[1136] Or he will argue, perhaps, that the market would have been much more favourable to Esau if Jacob had had more pottage than he could easily have disposed of—a case where even monopoly might offer some advantage to the buyer.
[1137] “For purposes of demonstration,” says Pareto, “we have assumed the existence of private property. But to assume on the strength of the conclusion which we have established that a régime of private property gives the maximum of well-being would clearly be to beg the question.”
[1138] This doctrine is not accepted even by all the Hedonists. Walras especially is very critical in the fourth edition of his Économie pure. M. A. Landez in his Intérêt du Capital (1904) and Irving Fisher in The Rate of Interest (1907) have tried if not to demolish it at least to correct it by giving a more subtle analysis of the motives determining a preference for a future income as compared with a present one. This time-preference, of course, varies according to the fortune of each and other circumstances.
[1139] We have already remarked on this in the case of M. Böhm-Bawerk. This is another respect in which the Hedonists have shown themselves faithful to the Classical tradition. The necessity for separating the art from the science of political economy, pure economics from applied, was especially emphasised by Courcelle-Seneuil and Cherbuliez. Pareto put it well when he said that the maximum of ophelimity can be put in the shape of an equation, but the maximum of justice can not.
[1140] This system, according to Walras, would possess another advantage in that it would facilitate the establishment of free trade, which is an ideal of the science. The chief difficulties would thus be avoided, such as unequal import duties and unequal degree of fertility. “Free trade has always involved the absence of duties, and the nationalisation of land would further result in the free movement of capital and labour to whatever place might prove most advantageous to them.” (La Paix par la Justice sociale et par le Libre-Échange, in Questions pratiques de Législation ouvrière, September-October 1907.)
[1141] The same is true of American economists, where the use of the Hedonistic method is by no means confined to one school. Professor Clark employs it, and he is rather inclined to set up an apology for the present economic order and to trust to the efficacy of free competition. But Professor Patten also makes use of it, and he is an interventionist of the extreme type.
[1142] Economics will become a science when it can say that “what was just now nothing better than an intuition can now be fully proved.” (Walras, Économie politique pure, p. 427.)
[1143] “It is necessary to apply the law of the variation of intensity of need to each separate individual in relation to each one of his needs.” (Aupetit, La Monnaie, p. 93.)
[1144] It is only those Hedonists who claim to be able to establish an exact science that make use of the mathematical and abstract method to the total exclusion of the historical and biological method. Professor Marshall expressly declares himself in favour of the biological method, and would advocate employing diagrams and curves as little as possible (Economic Journal, March 1898, p. 50).
[1145] Pareto, Giornali degli Economisti, September 1901.