“Men of leisure,” he says, “employed themselves in procuring all sorts of conveniences and accommodations unknown to their forefathers, and that was the first yoke which, without intending it, they imposed upon themselves, and the prime source of the inconveniences which they prepared for their descendants. For, not only did they thus continue to emasculate both mind and body, but these luxuries having by habit lost all their relish, and degenerated into true wants, their being deprived of them caused more pain than the possession of them had given pleasure: they were unhappy at losing what they had no enjoyment in possessing.”
Rousseau was convinced that God, nature, and humanity were wrong. That is still the opinion of many; but it is not mine.
After all, God forbid that I should desire to set myself against the noblest attribute, the most beautiful virtue of man, self-control, command over his passions, moderation in his desires, contempt of show. I don’t say that he is to make himself a slave to this or that factitious want. I say that wants (taking a broad and general [p082] view of them as resulting from man’s mental and bodily constitution), combined with the power of habit, and the sense of dignity, are indefinitely expansible, because they spring from an inexhaustible source—namely, desire. Who should blame a rich man for being sober, for despising finery, for avoiding pomp and effeminacy? But are there not more elevated desires to which he may yield? Has the desire for instruction, for instance, any limits? To render service to his country, to encourage the arts, to disseminate useful ideas, to succour the distressed,—is there anything in these incompatible with the right use of riches?
For the rest, whatever philosophers may think of it, human wants do not constitute a fixed immutable quantity. That is a certain, a universal fact, liable to no exception. The wants of the fourteenth century, whether with reference to food, or lodging, or instruction, were not at all the wants of ours, and we may safely predict that ours will not be the wants of our descendants.
The same observation applies to all the elements of Political Economy—Wealth, Labour, Value, Services, etc.,—all participate in the extreme versatility of the principal subject, Man. Political Economy has not, like geometry or physics, the advantage of dealing with objects which can be weighed or measured. This is one of its difficulties to begin with, and it is a perpetual source of errors throughout; for when the human mind applies itself to a certain order of phenomena, it is naturally on the outlook for a criterion, a common measure, to which everything can be referred, in order to give to that particular branch of knowledge the character of an exact science. Thus we observe some authors seeking for fixity in value, others in money, others in corn, others in labour, that is to say, in things which are themselves all liable to fluctuation.
Many errors in Political Economy proceed from authors thus regarding human wants as a fixed determinate quantity; and it is for this reason that I have deemed it my duty to enlarge on this subject. At the risk of anticipating, it is worth while to notice briefly this mode of reasoning. Economists take generally the enjoyments which satisfy men of the present day, and they assume that human nature admits of no other. Hence, if the bounty of nature, or the power of machinery, or habits of temperance and moderation, succeed in rendering disposable for a time a portion of human labour, this progress disquiets them, they consider it as a disaster, and they retreat behind absurd but specious formulas, such as these: Production is superabundant,—we suffer from plethora,—the power of producing outruns the power of consuming, etc. [p083]
It is not possible to discover a solution of the question of machinery, or that of external competition, or that of luxury, if we persist in considering our wants as a fixed invariable quantity, and do not take into account their indefinite expansibility.
But if human wants are indefinite, progressive, capable of increase, like desire, which is their never failing source, we must admit, under pain of introducing discordance and contradiction into the economical laws of society, that nature has placed in man and around him indefinite and progressive means of satisfaction;—equilibrium between the means and the end being the primary condition of all harmony. This is what we shall now examine.
I said at the outset of this work that the object of Political Economy is man, considered with reference to his wants, and his means of satisfying these wants.
We must then begin with the study of man and his organization.