A History of Economic Doctrines / from the time of the physiocrats to the present day

by Charles Gide; Charles Rist

It is hardly necessary to say that the term “natural order” is meant to emphasise the contrast between it and the artificial social order voluntarily created upon the basis of a social contract.[11] But a purely negative definition is open to many different interpretations.

In the first place, this “natural order” may be conceived as a state of nature in opposition to a civilised state regarded as an artificial creation. To discover what such a “natural order” really was like man must have recourse to his origins.

Quotations from the Physiocrats in support of this view might easily be cited.[12] This interpretation has the further distinction of being in accord with the spirit of the age. The worship of the “noble savage” was a feature of the end of the eighteenth century. It pervades the literature of the period, and the cult which began with the tales of Voltaire, Diderot, and Marmontel reappears in the anarchist writers of to-day. As an interpretation of the Physiocratic position, however, it must be unhesitatingly rejected, for no one bore less resemblance to a savage than a Physiocrat. They all of them lived highly respectable lives as magistrates, intendants, priests, and royal physicians, and were completely captivated by ideas of orderliness, authority, sovereignty, and property—none of them conceptions compatible with a savage state. “Property, security, and liberty constitutes the whole of the social order.”[13] They never acquiesced in the view that mankind suffered loss in passing from the state of nature into the social state; neither did they hold to Rousseau’s belief that there was greater freedom in the natural state, although its dangers were such that men were willing to sacrifice something in order to be rid of them, but that nevertheless in entering upon the new state something had been lost which could never be recovered.[14] All this was a mere illusion in the opinion of the Physiocrats. Nothing was lost, everything was to be gained, by passing from a state of nature into the civilised state.

In the second place, the term “natural order” might be taken to mean that human societies are subject to natural laws such as govern the physical world or exercise sway over animal or organic life. From this standpoint the Physiocrats must be regarded as the forerunners of the organic sociologists. Such interpretation seems highly probable because Dr. Quesnay through his study of “animal economy” (the title of one of his works) and the circulation of the blood was already familiar with these ideas. Social and animal economy, both, might well have appeared to him in much the same light as branches of physiology. From physiology to Physiocracy was not a very great step. At any rate, the Physiocrats succeeded in giving prominence to the idea of the interdependence of all social classes and of their final dependence upon nature. And this we might almost say was a change tantamount to a transformation from a moral to a natural science.[15]

Even this explanation seems to us insufficient. Dupont, in the words which we have quoted in the footnote below, seems to imply that the laws of the beehive and the ant-hill are imposed by common consent and for mutual benefit. Animal society, so it seemed to him, was founded upon social contract. But such a conception of “law” is very far removed from the one usually adopted by the natural sciences, by physicians and biologists, say. And, as a matter of fact, the Physiocrats were anything but determinists. They neither believed that the “natural order” imposed itself like gravitation nor imagined that it could ever be realised in human society as it is in the hive or the ant-hill. They saw that the latter were well-ordered communities, while human society at its present stage is disordered, because man is free whereas the animal is not.

What are we to make of this “natural order” then? The “natural order,” so the Physiocrats maintained, is the order which God has ordained for the happiness of mankind. It is the providential order.[16] To understand it is our first duty—to bring our lives into conformity with it is our next.

But can a knowledge of the “order” ever be acquired by men? To this they reply that the distinctive mark of this “order” is its obviousness. This word occurs on almost every page they wrote.[17] Still, the self-evident must in some way be apprehended. The most brilliant light can be seen only by the eye. By what organ can this be sensed? By instinct, by conscience, or by reason? Will a divine voice by means of a supernatural revelation show us the way of truth, or will it be Nature’s hand that shall lead us in the blessed path? The Physiocrats seem to have ignored this question, for every one of them indifferently gives his own answer, regardless of the fact that it may contradict another’s. Mercier de la Rivière recalls the saying of St. John concerning the “Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” This may be taken to be an internal light set by God in the heart of every man to enable him to choose his path. Quesnay, so Dupont affirms, “must have seen that man had only to examine himself to find within him an inarticulate conception of these laws. In other words, introspection clearly shows that men are unwittingly guided by an “inherent” knowledge of Physiocracy.”[18] But, after all, it seems that this intuitive perception is insufficient to reveal the full glory of the order. For Quesnay declared that a knowledge of its laws must be enforced upon men, and this afforded a raison d’être for an educational system which was to be under the direct control of the Government.

To sum up, we may say that the “natural order” was that order which seemed obviously the best, not to any individual whomsoever, but to rational, cultured, liberal-minded men like the Physiocrats. It was not the product of the observation of external facts; it was the revelation of a principle within. And this is one reason why the Physiocrats showed such respect for property and authority. It seemed to them that these formed the very basis of the “natural order.”

It was just because the “natural order” was “supernatural,” and so raised above the contingencies of everyday life, that it seemed to them to be endowed with all the grandeur of the geometrical order, with its double attributes of universality and immutability. It remained the same for all times, and for all men. Its fiat was “unique, eternal, invariable, and universal.” Divine in its origin, it was universal in its scope, and its praises were sung in litanies that might rival the Ave Maria.[19] Speaking of its universality, Turgot writes as follows: “Whoever is unable to overlook the accidental separation of political states one from another, or to forget their diverse institutions, will never treat a question of political economy satisfactorily.”[20] Referring to its immutability, he adds: “It is not enough to know what is or what has been; we must also know what ought to be. The rights of man are not founded upon history: they are rooted in his nature.”