever so absurd as to suppose tliat manliiiid is really so constituted, but because this is the mode in which science must necessarily proceed."— /. S. Mill, Essai/s on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy, p. 139.

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 17

diminishing production had been, and must be, attended with power on the landlord's part to take to himself a constantly increasing share of the di- minished product, leaving to the poor laborer a steadily diminishing share of a constantly declining quantity; the growing inequality of the people of England being thus proved to be the result of a great law established by the Creator for government of the human race. A tendency towards subjection of the masses, or, in other words, towards slavery, having been thus established as a necessary result of divine institutions, Mr. Mill certainly did not err when telling his readers that the law of the con- stantly decreasing productiveness of agricultural labor whose existence had been thus assumed, was "the most important proposition in political econ- omy;" and that, "were the law different, nearly all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be different." So far he was en- tirely right. When, however, the baselessness of the Malthusian assumption had been distinctly shown ; when it had been proved that the work of cultiva-^ tion had in all ages and countries necessarily com- menced on the poorer soils, passing steadily, as numbers, wealth, power, and civilization grew, towards those more rich, with constantly increasing facility in obtaining supplies of food and other products of the soil ; when it had been shown that such proceeding had been in full accordance with the law in virtue of which poor and scattered men find themselves, in every departr^ent of occupation,

2

18 THE UNITY OP LAW.

compelled to commence with poor machinery, passing thence to that which is better ; when these things had all been proved by means of facts occurring at every age and in every part of the world, it is cer- tainly somewhat remarkable that a philosopher like Mr. Mill should have contented himself with simply denying the existence of any " invariable law," and demanding proof that " the return to labor from the land, when population and wealth increase, agricul- tural skill and science remaining the same, is not a diminishing one."

How to treat such a suggestion as this it is diiB- cult to determine, it being — and in so saying, it is earnestly desired to avoid disrespect to its author — simply absurd; more so, even, than his celebrated " wages fund" theory, now abandoned. As well might he claim of an opponent to prove that had mining skill and science remained the same from the days of the Plantagenets, the return to mining labor would not have been a steadily diminishing one. Both cases being alike impossible of occurrence, both are equally unworthy of place in a work which professes to fur- nish scientific information. Growing wealth in- volves necessarily development of" skill and science," and the philosophy of the attempt to separate them in the manner here proposed is strictly on a par with one whose aim should be that of dissolving the connection between the appearance of light and the presence of the sun.

Discussing further the question of the order of cultivation, Mr. Mill demands that his opponent

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 19

show " that in any old country the uncultivated lands are those which would pay best for cultivation," Dartmoor and Shap Fell being, as he tells his read- ers, thereby proved " to be really the most fertile lands in England." The assumption here is, that " the uncultivated lands" referred to had always remained in a state of nature ; and yet no one better than its author knows that from Land's End to John o'Groat's Britain abounds in evidence that large portions of those very lands had been the chosen seats of early cultivation ; that in many cases they had been abandoned even before the historic period ; that the lower and richer lands had been but very slowly, and at a comparatively recent date, reduced to cultivation; and that the now richest soils of the kingdom had been, but a century or two since, en- tirely unoccupied.*

* The picture of the occupation of the Scottish. isles and highlands furnished bj the Duke of Argyll in his little volume recently pub- lished, and now here given, applies with equal force to the whole of Britain, and her attendant islands : —

" At a time when artificial drainage was unknown, and in a rainy climate, the flats and hollows which in the Highlands are now generally most valuable portions of the laud, were occupied by swamps and moss. On the steep slopes alone, which aiforded natural drainage, was it pos- sible to raise cereal crops. And this is one source of that curious ervot which strangers so often make in visiting and in writing on the Highlands. They see marks of the plough high up upon the mountains, where the land is now very wisely abandoned to the pasturage of sheep or cattle ; and, seeing this, they conclude that tillage has decreased, and they wail over the diminished industry of man. But when those high banks and braes were cultivated, the richer levels below were the haunts of the otter and the fishing places of the heron. Those ancient ploughmarks are tte sure indications of a rude and ignorant husbandry. In the eastern slopes of lona, Colmnba and his companions found one tract of

20 THE UNITY OF LAW,

Proof having been furnished that land obeys invariably the same law that we see to be true in reference to all other commodities and things, its value, like theirs, being limited within, and greatly within, what would be its cost of reproduction; that London itself, with all its advantages of situa- tion, formed no exception to the rule ; and that the value, whether in money or in labor, of all England is not even a tithe of what would be required for restoring it to its present condition, were it to be now restored to its original state; Mr. Mill assumes the possibility of a convulsion of nature whose effect should be that of at once doubling the size of the island, asking then, triumphantly, if that additional land could be supposed to have no value, for the reason that no labor had been expended on it? Had he reflected more carefully, he would have arrived at the conclusion that no such assumption could be needed, each successive year presenting cases of addition quite as fortuitous as the one he had here deemed it proper to suggest. Studying the real facts in regard to such additions, he would have been led inevitably to the conclusion that an aerolite, however large and however fully charged with gold, falling among the sands of xifrica, could

laud which was as adimirably adapted for the growth of corn as the remainder of it was suited to the support of flocks and herds. On the northeastern side of the island, between the rooky pasturage and the shore, there is a long, natural deolivitjr of arable soil, steep enough to be naturally dry, and protected by the hill from the western blast.

" And so here Colomba's tent was pitched, and his Bible opened, and his banner raised for the conversion of the heathen."— /ono, pp. 81-3.

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 21

have no money value whatsoever ; whereas, falling among British workshops, its price would be very- large. So, too, with a discovery of coal or ore in any one of thousands of places in these United States, as compared with similar discoveries in Ger- many or France. So, again, with the land whose sudden -appearance he has here assumed. Added to England, it would, like the coal or ore above referred to, , participate with all existing land in the advanta^s resulting from close proximity to mar- kets. Added to countries where no such markets existed, it could have no value whatsoever.

The facts assumed by Mr. Mill, in preference to real facts that had been always within his reach, having been thus disposed of, it is proposed now to look for a moment to his own arguments, given to the world as being those of his opponents.

§ 6. In the sixth and last edition of his " Prin- ciples," Mr. Mill admits that what Malthus and his followers had assumed as having been universally true, had not really been so when applied to " soil cultivated in a newly settled country. It is not," as he continues, "pretended that the law of diminishing return was operative from the very beginning of society;" yet does it, as he further says, "begin quite early enough to support the conclusions they founded on it." This, be it observed, is asserted by an author residing in a country whose earliest cultivation we see to have been of lands so poor that they long since had been abandoned to give place to an agriculture like that of Lancashire, where the

22 THE UNITY OF LAW.

labors of a single individual furnish a larger yield than could have been obtained in return to those of almost a regiment of men in the days when the centre of British population, vpealth, and power was found in the long since abandoned neighborhood of Tintagel, when King Arthur there held his court; and when its Celtic inhabitants were engaged " in rendering the British islands for the first time fit for the habitation of man."*

Rejecting all facts like these, Mr. Mill persists in the assertion of diminishing returns to agricultural labor, this time summoning his opponent into court, to become witness in his favor, his call being made in the following terms, to wit: —

"Mr. Carey unconsciously bears the strongest testimony to the reality of the law he contends against ; for one of the pro- positions most strenuously maintained by him is, that the raw products of the soil, in an advancing community, tend steadily to rise in price. Now, the most elementary truths of political economy show that this could not happen unless the cost of pro- duction, measured in labor, of those products, tended to rise."t

In this there is a confusion of money and labor values somewhat remarkable as coming from so eminent a logician. Allowing it, however, to pass, and at once admitting entire ignorance of the ex- istence of any such " elementary truths," the reader's attention is now invited to the fact that Mr. Mill here entirely misrepresents the author he has pro-

* MiiUer, Chips from a German Workshop. Article, Cornish Antiqui- ties.

t Principles, isistli ed., vol. i. p. 228.

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 23

fessed to cite, the words " raw products of the soil" not having been used, and the tendency to rise in price having been shown to be common not only to all such products, but also, and most especially, to land and labor, both of which have been here suppressed. That this may be clearly seen and understood, the whole passage here apparently referred to is given below, as follows : —

The power of a commodity to command money in exchange is called its price. Prices fluctuate ; much food and wool being sometimes, or at some places, given for little money, while at others much money is given for little of either wool or food. What are the circumstances which tend to affect prices generally we may now consider.

A thousand tons of rags, or wool, at the Rocky Mountains would not exchange for the smallest piece of money ; whereas a quire of paper would command, perhaps, an ounce of silver. Passing eastward to the plains of Kansas, their relative values would have so much changed that the price of the rags would pay for many reams of paper. Coming to St. Louis, a further change would be experienced, rags having again risen, and paper again fallen. So, too, at every stage of the progress eastward, until in Massachusetts three pounds of rags would command more silver than would purchase a pound of paper. The ac- companying diagram exhibits these changes.

The price of raw materials tends to rise as we approach those places at which men are most enabled to combine for obtaining power to command the services of the great forces of nature. That of finished commodities moves in an opposite direction, both tending thus to more close approximation. Cotton is low on the plantation, but high in Manchester or Lowell. Corn in Illinois is often so cheap that a bushel does not pay even for a yard of coai'se cotton cloth, whereas in Manchester it pays for a dozen yards.

24

THE UiSriTT OF LATV.

PAPER.

RAGS.

Massachusetts.

Raw material tends to rise in price with the progress of men in wealth and civilization. What, however, is raw material ? In answer to this question, we may say, that all the products of the earth are in turn, finished commodity and raw material. Coal and ore are the finished commodity of the miner, but'the raw material of pig-iron. The latter is the finished commodity of the smelter, yet only the raw material of the puddler, and of him who rolls the bar. The bar is again the raw material of sheet-iron, that, in turn, becoming the raw material of the nail and the spike. These, in time, become the raw material of the house, in the diminished cost of which are concentrated all the changes in the various stages of passage from the crude ore lying useless in the earth, to the nail and spike, the hammer and saw, used in the constrnction of a dwelling.

In the early and barbarous ages of society land and labor are very low in price, and the richest deposits of coal and ore are worthless. Houses are then obtained with such exceeding diffi- culty that men are forced to depend for shelter against wind and rain upon holes and caves they find existing in the earth. In time they are enabled to combine their efforts, and with every step in the course of progress land and labor acquire power to Command money in exchange, while houses lose it. As the ser- vices of fuel are more readily commanded, pig-iron is more easily obtained. Both, in turn, facilitate the making of bars and sheets, nails and spikes, all of these in turn facilitating the creation of boats, ships, and houses ; each and every of these improvements tending to augment the prices of the original raw materials — land aud labor. At no period in the history of the world has

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 25

the general price of these latter been so high as in the present one ; at none would the same quantity of money have purchased BO staunch a boat, so fleet a ship, or so comfortable a house.

The more finished a commodity, the greater is the tendency to a fall of price ; and for the same reason, that all the economies of labor of the earlier processes are accumulated together in the later ones. Houses thus profit by all improvements in the mak- ing of bricks, in the quarrying of stone, in the conversion of lumber, and in the working of the metals. So, too, is it with articles of clothing — every improvement in the various processes of spinning, weaving, and dyeing, and in the conversion of clothing into garments, being found gathered together in the coat. The more numerous those improvements the lower will be its price, while the higher mil he that of the land and labor to which the wool is due.* — Manual of Social Science, pp. 285-6.

Eeasoning " from assumptions, and not from facts," Mr. Mill rejects all of these latter here pre- sented, except the single one that seemed to suit his purpose ; even then, as has been shown, substituting the comparatively narrow expression " raw products of the soil" for the far more comprehensive "raw material," covering, as does this latter, not only land and labor, but also that from which we obtain the plough, the ship, and the dwelling. In so doing, he has certainly made a sad mistake. The best evidence men can furnish of confidence in the ac- curacy of their own belief consists in frankly and honestly presenting the arguments of their op- ponents.

* Views Bimilar to these in effect occur necessarily in other portions of the work ; but, as it is believed, in no case so presented as to afford even the slightest warrant for the use here made of them by Mr. Mill. On the contrary, land, labor, and the rude products of both are through- out most intimately connected.

26 THE UNITY OF LAW.

§ 7. Adam Smith laid the foundation of a science far grander and more magnificent than any of those whose cultivation has brought such fame and honor to Murchison and Lyell, Tyndall and Huxley, Grove and Faraday, Morse and Henry of our ovi'n time, and to Franklin, Dalton, Fourcroy, and Berzelius in the past. Looking to the future while teaching the lessons of the past, he did not fail to caution his countrymen against the dangers, moral, mental, and physical, to which they must find themselves ex- posed should they continue onward in pursuit of a policy looking to the conversion of the island into a mere shop, and themselves into a " nation of shop- keepers." His immortal work was first published in 1776, its essential object having been that of enforcing upon the author's countrymen the great truth, that trade and manufacture were useful only so far as they contributed to the development of the treasures of the earth, and to the promotion of com- merce. He saw that the colonial system, looking exclusively to trade, tended unnaturally to increase the proportion of the British population employed in the work of exchange and transportation, thereby raising up "a nation of mere shopkeepers," and forcing industry to run principally in one great channel, instead of in a number of smaller ones; and he warned his countrymen of the dangers they thus incurred. Great, however, as were even then those dangers, England had yet but entered on the effort to reduce the world at large under the system so long imposed upon her colonial depend-

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 2T

ents.* The interdiction of the emigration of artisans dated then back but a single decade, and the battle of Plassey, by which the British power in India had been established, was then not twenty years old. Five years later came the prohibition of the export of silk and woollen machinery ; and before the close of the century the policy had been perfected by the extension of this prohibition to all other descriptions of machinery, to artisans by whom it might be made, and to colliers.

* How tyrannical and oppressive were tliose restrictions on colonial domestic commerce whlcli were denounced by Smith as not only iu themselves immoral, but as tending to the deterioration of his own countrymen, is shown in the /acts here given, as follows : — •

In 1699, Parliament declared "that no wool, yarn, or woollen manu- factures of their American plantations, should be shipped there, or even laden, in order to be transported from thence to any-place whatever.'^

In 1719, the House of Commons declared " that the erecting of manu- factories in the Colonies tended to lessen the dependence on Great Britain."

In order to protect British hatters from competition in America, Par- liament passed an act in 1732, prohibiting hats from being laden upon a horse, cart, or other carriage in the Colonies, with an intent to be exported to any other plantation, or to any place whatsoever, under a penalty of forfeiture of the hats so laden, and a fine of five hundred pounds I The same aet prohibited the employment of blacks or negroes iu the Colonies, in the business of making hats ; and also prohibited any person from engaging in the manufacture who had not served as an apprentice iu the business for seven years I

Iu 1750, Parliament passed an act prohibiting the erection or continu- ance of any mill or other engine in the Colonies, for slitting or rolling iron, or any plating forge to work with a tilt hammer, or any furnace for making steel in the Colonies, under a penalty of two hundred pounds. And eveiy such mill, engine, plating forge, and furnace in the Colonies was declared a common nuisance, and the Governors of the Colonies, on the information of two witnesses, were directed to cause the same to be abated within thirty days, or to forfeit the sum of five hundred pounds !

Of all tyrannies the most debasing to both master and man is that of the mere trader, as then and now exercised by Britain.

28 THE UNITY OF LAW.

From that hour to the present the British policy has been in direct opposition to all the teachings of the author of the Wealth of Nations, and in as direct accordance with those of Messrs. Hume and Brougham, the great object of whose desires, as ex- pressed in Parliament, was that, at any cost, "foreign manufactures should be stifled in the cradle," and that the nations of the world might be thus com- pelled to make all their exchanges in the British shop. From that hour, all that was really great and good in political economy has more and more tended to disappear, man being with each successive day more and more treated as a mere machine, and " the labor market" being more and more regarded as subject to the same laws which govern those other markets in which horses, oxen, and human cattle are elsewhere bought and sold. Side by side with this system the science here discussed has gradually been perfected, giving to the world divine laws in virtue of which all power tends naturally toward the hands of those already rich and strong, all responsibility being thrown on the shoulders of those who are poor and weak. If the latter will marry and will have children, why should they not be all9wed to starve, as have already done so many millions of Irish people t. Gradually accommodating itself to the policy denounced by the great Father of political economy, the science of which he had laid the foundations has become, to use the words of more than one eminent authority, " the science which treats of buying and selling;" one almost

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 29

equally eminent meanwhile cautioning the British public against "advocating the rights of labor," lest they find themselves to have been " digging a grave for free trade;" a third cautioning French authorities . against admitting the truth of the idea that the work of cultivation had commenced on the poorer soils, for the reason that " it led inevitably to protection."* Such is the politico-economical science whose foundations have now been placed in the grocer's shop and the peddler's wallet; whose every sugges- tion is opposed to that which common sense and common humanity teach the British people should of right be done;t whose one idea is found in the words

* Journal des Economistes, Deo. 1851, p. 297.

t " Proposals for legislative interference with a view to arrest some of the most frightful evils of society are still constantly opposed not by careful analysis of their tendency, hut by general assertions of Natural Law as opposed to all legislation of the kind. ' You cannot make men moral by Act of Parliament' — such is a common enunciation of Principle, which, like many others of the same kind, is in one sense a truism, and in every other sense a fallacy. It is true that neither wealth, nor health, nor knowledge, nor morality can be given by Act of Parliament. But it is also true that the acquisition of one and of all these can be im- peded and prevented by bad laws, as *ell as aided and encouraged by wise and appropriate legislation." — Duhe of Argyll, Reign of Law, -p. 404.

When a few years since it had been shown that in the bleaching establishments of both England and Scotland men, women, and children were required to work for sixteen to twenty hours per day under such a, temperature that their feet frequently became blistered by reason of the heating of the nails in the floor, and that because of the waste of life therein they had attained the name of "wasting shops:" when these things had been officially certified to, Parliament rejected a bill providing for putting them under the same restrictions as to hours of labor as had already been established for cotton mills ; so doing avowedly on the ground that such measures were opposed to true political economy as well as injurious to trade.

Mr. Herbert Spencer objects most positively to all such measures for

30 THE UNITY OF LAW.

" free trade;" whose terms are so undefined that it may safely be said of it, as has been said of meta- physics, that its language was that of one who did not understand himself, addressed to another who did not understand him ; whose tendencies were well described by the elder Napoleon when he said that, carried into practical efi'ect, " they would grind to powder the most powerful empires ;" whose result,^ thus far, has been that of giving to England an ever-rising tide of pauperism, and a rural popula- tion with, according to Edinburgh Reviewers, no future but the poorhouse; and whose professors yet claim to be disciples in the school of Adam Smith, the man who, were he now alive, would stand before the world as chief opponent of the science that has nothing but baseless " assumptions" on which to stand.*

§ 8. The following passages from an excellent arti- cle on The Method of Political Economy, in a recent British journal, are, in conclusion, here reproduced for the reader's consideration: —

" So far we bave considered political economy only as a mental science, because economists will insist on treating the subject

protecting the poor and weak against the rich and powerful, on the ground that it is the duty of government " to see that the liberty of each man to pursue the object of his desires is unrestricted." In support of this view he cites the late Mr. Cobden, but he might equally have cited the whole slaveholding body of America, opposed, as it had been, to the adoption of any course of action tending to prevent its members from " doing as they liked with their own," whether as regarded negro slaves or bales of cotton.

* The reader who may desire to see a iflore full examination of some of the details of the modern science will do well to consult an article ou "Economic Fallacies" in the London Quarterly Review for July, 1S71.

A SCIENCE BASED UPON ASSUMPTIONS. 31

exclusively from a mental point of view. But political economy is quite as much a physical science as a mental one. Wealth is a material and tangible object, which is not to be secured by wishing for it, but by acting in strict accordance with the physi- cal conditions of its existence. The production of the simplest commodity involves the operation of numerous laws of matter. There is a perpetual action and reaction going on of mind on matter and matter on mind. An effect which may appear as the result of one cause, may in reality be the result of a whole series of causes. To explain the effect, therefore, we must take into account, not one, but every cause that might in the remotest degree have had any influence in producing it. It so happens that in political economy the effects are more accessible than the causes, and this points to the inductive method as the proper one for an investigation of this kind. Treated by the inductive method, political economy is a science of the highest practical value ; treated a priori, it is not a science at all, but only a scientific artifice, a mere theory of human action in one particular direction, and which has not even the merit of being approxi- mately correct.

*******

"Political economy has not yet even arrived at the first or preparatory period. We have not yet begun to collect and ar- range our facts. Political economy is in the same state to-day that geology was before the days of Hutton and William Smith, or as the science of language was when comparative philology was unknown, and Hebrew was supposed to be the one primeval

language of the human race.

*******

"The charges brought against the science by Comte were not altogether uncalled for. Political economy exhibits no sign of progressiveness. Instead of discoveries, of which we have had none of any consequence since Adam Smith's time, we have had endless disputation and setting up of dogmas. It was so in Comte's day, and so it is in ours. Whatever progress may have been made in other sciences during the last century, there has been none in this. The most elelnentary principles are still matters of dispute. Tiie doctrine of free trade, for instance.

32 THE UNITY OF LAW.

which is looked upon as the crowning triumph of political econ- omy, is still very far from being universally recognized. Even in England, after twenty years' trial under most favorable circumstances, free trade has been put upon its defence. We make no progress, and from the very nature of our method of investigation, we can make none. The political economist observes phenomena with a foregone conclusion as to their cause. His method, in fact, is the method of the savage. The phenomena of nature, the thunder, the lightning, or the earth- quake, strike the savage with awe and wonder ; but he only looks within himself for an explanation of these phenomena. To him, therefore, the forces of nature are only the efforts of beings like himself— great and powerful no doubt, but with good and evil propensities and subject to every human caprice. Like the poli- tical economist, he works within the vicious circle of his own feelings, and he cannot comprehend any more than the savage how he can discover the laws which regulate the phenomena which he sees around him. The savage would reduce the Divine mind to the dimensions of the human ; the political economist would reduce the human mind to the dimensions of his ideal.

" Our conclusion is that the inductive method is alone appli- cable to the investigation of economic science, and that we shall never be able to make any solid progress so long as we continue to follow the a priori method — method which has not aided, but clogged and fettered us in the pursuit of truth, and which is utterly alien to the spirit of modern scientific inquiry." — West- minster Beview, July, 1871.

That the views thus presented are correct is beyond question. Political Economy, as now taught, is in a position closely correspondent with that occupied by Astronomy before the days of Copernicus, Kep- ler, and Galileo.- There, too, must it remain until its professors shall qualify themselves for furnishing answers to the simple questions — Whence comes the idea of value \ Of what does value consist %

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 33

CHAPTER II. OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS.

§ 1. The first man, when he had day after day even for a single week witnessed the rising and setting of the sun, the former having invariably been accompanied by the presence of light, while the latter had as invariably been followed by its absence, had thus acquired the first rude elements of positive knowledge, or science. The cause — the sun's rising — being given, it would have been be- yond his power to conceive that the effect should not follow. With further observation he learned to remark that at certain seasons of the year the luminary appeared to traverse particular portions of the heavens, that then it was always warm, and the trees put forth leaves, to be followed by fruit; whereas, at others, it appeared to occupy other por- tions of the heavens, the fruit then disappearing and the leaves falling, as a prelude to the winter's cold. Here was a further addition to his stock of knowledge, bringing with it foresight, and a feeling of the necessity for action. If he would live during the season of cold, he could do so only by preparing for it during the season of heat, a principle as thoroughly understood by the wandering Esquimaux of the shores of the Arctic Ocean as by the most

3

34 THE UNITT OF LAW.

enlightened and eminent philosopher of Europe or America.*

Earliest among the ideas of such a man would be those of space, quantity, and form. The sun was obviously very remote, while of the trees some were distant and others were close at hand. The moon was single, while the stars were countless. The tree was tall, while the shrub was short. The hills were high, and tending towards a point, the plains be- ing low and flat. We have here the most abstract, simple, and obvious of all conceptions. The idea of space is the same, whether we regard the distance between the sun and the stars by which he is sur- rounded, or that between the mountains and our- selves. So, too, with number and form, which apply

* "These faets, that science and the positive knowledge of the uncul- tured cannot be separated in nature, and that the one is hut a perfected and extended form of the other, must necessarily underlie the whole theory of science, its progress, and the relations of its parts to each other. There must be serious incompleteness in any history of the sciences which, leaving out of view the first steps of their genesis, com- mences with them only when they assume definite forms. There must he grave defects, if not a general untruth, in a philosophy of the sci- ences considered in their interdependence and development, which neglects the inquiry how they came to be distinct sciences, and how they were severally evolved out of the chaos of primitive ideas. * * * Is not science a growth ? Has not aoienoe, too, its embryology f And must not the neglect of its embryology lead to a misunderstanding of the principles of its evolution and of its existing organization ? There are a priori reasons, therefore, for doubting the truth of all philoso- phies of the sciences which tacitly proceed upon the common notion that scientific knowledge and ordinary knowledge are separate ; instead of commencing, as they should, by affiliating the one upon the other, and showing how it gradually came to be distinguishable from the o'her. We may expect to find their generalizations essentially artificial, and we shall uol be deceived." — Herbert Spencer, Genesis of Science.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 35

to the sands of the sea-shore as readily as to the gigantic trees of the forest, or to the various bodies seen to be moving through the heavens.

Next in order would come the desire, or the necessity, for comparing distances, numbers, and magnitudes, the means for this being at hand in machinery supplied by nature, and always at his command. His finger or his arm would supply a measure of magnitudes, his pace doing the same by distance ; and the standard with which he would compare the weights would be found in some one among the most ordinary commodities by which he was surrounded. In numerous cases, however, distances, velocities, or dimensions proving to be beyond the reach of direct measurement, there is thus produced a necessity for devising means of com- paring distant and unknown quantities with those that, being near, can be ascertained, and hence arises mathematics, or The Science — so denominated by the Greeks, because to its aid was due nearly all the positive knowledge of which they were possessed.

The multiplication table enables the ploughman to determine the number of days contained in a given number of weeks, and the merchant to calculate the number of pounds contained in his cargo of cotton. By help of his rule, the carpenter determines the distance between the ends of the plank on which he works. The sounding-line enables the sailor to ascertain the depth of water around his ship, and by aid of the barometer the traveller determines the height of the mountain on which he stands.

36 THE UNITY OF LAW.

All these are instruments for facilitating the acqui- sition of knowledge ; such, too, being the formulae of mathematics by help of which the philosopher determines the magnitude and weight of bodies distant from him millions of millions of miles, and is thus enabled to solve innumerable questions of the highest interest to man. They are the key to science, but are not to be confounded with science itself, although often included in the list of sci- ences, and even so recently as in M. Comte's well- known work. That such should ever have been the case has been due to the fact that so much of what is really physics is discussed under the head of mathematics; as is the case with the great laws for whose discovery we are indebted to Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. That a body impelled by a single force will move in a right line and with a velocity that is invariable, and that action and reaction are equal and opposite, are facts at the knowledge of which we have arrived in consequence of pursuing a certain mode of investigation ; but, when obtained, they are purely physical facts, ob- tained by help of the instrument to which we apply the term mathematics — and which is, to use the words of M. Comte, simply " an immense extension of natural logic to a certain order of deductions."* Logic is itself, however, but another of the instru- ments devised by man for enabling him to obtain a knowledge of nature's laws. To his eyes the earth

* Positive Philosophy, Martineau's Translation, vol. i. 33.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHOD'S. 37

appears to be a plane, yet does he see the sun rising daily in the east and setting as regularly in the west, from Avhich he might infer that it would always continue so to do ; but of this he can feel no certainty until he has satisfied himself why it is that it does so rise and set. At one time seeing the sun to be eclipsed, while at another the moon ceases to give light, he desires to know why such things are — what is the law governing the movements of those bodies ; having obtained which, he is enabled to predict when they will again cease to give light, and to determine when they must have done so in times that are past. At one moment ice or salt melts ; at another, gas explodes ; at a third, walls are shattered and cities are hurled to the ground ; and he seeks to know why these things are — what is the relation of cause and effect ] In the effort to obtain answers to all these questions, he observes and records facts, then arranging them with a view to determining the laws by virtue of which they occur — and he invents barometers, thermometers, and other instruments to aid him in his observations, but the ultimate object of all is that of obtaining an answer to the questions: Why are all these things'? Why is it that dew falls on one day and not on another"? Why is it that corn grows abun- dantly in this field and fails altogether in that one 1 Why is it that coal burns and granite will not"? What, in a word, are the laws instituted by the Creator for the government of matter 1 The answers to these questions constitute science — and mathe-

38 THE UNITY OP LA.^.

matics, logic, and all other of the machinery in use, are but instruments used by him for the purpose of obtaining them.

Discussing the subject of rational mechanics under the head of mathematics, M. Comte informs his readers that we here " encounter a perpetual confu- sion between the abstract and the concrete points of view ; between the logical and the physical ; between the artificial conceptions necessary to help us to general laws of equilibrium and motion, and the natural facts furnished by observation, which must form the basis of the science."* This, however, is only saying that as " the natural facts," furnished by observation, increase in number, there arises a necessity for endeavoring to perfect the machinery by help of which they are to be studied ; and that such is the case in the instance here referred to is shown in M. Comte's admission that the science of which he treats is " founded on some general facts, furnished by observation, of which we can give no explanation whatever."! Passing from gate to gate of science, we pass from simple to compound locks, requiring additional wards in the keys by which they are to be opened ; but the key still remains a key, and can never become a lock, even though the wards become fifty-fold more numerous than those of any yet constructed by Bramah, Chubb, or Hobbs, and require years of study for acquiring its proper management. There arises then what may

* Positive Philosophy, Martineau's Translation, vol. i. p 107 t Ibid.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 39

be called the science of the key, but it constitutes no part of natural science. When D'Alembert made, to use the words of Comte, "a discovery, by help of which all investigation of the motion of any body or system might be converted at once into a question of equilibrium," he merely opened a new ward in the key by which we were to unlock the cabinet of nature, and thus enlarge the boundaries of that department of knowledge which treats of the properties of matter and the laws by which it is governed, and known as physical science.

§ 2. Abstract mathematics necessarily took pre- cedence of the more concrete physics, because they were the sole product of logic, and dependent upon those first principles which are in their elements so nearly intuitive that when a boy commences the study of geometry he finds that he had already acquired a knowledge of much that is now being given to him as science. Hence, too, it was that moral science, poetry, the fine arts, and metaphysics were so far advanced in Greece, while mechanical science had scarcely an existence.

In defaultof observation, men of speculative habits looked inwards to their own minds and invented theories that were given to the world as laws, but, as has well been said, " Man can invent nothing in science or religion but falsehood, and all the truths that he discovers are but facts or laws that have emanated from the Creator." The men of the Middle Ages — the philosophers of the schools — taught the theories that had been invented by their

40 THE UNITY OF LAW.

Grecian predecessors, leaving it for Bacon to teach the philosophy that leads to the search for truth among the facts of nature and not among the spec- ulations of men. From his day to the present there has been a perpetual tendency towards the substitu- tion of careful observation and induction for the dreams of theorists, and as the Cartesian doctrine of Vortices gave way to the discovery of gravitation, so the imaginary phlogiston of Stahl, and the Pluto- nian and Neptunian cosmogonies, have yielded to the discoveries of modern science. The former was early displaced by the oxygen of Lavoisier, while the latter held their ground until disproved by the observations of geologists, whose branch of science dates its existence but little beyond the present century.

In physics, the more abstract and general has in its development tended to take precedence of that which is concrete and special, both, however, mov- ing gradually onward, each aiding and aided by the other. Astronomy, the science of the laws govern- ing bodies exterior to our own planet, was studied at an early period, the shepherds of Chaldea hav- ing carefully noted the movements of the celestial bodies, and Babylonians having calculated eclipses thousands of years before the commencement of the Christian era. From a well in Syene Eratosthenes obtained the observations required for determining the terrestial meridian ; and many centuries before Copernicus, Archimedes taught the double motion of the earth around its axis and around the sun.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 41

The precise length of the solar year was determined by Hipparchus, corresponding within ten minutes with the figures obtained by both Mexican and Etrurian observations.

The motions of the celestial bodies were thus early studied and comprehended, yet was it left to Newton to discover the reason why the apple falls to the earth ; to Franklin to discover the identity of lightning and electricity ; to Cavendish to dis- cover the composition of the air we breathe ; and to philosophers of our own day to discover the laws in virtue of which we see and hear. Laplace's great work of Celestial Mechanics was the product of the same period that witnessed the birth of a new science having for its object to determine the com- position of the globe on which we live and move, and from which we derive our daily bread. It is thus, as we approach nearer to man, his uses and pui'poses, we find the greatest retardation of that positive knowledge so early attained in reference to the method to be pui'sued in the effort for its attain- ment. The study of the history of science leads inevitably to an agreement with Buffon in the opinion that "however great may be our interest in knowing ourselves," we probably "understand better all that is not ourselves" — and with Eousseau in the belief that " much philosophy is required for observing the facts that are very near to us."

Passing from the more abstract and general laws governing the movements of distant bodies towards those determining the composition of the matter by

42 THE UNITY OF LAW.

which we are immediately surrounded, we find new laws, but all in harmony with those first obtained. Chemistry, following physics which deals with masses, deals with the elements of which they are composed, giving us atoms as obedient to the law of gravitation as are the earth, the satellites of Jupiter, and Jupiter himself. " The distinction between physics and chemistry," says M. Comte, " is much less easy to establish" than between chem- istry and astronomy, and, as he continues, "it is one more difficult to pronounce upon from day to day as new discoveries bring to light closer relations between them."* That such is the case will readily be seen by the reader who reflects how much of the present great development of physical knowledge has been due to the labors of Cavendish, Priestley, Black, Davy, Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Gay-Lussac, and other eminent chemists.

On another occasion M. Comte thus shows the intimate relation between physics on one side of chemistry, and physiology on the other : —

" By the important series of electro-chemical phenomena chem- istry becomes, as it were, a prolongation of physics : and at its other extremity, it lays the foundation of physiology by its research into organic combinations. These relations are so real that it has sometimes happened that chemists, untrained in the philosophy of science, have been uncertain whether a particular subject lay within their department, or ought to be referred either to physics or to physiology, "f

* Positive Philosophy, Martineau'a Translation, vol. i. p. 216. t Ibid., vol. i. p. 298.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 43

As yet, he is of opinion that " the direct depend- ence of chemistry on astronomy" is very slight, but

" When the time shall come for the development of concrete chemistry, that is, the methodical, application of chemical know- ledge to the natural history of the globe, astronomical considera- tions will no doubt enter in where now there seems no point of contact between the two sciences. Geology, immature as it is, hints to us such a future necessity, some vague instinct of which was probably in the minds of philosophers in the theological age, when they were fancifully and yet obstinately bent on uniting astrology and alchemy. It is, in fact, impossible to conceive of the great intestinal operations of the globe as radically inde- pendent of its planetary conditions."*

Passing thus from the masses of physics through the atoms into which they are resolved by chemistry, we next find those atoms arranging themselves in organized and living forms, and constituting the still more special subjects of vegetable, animal, and human physiology, whose connection with chemistry is thus described : —

" Physiology depends upon chemistry both as a point of de- parture and as a principal means of investigation. If we separate the phenomena of life, properly so called, from those of animality, it is clear that the first, in the double intestinal movement which characterizes them, are essentially chemical. The processes which result from organization have peculiar characteristics; but apart from such modifications, they are necessarily subjected to the general laws of chemical effects. Even in studying living bodies under a simply statical point of view, chemistry is of indispensable use in enabling us to distinguish with precision the different anatomical elements of any organism. "f

Again, in treating of biology, he says: —

* Positive Philosophy, Martineau's Translation, vol. i. p. 299. t Ibid., vol. i. p. 300.

44 THE UNITY OF LAW,

"It is to chemistry that biology is by its nature most directly and completely subordinated. In analyzing the phenomena of life, we saw that the fundamental acts which, by their per- petuity, characterize that state, consist of a series of compositions and decompositions; and they are therefore of a chemical na- ture. Though in the most imperfect organisms vital reactions are widely separated from common chemical effects, it is not the less true that all the functions of the proper organic life are necessarily controlled by those fundamental laws of composition and decomposition which constitute the subject of chemical science. * * * Chemistry must clearly furnish the starting-point of every rational theory of nutrition, secretion, and, in short, all the functions of the vegetative life considered separately ; each of which is controlled by the influence of chemical laws, except for the special modifications belonging to organic conditions."*

It is not, however, with chemistry alone that physiology is connected. Eemote from astronomy as that department of knowledge appears to be, the relation between them " is more important," says M. Comte, "than is usually supposed. I mean," continues he —

" Something more than the impossibility of understanding the theory of weight, and its effects upon the organism, apart from the consideration of general gravitation. I mean, besides, and more especially, that it is impossible to form a scientific concep- tion of the conditions of vital existence without taking into the account the aggregate astronomical elements that characterize the planet which is the home of that vital existence. * * *

" It may at first appear anomalous, and a breach of the ency- clopedical arrangement of the sciences, that astronomy and biology should be thus immediately and eminently connected, while two other sciences lie between. But indispensable as are physics and chemistry, astronomy and biology are by their nature the two principal branches of natural philosophy. They,

Positive Philosophy, Martineau's Translation, vol i. p. 379.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 45

the complements of each other, include in their rational harmony the general system of our fundamental conceptions. The solar system and Man are the extreme terms within which our ideas will forever be included. The system first, and then Man, according to the positive course of our speculative reason : and the reverse in the active process : the laws of the system deter- mining those of Man, and remaining unaffected by them. Be- tween these two poles of natural philosophy the laws of physics interpose, as a kind of complement of the astronomical laws; and again, those of chemistry, as an immediate preliminary of the biological. Such being the rational and indissoluble con- stitution of these sciences, it becomes apparent why I insisted on the subordination of the study of Man to that of the system, as the primary philosophical characteristic of positive biology."

Passing now toward the more concrete and special department of knowledge treating of the relation of man with his fellow-man, and with the earth from which he derives his means of support, we find chemistry laying the foundation for it when " abol- ishing the idea of destruction and creation,"* and thus establishing the facts that the consumption of food is but a necessary step towards its reproduc- tion ; that in all the processes of agriculture man is but making a machine which supports him while engaged in making it; that the more time and mind he devotes to the development of the powers of the earth, the greater must be his power of production; and that the more rapidly the consumption of food follows its production, the more prompt will be the reproduction of the elements required for new sup- plies thereof. These views of the eifect of the principle thus established had not occurred to M.

* Positive Philosophy, Martiueau's Translation, p. 305.

46 THE UNITY OF LA"W.

Cotnte, but he shows clearly the direct connection of chemical and social science when telling his readers that —

" Before anything was known of gaseous materials and pro- ducts, many striking appearances must inevitably have inspired the idea of the real annihilation or production of matter in the general system of nature. These ideas could not yield to the true conception of decomposition and composition till we had de- composed air and water, and then analyzed vegetable and animal substances, and then finished with the analysis of alkalies and earths, thus exhibiting the fundamental principle of the indefinite perpetuity of matter. In vital phenomena, the chemical exami- nation of not only the substances of living bodies, but their functions — imperfect as it yet is — must cast a strong light upon the economy of vital nature by showing that no organic matter radically heterogeneous to inorganic matter can exist, and that vital transformations are subject like all others to the universal laws of chemical phenomena."

The exhibit thus made by M. Comte of the close relation of the various departments of science has been not only confirmed but extended at every stage of progress since he wrote. In his recent address, delivered before the British Association, its Presi- dent, Sir William Thomson, told its members, that " the earnest naturalists of the present day," not appalled by difficulties, were " struggling boldly and laboriously to pass out of the mere natural history stage of their study, and bring zoology within the range of natural philosophy." The course of things is thus upward and onward, chemistry aiding in the development of physics, the researches of physiolo- gists meanwhile making new demands upon, and

OF SCIElSrCE AND ITS METHODS. 47

thereby promoting the growth of, chemical science. Each helps and is helped by the other.

The root, the stem, the branches, the leaves, and the blossoms of the tree are obedient to the same system of laws. Colored water applied to the root changes the color of the blossom, and stoppage of nourishment to the root destroys the tree. It is still but a single tree, and so is it with the tree of science, whose root is found in physics, its stem branching into those divisions which are based upon observation and experiment, leaving us to find the leaves, the blossoms, and the fruit in the less de- monstrable departments of knowledge.

That this is true as regards the more abstract and general portions of science to which reference has here been made, can scarcely now be doubted. Wherefore, then, should we doubt that it would be found equally so in relation to those more concrete and special which treat of man in his relation with the material world — of man in his relations with his fellow-man — of man as a being capable of acquiring power over the various natural forces provided for his use, and responsible to his fellow-men, and to his Creator for the proper use of the faculties with which he has been so wonderfully endowed f. If the root, the stem, and the branches obey the same laws, should we not find the blossoms and the fruit of the tree of science equally obedient to them, and will not the diagram opposite represent with considerable accuracy the relation of the various departments of knowledge and- — having always re-

,48 THE UNITY OF LAW.

gard to the fact that each has aided, as it has been aided by, each and every other — the order of their march toward becoming perfect and exact science?

§ 3. " The distributions and partitions of know- ledge," says Lord Bacon in his Novum Organum, " are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and touch hut in a point ; but are like branches of a tree that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance before it comes to discontinuance and break itself into arms and boughs ; therefore," as he continues, " it is good, before we enter into the former distribution, to create and constitute one universal science by the name of Philosophia Prima, or Summary Philosophy, as the main or common way, before we come where the ways part and divide themselves."

Concerned as he was with the order and division of the sciences, and pledged as he was in the intro- duction to his work to furnish it, he failed to do so, " the first part of the Introduction which compre- hends the division of the sciences" being, says his editor, " wanting." A study, so far as the idea of the text appears to require elucidation, rather than an attempt to supply the deficiency, is submitted in its stead.

The several branches of natural science are com- monly spoken of, but the figure has a larger paral- lelism with the subject — a tree having not only branches but also roots. These latter are properly underground branches, constituting the structural support and furnishing the vital subsistence of the

E49.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 49

tree, which grows from its roots and with them. Its stem, branches, flowers, and fruits, being con- verted aliment supplied by and through the roots, the allusions of the figure are in good keeping with the natural history of the subject intended to be illustrated.

The central or tap root, as the reader sees, re- presents matter with its essential properties of inertia, impenetrability, divisibility, and attraction. The lateral ones stand on one side for mechanical and chemical forces, and on the other, for vegetable and animal ones; and from these substantive roots of being rises the stem, man, so composed as to his natural constitution. The soul, being the occult life of the structure, is incapable of representation, though manifested by its proper evidence in the flowers and fruits, the emotions and thoughts of his faculties.

We have now the stem — the man — " having

dimension and quantity of entireness and continu-

iince before it came to discontinue and break itself,"

branching off into his diverse activities. These

branches are his functions, ramifying into all their

specific diff'erences of application. The first branch

on the material side is Physics, as represented in

the diagram. Its ramifications are into natural

philosophy and chemistry — masses and atoms — and

the shoots from these are mechanics and chemical

dynamics; the one being the action of masses, and

the other that of atoms.

The main branch on the vital side of the tree, 4

50 THE UNITY OF LAW.

rising a little above Physics, must necessarily be Organology, branching first into the science of vege- table beings, Phytology, then sending off the shoot, Vegetable Physiology; and second, into that of animal beings. Zoology, leading to Biology, or the science of life.

Following the stem in the natural order of rank and successive development, it is seen next giving off Sociology, which divides itself into Jurisprudence and Political Economy, while on the corresponding side of the main branch. Psychology ramifies itself into Ethics and Theology — the tree finally topping out with Intuition as the material branch and Inspiration as the vital one. These highest and last named are rightly the source of the other science or sciences to which Bacon alludes as stand- ing above Metaphysics, when he says that, " as for the vertical point, the summary law of nature, we know not whether man's inquiry can attain unto it ;" that is, so as to order and methodize its teach- ings.

In this scheme of the sciences of things there is no place for either Logic or Mathematics, the re- spective regulative sciences of mind and matter. Neither of these belongs to Natural History, being both alike mere instruments to be used in the study of nature.

Historically, the top branches of the tree of know- ledge, as of all other trees, are first produced, and the branches next below are soon put forth, but mature later, the instincts of religion and reason

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 51

appearing in their vigor in the childhood of the race. Social science necessarily, and metaphysics spontaneously, extend themselves as early as societies take form, and speculation is awakened — bringing quickly forth the flowers and fruits of music, poetry, the fine arts, logic, mathematics, and those generali- ties of speculative truth which are the products of imagination and reflection.* The correspondence between the figure chosen and the facts to be illus- trated would seem to be complete.

In time, the branches nearer to the earth, more material in their substance and more dependent upon observation, obtain development in their larger diversity of use. The sciences of substance, of natui'al objects, grow and ramify themselves almost indefinitely — physical philosophy and organology, in their dependencies, shooting out in every direction of observation and experiment, at first overshadowed by the speculative branches above them, but always vivified by them ; while in their turn repaying this service by affording substantive strength and cor- rective modification as they grow into maturity.

Such is the history of science, and such the illustration of its orderly divisions, succession, and co-ordination; it represents the compound nature

* XenopUon urged upon his Athenian countrymen tliat in default of the domestic market for food that would have resulted from proper de- velopment of the mineral treasures with which their soil abounded, agriculture had become impossible ; many having been forced to abandon it, becoming usurers or brokers. See Journal des Economistes, Sept. 1871, p. 365. This is probably the earliest exhibit on record of the de- pendence of agriculture ou the mining and manufacturing industries.

52 THE UNITY OF LAW.

of man, the sources of his powers, and the order of their development.

§ 4. Seeking to obtain power over matter, man desires to obtain a knowledge of the laws instituted for its government. To become the subject of law, it is required that there be a regular and uniform succession of causes and effects, the nature of which may be expressed in distinct propositions — so that when we observe the former we may be enabled to predict the latter; or that when the latter are ob- served, we may safely assume the former to have pre-existed.

In the early ages of society theories abound, and for the reason that, in default of knowledge, almost every occurrence is regarded as accidental, or is at- tributed to the direct interposition of mythological powers whose qualities are so vaguely conceived as to make the idea of the events depending upon their action scarcely one remove from that of its being absolutely fortuitous and irreducible to order and rule. The Greeks of the days of Homer solicited the aid of imaginary deities, themselves moved to action by the same feelings and passions that influ- enced their worshippers ; precisely as does now the poor African who makes his oblations of corn or oil, palm-wine or rum, to the stock or stone, the alliga- tor, or the bundle of rags, he has chosen for his idol. With time, however, the regular succession of effects and causes comes to be understood, and at every stage of progress theory tends to pass away, yielding place to knowledge; this latter bringing with it power

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 53

to direct the forces of nature to man's service. At each such stage he obtains new evidence of the universality of natural laws — new proof that where exceptions appear to exist they are but appearances, and will, when carefully analyzed and fully under- stood, but prove the rule ; as does the smoke when rising in apparent opposition to the great law in virtue of which all the matter of which the earth is composed tends towards its centre.*

To prove the universality of law, thereby estab- lishing the unity of science, seemed at first to be the intention of M. Comte, from whose work pre- liminary to, and intended as the basis of, the one that was to be specially devoted to social science, the preceding extracts have been made. The pro- mised work subsequently appeared, but in it, as before when treating of man and his operations, he intentionally ignored that mathematical method to . which the earlier and more developed departments of science had so largely been indebted. That he should so have done would seem to have been a consequence of regarding mathematics as a science, and not as a mere instrument for the acquisition of scientific knowledge. Thus, in treating of chemistry, he tells us that " every attempt to refer chemical

* " We ought to conceive the study of nature as destined to furnish the true rational basis of the action of man upon nature ; because the knowledge of the laws of phenomena, of which the invariable result is foresight, and that alone, can conduct us in active life to modify the one by the other to our advantage. In short, Science whence Fore- sight, FoEESiGHT WHENCE AcTioN, suoli is the simple formula which expresses the general relation of Science and Art." — Comte.

54 I THE UNITY OF LAW.

questions to mathematical doctrines must be con- sidered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena."* "What, however, are those doctrines'? Are they anything beyond simple formulse adapted to the peculiar circumstances of the case under considera- tion ? Certainly not. The geometer tells us that every whole is equal to all its parts, and that things which are halves of the same thing are equal, axioms of universal application, and equally true in relation to all bodies, whether those treated by the chemist, the sociologist, or the measurer of land, but involving no question of doctrine whatsoever.

Occasionally M. Comte speaks of mathematics as what it clearly is, an "instrument of admirable efficacy," but being an instrument it can no more be a science than can a key become a lock. That instrument, the mathematical method, is always applicable, whatever may be the subject of investi- gation. That method is analysis — the study of each separate cause tending to produce a given effect. To it we owe all the discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and their successors; such, too, being the method of the chemist, who commences by ascertaining the separate force of each of his various ingredients, and ends by deducing the law of the effect. When engaged in the study of the skeleton, the physiologist uses the formulae of the physicist; but when studying the composition of the blood, he resorts necessarily to those of the chemist, in which

* Positive Philosophi/, Martineau's Translation, vol. i. p. 299.

OF SCIENCE And its methods. 55

is embodied all the knowledge derived from the observation of the philosophers by v(^hom he had been preceded. This method, however, is discarded by M. Comte in treating of social science, as will be seen by the following passage : —

" There can be no scientific study of society, either in its con- ditions or its movements, if it is separated into portions, and its divisions are studied apart. I have already remarked upon this in regard to what is called political economy. Materials may be furnished by the observation of different departments ; and such observation may be necessary for that object ; but it cannot be called science. The methodical division of studies which takes place in the simple inorganic sciences is thoroughly irrational in the recent and complex science of society, and can produce no results. The day may come when some sort of sub- division may be practicable and desirable ; but it is impossible for us now to anticipate what the principle of distribution may be ; for the principle itself must arise from the development of the science ; and that development can take place no otherwise than by our formation of the science as a whole. "

" In the organic sciences, the elements are much better known to us than the whole which they constitute ; so that in that case we must proceed from the simple to the compound. But the reverse method is necessary in the study of man and of society ; man and society as a whole being better known to us, and more accessible subjects of study, than the parts which constitute them."*

To pursue the course thus indicated would be to go back to what M. Comte was accustomed to de- nominate the metaphysical stage of science. The philosopher of old would, in like manner, have said: "These masses of granite are better known to us than the parts of which they are composed, and

* Positive Philosophy, Martineau's Translation, vol. ii. p. 81.

56 THE UNITY OF LAW.

therefore we will limit our inquiries to the questions as to how they came to have their existing form and occupy their present position." Without the analysis of the chemist it would have been as impos- sible that we should be enabled to " penetrate into the details" of the piece of stone, and thus to acquire a knowledge of the composition of the distant moun- tain from which it had been taken, as it would now be for us to penetrate into those of the communities that have passed away, were we not in the midst of living ones, composed of men endowed with the same gifts and animated by the same feelings and passions observed to have existed among those of ancient times ; and were we not, too, possessors of the numerous facts accumulated during the many centuries that since have intervened. It is the details of life around us that we need to study, commencing by analysis and proceeding to synthe- sis, as does the chemist when he resolves the piece of granite into atoms, and thus acquires the secret of the composition of the mass. Having ascertained that it is composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica, and having fully satisfied himself of the circumstances under which it appears in the country near to him, he feels entire confidence that wherever else it may be found, its composition and its position in the order of formation will be the same. He is constantly going from the near and the known which he can analyze and examine, to the distant and the un- known which he cannot ; studying the latter by means of formulae obtained by analysis of the former.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 57

Thus it was that by study of the deposits of Siberia and California, the geologist was enabled to predict that gold would be found among the mountains of Australia.

Seeking now to understand the history of man in past ages or in distant lands, we must commence by studying him in the present, and having mastered him in the past and present, we may then be enabled to predict the future. To do this, it is required that we do with society as the chemist does with the piece of granite, resolving it into its several parts and studying each part separately, ascertaining how it would act were it left to itself; then comparing what would he its independent action with that we see to he its societary action. That done, by help of the same law of which the mathematician, the physicist, the chemist, and the physiologist avail themselves — that of the composition of forces — we may perhaps arrive at the law of the effect. So to do would not, however, be to adopt the course of M. Comte, who gives us the distant and the unknown — the societies of past ages — as a means of understanding the movements of the men by whom we are sur- rounded, and of predicting what will be those of future men. To us it seems that as well might the teacher furnish his students with a telescope by which to study the mountains of the moon, that he might be thus enabled to understand the movements of the laboratory.

The necessary consequence of this inverse and erroneous method is that he is led to arrive at con-

68 THE UNITY OF LAW.

elusions directly the reverse of those to which men's natural instincts lead them; directly opposed, too, to the tendencies of thought and action in all the times of advancing civilization, whether in the ancient or modern world ; the result being that he leaves his readers as much at a loss to under- stand the causes of disturbance that now exist, or the remedy needed to be applied, as would a physician who should limit the study of his patient to an examination of the body in a mass, omitting all inquiry into the state of the lungs, the stomach, or the brain. His system of sociology does not ex- plain the past, and cannot therefore be used to direct the present ; the reason why it neither does nor can do so being that he has declined to use the method of physics, that philosophy which studies the near and the known for the purpose of obtaining power to comprehend the distant and the unknown ; which studies the present to obtain knowledge by aid of which to understand the causes of events in the past, and to predict those which are bound to flow from similar causes in the future.

§ 5. Turning from France to Britain, we find ourselves in the home of Adam Smith, whose most essential doctrines have, however, been wholly re- pudiated by his successors of that modern school which had its origin in the teachings of Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo. "Social Science," as the world is there taught by one of its most distinguished teachers, " is a deductive science ; not, indeed," as he continues, "after the model of geometry, but

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 59

after that of the highest physical sciences. It infers the law of each effect from the laws of causation upon which the effect depends ; not, however, from the law merely of one cause, as in the geometrical method, but by considering all the causes which conjointly influence the effect, and compounding those laws with one another."*

Such is the theory. The practice under it con- sists in providing for the use of science a politico- economical man, or monster, on one hand influenced solely by the thirst for wealth, and on the other so entirely under the control of the sexual passion as to be at all times ready to indulge it, however greatly such indulgence may tend to prevent the growth of wealth.f

What, however, is this thing in the quest for which he is so assiduously engaged'? What is wealth ■? To this question political economy fur- nishes no reply, it having never yet been settled in what it is that wealth consists. Were it suggested that land Constituted any part thereof, the answer would at once be made, that, by reason of a great law of nature, the more of it brought into use, and the larger the quantity of labor given to its improve- ment, the less must be the return to human effort, the poorer must the community become, and the greater must be the tendency toward poverty and death ; the law of constantly diminishing returns to labor applied to cultivation being, as Mr. Mill

* J. S. Mill. System of Logic, Book vi. oh. 8. I See ante, p. 15.

60 THE UNITY OF LAW.

assures us, the most important one in the whole range of economic science. Were it next assumed that wealth might be found in development of the individual Acuities, proof apparent could be furnished that not only would search in that direc- tion be vain, but that it would result in establish- ment of the fact that increase in the number of teachers must be attended with diminution of the quantity of wealth at the community's command * Foiled thus in all his efforts, the inquirer, after having studied carefully all the books, would still be found repeating the question — What is wealth'?

Turning next to the being so sedulously engaged in the pursuit of an undefined something that seems to embrace so much, and that yet excludes so large a proportion of the things usually regarded as wealth, he would desire to satisfy himself if the subject of political economy were really the being known as man. He might perhaps be led to ask, has man no other qualities than those here attributed to him ? Is he, like the beasts of the field, solely given to the search for food, and shelter for his body ? Does he, like them, beget children for the sole gratification of his passions, and does he, like them, leave his offspring to feed and shelter them- selves as they may 1 Has he no feelings or affections to be influenced by the care of wife and children 1 Has he no judgment to aid him in the decision as to what is likely to benefit or to injure him 1 That he did possess such qualities would be admitted,

* See Mill, Principles, 6th edition, vol. i. p. 61.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 61

but the economist would maintain that his science was that of material wealth alone, to the entire ex- clusion of that wealth of affection and intellect held by Adam Smith in such high esteem; and thus would he, at the close of all his search, discover that the subject of political economy was not really a man, but an imaginary being moved to action by the blindest passion, and giving all his energies to the pursuit of a thing in its nature so undefinable that all the books would be vainly searched for a definition that would be admitted by a jury of eco- nomists as embracing all that should be included, and excluding all that should not.

The law of the composition, of forces requires that we study all the causes tending to produce a given effect. That effect is Man — the man of the past and the present; and the social philosopher who excludes from consideration his feelings and affec- tions, and the intellect with which he has been endowed, makes precisely the same mistake that would be made, by the physical one who should look exclusively to gravitation, forgetting heat; and should thence conclude that at no distant day the whole material of which the earth is composed would become a solid mass, plants, animals, and men having disappeared. Such is the error of modern political economy, its effects exhibiting themselves in the fact that it presents for our consideration a mere brute animal to find a name for which it desecrates the word "man," recognized by Adam Smith as

62 THE UNITT OF LAW.

expressing the idea of a being made in the likeness of its Creator.

It was well asked by Goethe — " What is all inter- course with nature, if by the analytical method we merely occupy ourselves with individual material parts, and do not feel the breath of the spirit which prescribes to every part its direction, and orders or sanctions every deviation by means of an inherent law ■?" And what, we may ask, is the value of an analytical process that selects only the " material parts" of man — those which are common to himself and the beast — carefully excluding those common to the angels and himself? Such is the course of modern political economy, which not only does not " feel the breath of the spirit," but even ignores the existence of the spirit itself, and is therefore found defining what it is pleased to call the natural rate of wages as being " that price which is necessary to enable the laborers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution ;"* that is to say, such price as will enable some to grow rich and increase their race, while others perish of hunger, thirst, and exposure. Such are the teachings of a system that has fairly earned the title of the " dismal science" — that one the study of which led M. Sismondi to the inquiry : " What, then, is wealth everything, and is man ab- solutely nothing ■?" In the eyes of modern political economy he is nothing, and can be nothing for the reason that it takes no note of the qualities by which

* Rioardo.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 63

he is distinguished from the brute, led thus inevita- bly to regarding him as a mere instrument to be used by capital for enabling its owner to obtain compensation for its use, " Some economists," said a distinguished French economist, shocked at the material character of the so-called science, " speak as if they believed that men were made for products, not products for men;"* and at that conclusion must all arrive who commence by the method of analysis, and close with exclusion of all the higher and distinctive qualities of man.

§ 6. In the progress of knowledge we find our- selves gradually passing from the compound to the simple ; from that which is abstruse and difficult to that which is plain and easily learned. That sim- plicity and truth travel generally together is proved by the beautiful simplicity and wonderful breadth of propositions in science — themselves the result of a long induction — leading to the knowledge of great truths not at first perceptible, but when announced so conclusive as to close, almost at once and forever, all discussion in reference thereto. The falling of the apple led Newton to the law of gravitation, and to the discovery of that law we owe the astonishing perfection of modern astronomy. The establishment of the identity of lightning and electricity laid the foundation of a science by help of which we have been enabled to command the services of a great power in nature that has to a great extent superseded the contrivances of man. Kepler and Galileo, New-

* Droz. Economie Politique.

64 THE UNITY OF LAW.

ton and Franklin, would have failed in all their efforts to extend the domain of science, had they pursued the method of M. Comte in his attempt to establish a system of social science.

Does this method, however, supersede entirely the d, priori one 1 Because we pursue the method of analysis, are we necessarily precluded from that of synthesis ? By no means. Each in turn makes preparation for the other. It was by the careful observation of particular facts that Le Verrier was led to the grand generalization that a new and unobserved planet was bound to exist, and in a cer- tain part of the heavens, and there it was almost at once discovered. To careful analyses of various earths it was due that Davy was led to the announce- ment of the great fact that all earths have metallic bases — one of the grandest generalizations on record, and one whose truth is being every day more and more established. The two methods were well described by Goethe, when he said that synthesis and analysis were " the systole and diastole of human thought," and that they were to him "like a second breathing process — never separated, ever pulsating."

" The vice of the a priori method," says the writer from whom this passage is taken, " when it wanders from the right path, is not that it goes before the facts, and anticipates the tardy conclu- sions of experience, but that it rests contented with its own verdicts, or seeking only a partial, hasty confrontation with facts — what Bacon calls 'notiones temerfe k rebus abstractas.' "*

* Westminster Review, Oct. 1862 : Article, Goethe as a Man of Science.

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 65

Science being one and indivisible, so must the method of study be. That this is so with, regard to all the departments of knowledge that underlie social science — physics, chemistry, and physiology — cannot now be doubted, yet is it but recently that there has been reason to believe in any such con- nection. With each new discovery the approxima- tion becomes more close, and with each we see how intimately are the facts of all the earlier and more abstract departments of knowledge connected with the progress of man toward that state of high de- velopment for which he seems to have been intended. From hour to hour, as be acquires further control over the various forces existing in nature, he is enabled to live in closer connection with his fellow- man — to obtain larger supplies of food and clothing — to improve his own modes of thought and action, and to furnfsh better instruction to the generation destined to succeed him. The knowledge that leads to such results is but the foundation upon which we are required to build when undertaking to con- struct that higher department denominated social science, and the instrument that has been so suc- cessfully used in laying the foundation cannot but be found equally useful in the construction of the edifice itself.

Mathematics must there be used, as it is now in every other branch of inquiry, and the more it is" used the more must sociology take the form of real science, and the more intimate become its rela- tions with other departments of knowledge. The

66 THE UKITY OF LAW".

Malthusian law was the first instance of its appli- cation, and had it proved a true one, it would have given a precision to political economy of which before it had been utterly incapable, making the progress of man directly dependent upon numbers on one hand and the powers of the soil on the other. So, too, with Mr. Eicardo's celebrated theory of rent, by which was established what he deemed to be the natural division of labor's products among those who labored and those who owned the land on which they were raised. The method of both these great laws was right, and the fact of their having adopted it has properly placed their authors in the front rank of economists, giving to their works an amount of infiu"ence never before exercised by any writers on economical science. That they fell into the error above described, of " seeking only a partial, hasty confrontation with facts," and, therefore, fur- nished the world with theories directly the reverse of true, does not prevent us from seeing of what infinite advantage to the progress of science it would have been to have the facts brought under these relations, if true, nor of how great importance it must be to have the real facts brought under such relations whenever possible.

Let us, for example, take the following proposi- tion : —

In the early period of society, when land is abundant and people are few in number, labor is unproductive, and of the small product, the land- owner or other capitalist takes a large proportion.

OP SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 67

leaving to the laborer a small one. The large pro- portion yields, however, but a small amount, and both laborer and capitalist are poor — the former so poor that he is everywhere seen to have been slave to the latter. Population and wealth, however, increasing, and labor becoming more productive, the land-owner's share diminishes in its proportion, but increases in its amount. The laborer's share increases not only in its amount, but also in its proportion, and the more rapid the increase in the productiveness of his labor the greater is the propor- tion of the augmented quantity retained by him ; and thus, while the interests of both are in perfect harmony with each other, there is a constant ten- dency towards the establishment of an equality of condition — the slave of the early period becoming the free man of the later one.

Admitting this to be true — and if so it establishes directly the reverse of what was propounded by Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo — we have here the distinct expression of a mathematical relation be- tween the concomitant variations of power of man and matter — of the man representing only his own faculties, and of the man representing the accumu- lated results of human faculties exerted upon mat- ter and its forces. The problem of social science, and the one attempted to be solved, is: "What are the relations of man and the outside material world ■?" They change, as we see, men becoming, in some countries, from year to year more and more the masters, and in others, the slaves of nature. In

68 THE UNITY OF LAW.

what manner is it that changes in one tend to pro- duce further changes in itself, or to effect changes in the other 1 To this question we need a mathe- matical answer, and until it be furnished — as it is believed to be in the above very simple proposition — political economy can bear only the same relation to social science that the observations of the Chal- dean shepherds bear to modern astronomy.

Social science can scarcely be said to have an ex- istence. That it might exist it was essential to jjossess the physical, chemical, and physiological knowledge required for enaWing us to observe how it is that man is enabled to obtain command over the various forces provided for his use, and to pass from being the slave, to becoming the master of nature " Man," says Goethe, " only knows himself in as far as he knows external nature," and it was needed that the more abstract and general depart- ments of knowledge should acquire a state of high development before we could advantageously enter upon the study of the highly concrete and special, and infinitely variable, science of the laws by which he is governed in his relations with the external world, and with his fellow-man. Chemistry and physiology are both, however, of recent date. A century since, men knew nothing of the composition of the air they breathed, and it is within that period that Haller laid the foundation of the physiological science that now exists. In physics, even, the Aristotelian doctrine of the four elements had yet possession of many of the schools, and still probably

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 69

remains in some of those on the outer borders of civilization. In this state of things there could be but little progress toward attainment of the know- ledge how far it was in the power of man to com- pel the earth to yield the supplies required for a steadily increasing population; and without that knowledge there could be no such thing as social science.

Science requires laws, and laws are but universal truths — truths to which no exceptions can be found. Those obtained, harmony and order take the place of chaos, and we are led in every department of knowledge as much to recognize effects as having been the natural results of certain definite causes, and to look for the reappearance of similar effects when like causes shall again occur, as did the first man when he had definitely connected the presence and absence of light with the rising and setting of the sun.

Where, however, is there in social science a pro- position whose truth is universally admitted 1 There is not even .a single one. A century since, the strength of a nation was regarded as tending to increase with augmentation of its numbers, but now we are taught that growth of numbers brings with it weakness instead of strength. From year to year we have new theories of the laws of population, and new modifications of the old one ; and the question of fhe laws governing the distribution of the proceed^ of labor between the ownei* and occu- pier of land,' is now discussed as vigorously as it was

70 THK UNITY OF LAW.

half a century since. Of the disciples of Messieurs Malthus and Kicardo, scarcely any two are agreed as to whaj;>-it was that they had really meant to teach. On one day we are told that the Ricardo- Malthusian doctrine is dead, and on the next we learn that it is an evidence of want of knowledge to doubt its truth ; and yet the parties to whom we are indebted for all this knowledge belong to the same politico-economical school.* The strongest advocates for the removal of all restrictions on trade in cloth are found among the fiercest opponents of freedom of the trade in money ; and among the most enthusiastic friends of competition for the sale of merchandise, are to be found the most decided opponents of competition for the purchase of the laborer's time and talents. Teachers who rejoice in everything tending to increase the prices of cloth and iron, as leading to improvement in man's con- dition, are found among the foremost of those who deprecate advance in the price of the laborer's ser- vices, as tending to diminution of power for the maintenance of trade. Others who teach non-inter- ference by government when it looks to the diffusion of knowledge among the people, are among the most

* " We telieve it (the Rioardo principle of rent) dominates in the long run, and is the main cause of the decline of nations. * * We believe the law of population to which Malthua first directed public attention, to be founded in fact." — London Spectator.

" Nobody, except a few mere writers, now troubles himself about Malthus on population, or Ricardo on rent. Their error may yet indeed linger in the universities, the appropriate depositories of what is obso- lete."—-£ on ofon Economist, same date.

OF SCIENCE AKD ITS METHODS. 71

decided as to the propriety of such interference when it looks to measures leading to war and waste. All being therefore confusion, nothing is settled ; as a necessary consequence of which the world looks quietly on, waiting the time when the teachers shall arrive at some understanding among themselves as to that first of all conditions incident to the ex- istence of any branch of science, to wit : the real value of the terms in use. As has been already shown (see p. 10, ante), toward this first stage no approach whatsoever Tias yet been made.

§ 7. The causes of the existence of this state of things are readily explained. Of all, societary science is the most concrete and special ; the most dependent on the earlier and more abstract depart- ments of science ; the one in which the facts are most difficult of collection and analysis ; and, there- fore, very late in making its appearance on the stage. Of all, too, it is the only one that aff'ects the interests of men, their feelings, passions, prejudices, profits, and, therefore, the one in which it is most difiicult to find men collating facts with the sole view to deduce from them the knowledge they are calculated to aff'ord. Treating, as it does, of the relations between man and man, it has everywhere to meet the objection of those who seek the enjoy- ment of power and privilege at the cost of their fellow-men. The sovereign holds in small respect the science that would teach his subjects to doubt the propriety of his exercise of power by the grace of God. The soldier cannot believe in one that

72 THE UNITY OF LAW.

looks to the annihilation of his trade, nor can the monopolist readily be made to believe in the advan- tages of competition. The politician, living by managing the affairs of others, has small desire to see the people taught the proper management of their own concerns. All these profiting by teach- ing falsehood they therefore frown upon those who seek to teach the truth. The landlord believes in one doctrine and his tenant in another, the payer of wages, meantime, looking at all questions from a point of sight directly the opposite of the one occu- pied by him to whom the wages are paid.

We here meet a difficulty with which, as has been already said, no other science has needed to contend. Astronomy has wrought its way to its present pro- digious height with but temporary opposition from the schools, because no one was personally interested in continuing to teach the revolution of the sun around the earth. For a time the teachers, secular and spiritual, were disposed to deny the movement of the latter, but the fact was proved and opposition ceased. Such, too, was the case when geology began to teach that the earth had had a longer existence than previously had been believed. The schools that represented by-gone days did then as they had done in the days of Copernicus and Galileo, de- nouncing as heretics all who doubted the accuracy of the received chronology, but short as is the time that has since elapsed the opposition has already disappeared. Franklin, Dalton, Wollaston, and Ber- zelius prosecuted their inquiries without fear of

OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 73

opposition, their discoveries being unlikely to affect injuriously the pockets of land-owners, merchants, or politicians. Social science is, however, still to a great extent in the hands of the schoolmen, backed everywhere by those who profit by the ignorance and weakness of the people.

The occupants of academic chairs in Austria or Russia may not teach what is unfavorable to the divine rights of kings, or favorable to increase in the powers of the people. The doctrines of the schools of France vary from time to time as des- potism yields to the people, or the people yield to it. The landed aristocracy of England was gratified when Mr. Malthus satisfied it that the poverty and misery of the people resulted necessarily from a great law emanating from an all-wise and all-bene- volent Creator; and the manufacturing one is equally so when it sees, as it thinks, the fact established, that the general interests of the country are to be pro- moted by measures looking to the production of an abundant supply of cheap, or badly paid, labor.

Social science, as taught in most of the colleges of this country and of Europe, is now on a level with the chemical science of the early part of the last century ; and thei'e it will remain so long as its teachers shall continue to look inwards to their own minds and invent theories, instead of looking out- ward to the great laboratory of the wox'ld for the collection of facts with the view to the discovery of laws. In default of such laws they are constantly repeating phrases that have no real meaning, and

74 THE UNITY OF LAW.

that tend, as Goethe most truly says, to " ossify the organs of intelligence" of their hearers and them- selves.*

The state in which it now exists is what M. Comte is accustomed to denominate the metaphysi- cal one, and there it must continue to remain until its teachers shall waken to the fact, that there is but one system of laws for the government of all matter, whether existing in the form of a piece of coal, a tree, a horse, or a man — and but one mode of study for all departments of it. " The leaf," says a recent writer, "is to the plant what the microcosm is to the macrocosm — it is the plant in miniature ; a common law governs the two, and, therefore, what- ever disposition we find in the parts of the leaf, we may expect to find in the parts of the plant, and vice versa." So it is with the tree of science and its many branches, what is true of its root cannpt be otherwise than true of the leaves and the fruit. The laws of physical science are equally those of social science, and in every effort to discover the former we are but paving the way for the discovery of the

* " The pagan, the idolater, the ignorant even of the Catholic church worship their stocks and stones ; and, Instead of regarding these as signs only shadowing forth what in its intellectual state the human mind cannot otherwise express of its religious sentiments, takes the signs for the things they represent, and worships thein as facts. We, too, worship our signs — our words. Let any man set himself to the task of examining the state of his knowledge on the most important subjects, divine or human, and he will find himself a mere word-wor- shipper ; he will find words without ideas or meaning in his mind venerated, made idols of — idols different from those carved in wood or stone only by being stamped with printer's ink on white paper." — Laing, Chronicle of the Sea Kings, Introd. Dissertation chap. ii.

OP SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. 75

latter. " The entire succession of men," said Pascal, " through the whole course of ages, must be regarded as one man, always living and incessantly learning;" and among the men who have most largely contri- buted toward the foundation of a true social science are to be ranked the eminent teachers to whose labors we have been so largely indebted for the great development of physical, chemical, and physi- ological science in the last and present centuries.

The later man is, therefore, the one possessing the most of that knowledge of societary opera- tions required for comprehending. the causes of the various effects recorded in the historic page, and for predicting those which must result in future from causes now existing. The early man possessed little of science but the instrument required for its acquisition, and what of it he did acquire was purely physical in its character and most limited in its ex- tent. The existing one is in possession not only of physical science to an extent that is wonderful com- pared with what existed a century since, but to this has added the chemical and physiological sciences then scarcely known, and has proved the existence throughout of a harmony that before had been un- imagined. If, then, there is truth in Pascal's sug- gestion, may it not be that the laws of all the earlier and more abstract departments of science will be found to be equally true in reference to that highly concrete and special one which embraces the rela- tions of man in society ; and that, therefore, all sci- ence will prove to be but one, its parts differing as

76 THE UNITY OF LAW.

do the colors of the spectrum, but producing, as does the sun's ray, undecomposed, one white and bright light 1 To show that such is the case is the object of the present work.*

Turning again to the figure, the reader will remark that the branch of science of which it is proposed to treat finds its place between those of material and mental life, organology and psychology, and that it is through it that both must look for their development. That the mind may be active and vigorous, the body must be properly cared for. Social Science looks to the care of both. It treats of the relations of man with the physical world over which it is given to him to rule, and with that social one in which it is given to him to perform a part. Upon the nature of those relations depends the stimulation into activity of those qualities which constitute the real man — those by which he stands distinguished from other animals. What they are it is proposed now to show.

* " The view propounded in this work allows, however, a greater and more important part to the share of external iuflaenoes, it being be- lieved by the author, however, that these external influences equally with the internal ones are the results of one harmonious action under- lying the whole of Nature, organic and inorganic, cosmical, physical, chemical, terrestrial, vital, and social." — Mivart, Genesis of Species, Lon- don, 1871.

"All science is but the partial reflection, in the reason of man, of the great all pervading reason of the universe. And thus the unity of science is the reflection of the unity of nature, and of the unity of that supreme reason and intelligence which pervades and rules over Nature, and from whence all reason and all science is derived." — Rev. Baden Powell.

OP MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 77

CHAPTEE III.

OF MAN— THE SUBJECT OP SOCIAL SCIENCE.

§ 1. Man, the molecule of society, is the subject of social science. In common with all other animals he must eat, drink, and sleep, but his greatest need is that of ASSOCIATION with his fellow-men. Born the weakest and most dependent of animals, he re- quires the largest care in infancy and to be clothed by others, whereas to birds and beasts clothing is supplied by nature. Capable of acquiring the high- est degree of knowledge, he appears in the world destitute even of that instinct which teaches the bee, the spider, the bird, and the beaver to construct their habitations, and to supply themselves with food. Dependent upon the experience of himself and others for all his knowledge, he requires lan- guage to enable him either to record the results of his own observation, or to profit by those of others; and of language there can be none without associa- tion. Created in the image of his Maker, he should participate in His intelligence; but without lan- guage there can be no ideas — no power of thought. Without it, therefore, he must remain in ignorance of the existence of powers granted to him in lieu of the strength of the ox, the speed of the hare, the

78 THE UNITY OF LAW.

sagacity of the elephant, and must remain below the level of the brute creation. To have language there must be association and combination of men with their fellow-men, and it is on this condition only that man can be man ; on this alone that we can conceive of the being to which we attach the idea of man. " It is not good," said God, " that man should live alone," nor do we ever find him doing so — the earliest records of the world exhibit- ing to us beings living together in society, and using words for the expression of their ideas. Whence came those words 'i Whence came language 1 With the same propriety might we ask — Why does fire burnl Why does man see, feel, hear, or walk "? Language escapes from him at the touch of nature herself, the power of using words being his essential faculty, enabling him to maintain commerce with his fellow-men, and fitting him for that association Avithout which language cannot exist. The words society and language convey to the mind separate and distinct ideas, and yet by no effort of the mind can we conceive of the existence of the one without the other.*

* " Ever since the time of Wilhelm von Humboldt, all who have Beriously grappled with the highest problem of the science of Language have come to the conviction that thought and language are inseparable — that language is as impossible without thought as thought is without language ; and that they stand to each other like soul and body, like power and function, like substance and form. The objections whith have been raised against this view arise generally from a mere misun- derstanding. If we speak of language as the outward realization of thought, we do not mean language ag deposited in a dictionary or sketched in a grammar ; we mean language as an act, language as being

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 79

The subject of social science then is man — the being to whom have been given reason and the faculty of individualizing sounds so as to give ex- pression to every variety of idea ; and who has been placed in a position to exercise that faculty. Iso- late him, and with the loss of the power of speech, he loses the power to reason, and with it the dis- tinctive quality of man. Restore him to society, and with the return of the power of speech he becomes again the reasoning man.

We have here the great law of molecular gravita- tion as the indispensable condition of the existence of the being known as man. The particles of matter having each an independent existence, the atom of oxygen or of hydrogen is as perfect and complete as it could be were it in connection with millions of others like itself. The grain of sand is perfect whether flying alone before the wind or resting with its fellows on the shores of the broad Atlantic. The tree and the shrub, brought from distant lands and standing alone in the conservatory, pro- duce the same fruits and yield the same odors as when they stood in the groves from whic'h they had been transplanted. The individual dog, cat, and

spoten, language as living and dying with every word that is uttered. We might perhaps call this speech, as distinguished from language." — Professor Mi511er in the Contemporary Review, December, 1871.

"We imagine we are altogether free and independent, and are not aware that our thoughts are manacled and fettered by language ; and that, without knowing or perceiving it, we have to keep pace with those who walked before us thousands and thousands of years ago." — Ibid. Chips from a German Workshop, Article, Cornish Antiquities.

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It

rabbit possess all their powers in a state of entire isolation. Such, however, is not the case with man. The wild and isolated man, wherever found, has always proved to be not only destitute of the reason- ing faculty,, but destitute also of that instinct which in other animals takes the place of reason — and, therefore, the most helpless of beings.

Man tends of necessity to gravitate towards his fellow-man. Of all animals, he is the most gregari- ous, and the greater the number collected in a given space the greater is the attractive force there ex- erted, as is seen to have been the case with the great cities of the past, Athens and Rome, Nineveh and Babylon ; and as now is seen in regard to those of both the Eastern and Western Continents. At- traction is here, as everywhere else in the material world, in the direct ratio of the mass, and in the inverse one of the distance.

Such being the case, why is it that all the members of the human family do not tend to come together on a single spot of earth ] Because of the existence of that same simple and universal law by means of which is maintained the beautiful order of the system of which our planet forms a part. We are surrounded by bodies of various sizes, each having its local centre of attraction by means of which its parts are held together. Were it possible that that attractive force could be annihilated, the rings of Saturn, the moons of our earth and of Jupi- ter, would crumble to pieces and fall inward upon the bodies they now attend, a mass of ruins. So,

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE, 81

too, with the planets themselves. Small as are the asteroids, each has within itself a centre of attrac- tion enabling it to preserve its form and substance, despite the superior attraction of the larger bodies by which it is everywhere surrounded.

So it is throughout our world. Look where we may, we see local centres toward which men gravi- tate, some exercising less influence, others more. London and Paris are now the rival suns of our sys- tem, each exercising a strong attractive force, and were it not for the counter attraction of Prague and Munich, Vienna and Berlin, Florence and Naples, Madrid and Lisbon, Brussels and Amsterdam, Copen- hagen, Stockholm, and St. Petersburg, Europe would present to view one great centralized system, the population of which was always tending toward those two cities, there to make all their exchanges, and thence to receive their laws. So, too, in this country. It is seen by all how strong is even now the tendency toward New York, despite the existence of local centres of attraction in the cities of Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, "Washington, Pittsburg, Cin- cinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, Augusta, Savannah, Charleston, and the numerous capitals of the several States. Obliterating these centres, and placing a centralized government like that of England, France, or Russia, in New York city, not only would this latter grow to the size of London, but soon would far exceed it, with an effect similar to that which would be produced in the astronomical world by a

6

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like course of- operation. The local governments falling to pieces, all the atoms of which they had been composed would tend at once towards the new centre that had been thus produced. Local and voluntary association for the various purposes of life, throughout what would then be the provinces of a great centralized State, would be at an end, but in its place would be found the forced associa- tion of dependents on one hand, and masters on the other. Every neighborhood that required to have a road or a bridge, to establish a bank, or to obtain a redress of grievances, would be required to make its application therefor at the great city, distant many hundreds of miles, and to pay innumerable ofla- cers before it could obtain the desired permission, as is now the case in France. Every community that found itself suffering from heavy taxes, or from other oppressions from which it desired to be re- lieved, would be found seeking to make itself heard, but its voice would be drowned by those of the men who profited by such abuses, as is now the case with complaints to the British Parliament of Ireland and India.*

* " Indian questions do not excite so much interest in the House of Commons as the squabble about the cost of a road through St. James's Park ; and all this is taking place while the fioauces of India are get- ting into inextricable confusion, debt rapidly accumulating, expenditure steadily increasing, and taxation becoming so burdensome that far and wide the seeds of disaffection are sown." — Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1871.

In the last ten years the salt tax, already most oppressive, has been five times increased ; a heavy income tax has been imposed, and taxes on feasts and marriages have been proposed ; two and a quarter millions of people have died of famine ; the debt, including guarantees of badly

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 83

Instead of going, as now, to the capital of the State close at hand, and obtaining at little cost the required laws, they would find themselves compelled to employ agents for the negotiation of their busi- ness, those agents then, as now in England, accu- mulating enormous fortunes at the cost of poor and distant suitors. Much of this is already seen at Washington, yet how trivial is it compared with what it would be were all the various business transacted by State Legislatures, and by County Boards, brought within the sphere of Congress, as to sp great an extent it now is within that of the British Parliament.

The centralizing tendency of State capitals is, in its turn, greatly neutralized by the existence of opposing centres of attraction at the various county seats, and in the numerous towns and cities of the Union, each managing its own affairs, and each presenting places at which the people of the various districts, and of the whole country itself, are brought into connection with each other for ex- change of the products of physical or mental affort. Obliterate these — centralize the powers of towns and counties in State Legislatures — and the power of local association within the States would be almost altogether annihilated. The State capital, or that of the Union, would grow rapidly, as would

constructed and expensive railroads, has grown to nearly $1,000,000,000 ; the sole reliance for payment of interest thereon being now found in continued maintenance of the power to poison the Chinese people with the produce of Indian opium fields.

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the sun were the local attractions of the celestial bodies to disappear. The splendor of both might be much increased, but in the space now traversed by the planets motion would cease to exist, as would be the case throughout this country were it made dependent on a single centre ; and without motion there could be neither association, force, nor pro- gress.

Further, with the growth of centralization there would be seen a diminution in the counteracting force by which families are held together, despite attractions of the capital. Whatever tends to the establishment of decentralization, and to the pro- duction of local employment for time and talent, tends to give value to land, to promote its division, and to enable parents and children to remain in closer connection with each other; and the stronger the ties that bind together the various families of which the community is composed, the more per- fect must be the attraction within the bosom of the communities which constitute the State. What- ever tends, on the contrary, to the diminution of local employment tends to the consolidation of land, the breaking up of families, and the building up of great cities at the expense of the country, as has been the case in Italy, France, India, and Britain ; and as even here is seen in the rapid growth of cities, accompanied, as it always is, by the expulsion of our people to new territories, with diminution of the power of association and combination.

The pages of history furnish throughout evidence

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OP SOCIAL SCIENCE. 85

that the tendency towards association — without which the human animal cannot become the being to which we apply the denomination of man — has everywhere grown with increase in the number and strength of local centres, declining, on the contrary, with their diminution. Such centres were found in nearly all the Grecian Islands, Laconia and Attica, Boeotia and Argos, Arcadia and Elis, Megara ajid Corinth, meanwhile, each rejoicing in its own. Local association existed there to an extent that had until then been unequalled in the world, yet the tendency towards general association was ex- hibited in the foundation of the Isthmian and Ne- mean and the yet more celebrated Olympic games, which drew together all that were distinguished for physical or intellectual power, not only in the States and cities of Greece itself, but in the distant Italy and Asia. In the Amphictyonic league we find fur- ther evidence of the tendency to general as a conse- quence of local association; but here, unhappily, the idea was not fully carried out. The attractive force of this sun of the system was not sufficient for the maintenance of order in the movements of the planets, which frequently, therefore, shot madly from their spheres and jostled against each other.

To the equal action of opposing forces it is due that the celestial world is enabled to exhibit such wonderful harmony and such unceasing motion. In the application of this principle to the societaty movement the people of Greece had all this yet to learn, the consequences being found in frequent

S6 THE UNITY OF LAW.

wars among themselves, resulting in the establish- ment of a highly centralized government control- ling the disbursements of a treasury filled by the contributions of a thousand subject cities. Thence- forward the subject peoples lost the power of associa- tion for determination of their own respective rights, and had to seek for justice among themselves in the courts of Athens. To that city resorted all who had money to pay to, or receive from, the State ; all who had causes to try ; all who sought places of power or profit ; all who found themselves unable to obtain a living at home ; and all who preferred the work of plunder to that of labor ; centralization growing with every step in this direction, until at length Athens and Sparta, Samos and Mitylene, and all the other states and cities, became involved in one common ruin; Attica herself becoming, to a great extent, the property of a single individual sur- rounded by hosts of slaves, the disposition for vol- untary association, and the power to exercise it, having wholly passed away.

Looking to Italy, we see a similar course of things. In its early days Etruria and the Campagna, Magna GrjEcia and the Samnite Hills, presented to view numerous cities, each the centre of a district through- out which existed in a high degree the habit of local and voluntary association. With time, how- ever, we see it gradually disappearing, and first among the people of Eome itself, perpetually en- gaged in disturbing their peaceful neighbors. The central city growing by help of plunder, the local

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 87

centres gradually diminished in importance, with constantly growing necessity for resorting to the arbi- tration of Eome itself. As power thus centralized itself within her walls her people became more and more dependent on the public treasury, and the power of voluntary association gradually disappeared ; Italy throughout, meanwhile, presenting the spec- tacle of great landlords occupying palaces, and sur- rounded by troops of slaves. So long as the op- posing forces were in equal balance she furnished the world with men ; but with her decline she is seen more and more to have presented it with slaves, sometimes attired in the beggar's rags, at others in the imperial purple.

Studying the history of the Eepublic and the Empire, we see that their long duration is to be at- tributed to the fact that to so great an extent the people of the provinces were left to govern them- selves, subject only to the performance of certain duties to the central power. Local association for almost every purpose was for centuries left un- touched, towns and cities imposing their own taxes, determining their own laws, and selecting the magistrates by whom they were to be carried into effect.*

Modern Italy, from the days of the Lombards, presented during many centuries striking evidences

* The extraordinary extent to which this system of localization was carried, and its wonderful results, hare been recently admirably ex- hibited by M. le Comte de Champagny, an account of whose works will be found in the British Quarterly Review for July, 1870.

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of the connection between local attraction and the power of voluntary association. Milan, Genoa, Venice, Florence, Kome, Naples, Pisa, Sienna, Padua, and Yerona, were each centres such as had existed once in Greece, but in default of a sun with attractive force sufRcient to maintain the har- mony of the system they were perpetually warring with each other, until at length the habit of asso- ciation entirely disappeared.

India had numerous centres of attraction. Besides its several capitals, each little village presented a self-governing community in which existed the power of association to an extent scarcely elsewhere equalled ; but with the growth of central power the habit and the power of exercising it have almost altogether disappeared.

Spain had numerous local centres. Association there existed to a great extent not only among the enlightened Moors but among the people of Castile and Arragon, Biscay and Leon. The discovery of this continent, of which the government became the absentee landlord, greatly increased the central power, with corresponding decline in local activity and association, the result exhibiting itself in the depopulation and weakness that have since ensued.

In Germany we find the home of the decentrali- zation of Europe — of jealousy of central power — and of the maintenance of local rights — as a consequence of which the tendency towards association has al- ways been strong among her people, bringing with it in our own time a commercial union that has

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 89

proved itself the foundation of the present magnifi- cent and powerful Empire. Like Greece, Germany has been until now deficient as regards the sun around which the numerous planets might peace- fully revolve ; and, as in Greece, powers exterior to her system have been enabled to use one commu- nity against another to an extent that has greatly retarded the progress of her own civilization, although as as rule she has elsewhere interfered littlfe with its progress.* Strong for defence she has, therefore, been weak for offence, and has ex- hibited no tendency to wars for conquest, or toward the levying of contributions upon her poorer neigh- bors, as has been so much the case with her highly centralized neighbor, France.f Abounding always in local centres it has been found impossible to create a great central city to direct the modes of thought and action, and to that it is due that Ger- many is now so rapidly taking the position of the great intellectual centre, not only of Europe, but of the world at large.

Among the German States there is none whose policy has so much tended to the maintenance of local centres of action, as promotive of the best in- terests of both the people and the state, as Prussia.

* Austria is a compound of numerous bodies, a large portion of which Is entirely exterior to Germany. Her wars in Italy have been Austrian and not •Grermanic.

■f- The occurrences of the last few years might seem to be in contra- diction of this, but when properly examined such will not prove to he the case. The object of both of the recent wars was the establishment of German independence.

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All the ancient divisions, from the communes to the provinces, have been carefully preserved, and their constitutions as carefully respected ; as a consequence of which it is that we here find the people advancing towards freedom with great rapidity, the State itself meanwhile rapidly advancing in wealth and power. Long before the recent wars the peaceful effects of decentralization had here fully exhibited themselves in the fact that, under the lead of Prussia, Northern Germany had been brought under a great federal system, by help of which internal commerce had been placed on a footing almost precisely corre- sponding with that of these United States.*

Nowhere in Europe had decentralization more existed, and nowhere had the tendency to peaceful association, or the strength of resistance to attacks from without consequent upon union, been more fully exhibited than in Switzerland, notwithstanding the existence of the widest religious differences.

The French Revolution annihilated, when it should have strengthened, the local governments — centralization being thus increased when it should have been diminished, the consequences being seen in a perpetual succession of wars and revolutions. Much was done towards decentralization when the lands of absentee nobles and of the church were divided among the people, and to the counteracting effect of this measure it is due that France so long

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 91

continued to grow in strength notwithstanding the extraordinary centralization of her system.

Belgium and Holland present remarkable instances of the tendency of local action to produce habits of association. In both, towns and cities are nu- merous, and the effect of combined action is seen in the wonderful productiveness of what was origi- nally one of the poorest countries of Europe.

In no part of Europe was the division of land so complete, or its possession so secure, as in Norway, at and before the date of the Norman conquest of England ; and in none, consequently, was the power of local attraction so fully exhibited. The habit of association, therefore, existed to an extent then unknown in France and Germany, developing itself in the establishment of " a literature in their own language, and living in the common tongue and minds of the people."* Elsewhere, the languages of the educated and uneducated classes have differed so widely as to render the literature used by the former entirely inaccessible to the latter ; and, as a necessary consequence, there has been " a want of that circulation of the same mind and intelligence through all classes of the social body, differing only in degree, not in kind, in the most educated and most ignorant; and of that circulation and inter- change of impressions, through a language and literature common to all, which alone can animate a

* Chronicle of the Sea-Kings of Norway. Introductory chapter hj S. Laing, p. 33.

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population into a nation."* They were in advance of other nations, too, in the fact that employments were diversified, affording further proof of the exist- ence of the habit of association and combination, " Iron," continues Mr. Laing, " is the mother of all the useful arts ; and a people who could smelt it from the ore, and work it into all that is required for ships of considerable size, from a nail to an anchor, could not have been in a state of such utter barbarism as they have been represented to us. They had a literature of their own, and laws, insti- tutions, social arrangements, a spirit and character, very analogous to the English, if not the source from which the English flowed ; and were in ad- vance of all Christian nations in one branch of the useful arts, in which great combinations of men are required — the building, fitting out, and navigating large vessels."f The same habit of local association has ever since existed, accompanied by a tendency to union whose effects were fully exhibited in the establishment, half g, century since, of a system of government in which the centralizing and decen- tralizing forces were balanced to an extent not exceeded in the world.

The attraction of local centres throughout the British islands, formerly so great, has, for a long time past, tended steadily to diminish. Edinburgh, once the metropolis of a kingdom, has become a

* Chronicle of the Sea-Kings of Norwaij. Introductory chapter by S. Laiug, p. 36. t Ibid., p. 146.

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 93

mere provincial city ; and Dublin, once the seat of an independent Parliament, has so greatly declined that were it not for the fact that it is the place at which a representive of majesty holds his occasional levees, it would scarcely at all be heard of Through- out the United Kingdom there is exhibited a con- stantly growing tendency towards centralization, accompanied by diminution in the strength of local attraction, increase of absentee proprietorship keep- ing steady pace with the growth of emigration from its shores. With every step in that direction we see a steady increase in the necessity for invol- untary association, manifested by the growth of fleets and armies, and of the contributions required for their support.

The Northern States of the American Union pre- sent, as has been already shown, a combination of the centralizing and decentralizing forces to an extent that has never been elsewhere equalled, and here accordingly we find existing in a high degree the tendency to local action for the creation of schools and school-houses, the making of roads, and the formation of associations for almost every im- aginable purpose. The system of laws that main- tains harmony throughout the Universe is here closely imitated, each State constituting a body perfect in itself, with local attraction tending to maintain its form, despite the gravitating tendency towards that centre around which it and its sister States are required to revolve.

Looking to the Southern States the reverse of

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the picture has hitherto been presented to our view. Masters there owned men who were altogether deprived of the power of voluntary association, and might not even sell their OAvn labor, or exchange its product for that of the labor of others. This was centralization, and hence it is that throughout the South there has been exhibited so strong a tendency toward disturbance elsewhere of the power of asso- ciation. All the wars of the Union have here had their origin.

Barbarism is a necessary consequence of the ab- sence of association. Deprived of this, man loses the essential qualities of man, and ceases to be the subject of social science.

§ 2. The next distinctive quality of man is indi- viduality. Each rat or robin, fox or wolf, is the type of his species wherever found, possessing habits and instincts in common with all his race. Not such is the case with man, in whom we find diflferences of tastes, feelings, and capacities almost as numerous as those observed in the human countenance. That such differences may be developed it is indispensable that he be brought into association with his fellow- men ; and where that has failed to be the case the individuality can no more be found than it would be were we seeking it among the foxes or the wolves. The wild men of Germany and those of India, Caspar Hauser being the type of all, differ so little that in reading the description of the one we might readily suppose we were studying that of the other. Passing from these to the lower forms of

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 95

association, such as exist among savage tribes, we meet a growing tendency to development of the vari- eties of individual character; but to find it in its highest degree w^e must seek it in those places in which there exists the greatest demand for intellec- tual effort; those in which there is the greatest variety of employment ; those in which, therefore, the power of association most perfectly exists, in towns and cities. That this should be the case, is perfectly in accordance with what throughout na- ture is everywhere else observed.

"The more imperfect a being is," says Goethe, "the more do its individual parts resemble each other, and the more do the parts resemble the whole. The more perfect a being, the more dis- similar are the parts. In the former case, the parts are more or less a repetition of the whole ; in the latter case they are totally unlike the whole. The more the parts resemble each other, the less subordination is there of one to the other ; subordination of parts indicates a high grade of organization."*

This is as true of societies as it is of the plants and animals in reference to which it was written. The more imperfect they are — the less the variety of employments, and the less, consequently, the

* " The differences are the condition of development ; the mutual exchanges, which are the consequences of these differences, waken and manifest life. The greater the diversity of organs, the more active and superior is the life of the individual. The greater the variety of indi- vidualities and relations in a society of individuals, the greater also is the sum of life, the more universal is the development of life, the more complete, and of a more elevated order. But it is necessary, not only that life should unfold itself in all its richness by diversity, but that it exhibit Itself iu its utility, in its beauty, in its goodness, by harmony. Thus we recognize the proof of the old proverb, ' Variety in unity is per- fection.' " — Guyot. Earth and Man, p. 80.

96 THE UNITY OF LAW.

development of intellect— the more do the parts resemble each other, as may readily be seen by any one who will study man in the purely agricultural countries of the earth. The greater the variety of employments — the greater the demand for intel- lectual eflfort — the more dissimilar become the parts and the more perfect becomes the whole, as may readily be seen on comparing any purely agricul- tural district with another in which agriculture, manufactures, and commerce are happily combined. Difference is essential to association. The farmer does not need to associate with his brother farmer, but he does need to do so with the carpenter, the blacksmith, and the miller. The mill operative has little occasion to exchange with his brother workman, but he does require so to do with the builder of houses, or the seller of food ; and the more numerous the shades of difference in the society of which he is a part, the greater will be the facility for, and the tendency to, that combination of effort required for developing the various faculties of its several members. All history, past and present, furnishes evidence as to the extraordinary extent to which, when a demand arises, peculiar qualities are found whose existence had before been unsuspected. Here, as everywhere else, it is demand that creates supply. Thus, in our own revolution blacksmiths and lawyers proved themselves distinguished sol- diers ; and that of France brought to light the mili- tary abilities of thousands of men that otherwise might have passed their lives at the tail of the

or MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 97

plough. It is the occasion that makes the man. In every society there exists a vast amount of latent capacity waiting but the opportunity to show itself, and thus it is that in communities in which there is no diversity of employment the intellectual power is so largely wasted, producing no result. Life has been defined as being a " mutual exchange of rela- tions," and where diflference does not exist there can be no exchange.

So it is everywhere throughout nature. To excite galvanic electricity, two metals need to be brought into combination; but even then their latent capa- cities are made active only by help of a third body differing totally from both. That accomplished, what was before dull and inert becomes active and full of life, and capable at once of entering into new combinations. So, too, with the lump of coal. Breaking it up into pieces, however small, and scattering them in the ground, there they will re- main, still fragments of coal. Let its atoms, how- ever, under the favoring influences of heat, be solicited by oxygen atoms to enter into combination with them, and at once a new substance is formed having other powers, and capable of entering into new combinations, forming parts of the trunks, branches, leaves, or blossoms of trees ; or the bones, muscles, or brain of man. The wheat yielded to the farmer's labors might remain, as we know it to have remained for numerous centuries, undecom- posed and uncombined with any other matter. Let it, however, pass through the stomach, and it

becomes resolved into its original elements, parts 7

98 THE UNITY OF LAW.

becoming bones, blood, or fat; parts again pass- ing off in the form of perspiration ; others mean- while being ejected in the form of excrement, ready to enter instantly into the composition of new vege- table forms. The power of association thus exists everywhere throughout the material world in the ratio of individualization. So, too, has it every- where been with man — the development of indi- viduality, at all times and in all countries, having been in the ratio of his power to act in obedience to that prime law of his nature which imposes upon him a necessity for association with his fellow-men. That power, as has been already seen, has always existed in the ratio of the equal action of the cen- tralizing and decentralizing forces, and where such action has most been found we should most find individuality, as certainly has beeji the case. In no country of the world had it ever so much existed as in Greece immediately anterior to the Persian inva- sion, and then and there it is that we find the highest development. To the men produced in that period it is that the age of Pericles owes its illustration. The destruction caused by Persian armies brought with it the conversion of citizens into soldiers, with steady tendency to increase of centralization and decline of the power of voluntary association and of individuality, until the slave alone was found culti- vating the lands of Attica; the free citizens of the earlier period having entirely disappeared. — So, like- wise, was it in Italy, where the highest individu- ality was found when the Campagna was filled with

OP MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 99

cities. Following their decline the great city grows, filled with paupers, the capital of a land cultivated by slaves. — So it is now throughout the East, where society is divided into two great parts — the men who toil and slave on one side, and, on the other, those who profit by the labors of the slave. Between two such masses there can be no associa- tion, and with the members there can be but little; there being among them none of that difference of pursuits which is required for producing exchanges of relations. The chain of society being there de- ficient in the connecting links there is no motion among the parts; and in the absence of motion there can be no more development of individuality of character than could be found in the pebble-stone before it had been subjected to the action of the blow-pipe.

The numerous towns and cities of Italy of the Middle Ages were remarkable for their activity, and for the development of individuality. So, likewise, was it in Belgium, and in Spain prior to the cen- tralization which followed close upon the expulsion of the Moors, and the discovery of the gold and silver deposits of this continent. — Such was the case, too, in each of the kingdoms now composing the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Taking Ireland separately we find her at the close of the last century giving to the world such men as Burke, Flood, Grattan, Sheridan, and Wellington; but since then, centrahzation having greatly grown, individuality has passed away. So, likewise, has it

100 THE UNITT OF LAW.

been in Scotland since the Union. A century since that country presented to view a body of men occu- pying positions as distinguished as any in Europe, but her local institutions have decayed and there are now, as we are told, " fewer individual thinkers" in that country than at any period " since the early part of the last century."* The mind of its whole youth, as the same journal tells us, is required to be " cast in the mould of English universities," which exer- cise upon it " an influence unfavorable to originality and power of thought."

In England herself centralization has made great progress with consequent increase of pauperism, a condition of things wholly adverse to individual development. The little landed proprietors have gradually disappeared to make way for the farmer and his hired laborers, and for the great manu- facturer with hosts of operatives — of whose names even he has no knowledge; the power of volun- tary association diminishing with every step in this direction. London grows to an enormous size at the cost of the country at large, centralization thus producing the disease of over-population, to be cured by a colonization tending at every step fur- ther to diminish the power of association.

Looking to France, we may see the steady de- cline of individuality attending the growth of cen- tralization. In the highly centralized days of Louis XIV. almost the whole land of the kingdom was in

* North British Review, Ajig. 1853.

HERBERT lb.\ul

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 101

the hands of a few great proprietors and of dig- nataries of the chureh — mere courtiers whose faces but reflected the expression apparent on that of the sovereign they were bound to worship. The right to labor was then held to be a privilege to be exer- cised at the pleasure of the monarch, and men were forbidden, on pain of death, to worship God accord- ing to their consciences, or even to fly the kingdom.

Passing homeward, we find in these Northern States individuality developed to an extent else- where entirely unknown, and for the reason that centralization exists in a very limited degree, while decentralization facilitates the rapid growth of as- sociative power. All the links of the chain are here found, and as every man feels that he can rise if he will there is the strongest inducement to strive for intellectual development. In the Southern States power centralized itself in the hands of the few, as- sociation among slaves was prohibited, and as a consequence, but little individuality has been de- veloped.

It is in variety there is unity, this being quite as true of the social as it is of the material world. Let the reader watch the movements of a city and study the facility with which men so various in their qualities combine their movements for the production of a penny newspaper, a ship, a house, or an opera ; then comparing it with the diflaculty experienced throughout the purely agricultural por tions of the country of cbmbining for even th''* most simple purposes, and he will see that it is

102 THE UNITY OF LAW".

difference that leads to association. The more perfect the societary organization, and the greater the variety of demands for exercise of the physical and intellectual powers, the higher will be the ele- vation of man as a whole, and the stronger will be the contrasts among men.

Individuality thus grows with the growth of the power of association, preparing the way for further and more perfect combination of action.

The more perfectly the local attraction tends to counterbalance that of the centre — the more society tends to conform itself to the laws we see to govern our system of worlds — the more harmonious must be the action of all the parts, and the greater must be the tendency toward voluntary association, and to the maintenance of peace abroad and at home.

§ 3. Association and individuality growing thus together, each aiding and aided by the other, with correspondent increase in the rapidity of the societary motion, and in the growth of societary force, man is thus gradually enabled to assume the position for which he had been from the first intended — that of controller of the great natural forces by which he is everywhere surrounded, and to which he had at first been so entirely enslaved ; the growing power for direction thus exhibited being accompanied by cor- responding development of that power for self- direction which, when obtained, constitutes the most important of all the faculties by which the human animal is distinguished from the brute.

OF MAN — THE SUBJECT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 103

Being so, it waits on others for its own development, at each and every stage of progress, however, aid- ing as aided by those other faculties to which the reader's attention has above been called.

The l