The significance of this conclusion is not quite the same as that which might be expected from the context from which I have taken the doctrine under criticism. The feelings of men with reference to economic goods are facts of definite, tangible nature, and subject-matter of social knowledge. But we have not yet reached a standard or source of social value. No homogeneous "labor jelly," or "pain jelly," or "utility jelly,"[100] made up by averaging arithmetically, or adding arithmetically, individual efforts or pains or pleasures, will solve our problem for us—as indeed I have been at pains to show in what has gone before. The purpose of the foregoing criticism is primarily to clear the ground for a conception of social organization which is more than mechanical, and in which the individual is both less and more than a self-sufficient monad.
FOOTNOTES:
[88] This criticism applies to the teachings of James Mill, J. S. Mill, and other sensationalist followers of Hume, even more than to Adam Smith. But see Professor Albion W. Small's Adam Smith and Modern Sociology, Chicago, 1907, esp. p. 51.
[89] It is easy for "analysis" to separate society into "individual" monads, and impossible for "synthesis"—once the validity of the analytic process is accepted—to put society together again. In fact, once the analytic process is begun, and once its results are accepted as anything more than matters of logical convenience, all unity and all organic connections, whether in the social or in other fields, seem to vanish like a dissolving show. There is a psychological doctrine of monadism, quite as logical as the sociological monadology here criticized, which finds it impossible to link together even the elements in a single individual's mind. (See William James, Principles of Psychology, 1905 ed., vol. i, pp. 179-80.) Into what inextricable difficulties one falls, in pursuing the monadistic logic, is more dramatically illustrated than by anything else I know by Bradley's Appearance and Reality, esp. chaps. ii and iii. The most useful viewpoint seems to be as follows: unity is as much an object of immediate knowledge as is plurality,—both being, in fact, the products of reflective thought. And unity is no more called upon to justify itself, before we recognize its existence, than is plurality. Cf. William James, The Meaning of Truth, New York, 1909, p. xiii; and also his Psychology, vol. i, pp. 224-25. Cf. also the writings of Professor John Dewey.
[90] Jevons, Theory of Pol. Econ., 3d ed., p. 14.
[91] Principles, 1907, p. 15 (1898 ed., p. 76). See also Marshall's criticism of Cairnes' conception of supply and demand, in the 1898 edition of the Principles, p. 172.
[92] "Professor Clark's Economics," Q. J. E., 1908, p. 170.
[93] Davenport, op. cit., p. 300, n. It may seem somewhat unfair to hold a man responsible for the view of another writer which he throws into a footnote of his own book. One who has read Professor Davenport's book, however, will recognize, I think, that this quotation does express Professor Davenport's view. His discussion in the text on pages 300-301 affirms virtually this same doctrine, as a proposition of psychology. See also his discussions in small type on pages 336-37. His whole system is based upon this doctrine.
[94] See, especially, William James, Pragmatism, and The Meaning of Truth; John Dewey, Essays in Logical Theory; and F. C. S. Schiller, Humanism.
[95] The utter impossibility of adequately summing up a philosophic doctrine in two or three sentences will excuse this statement to those pragmatists who would prefer a somewhat different formulation.