To control his appetites, to govern his passions, to sacrifice the present to the future, to submit to privations for the sake of greater but more distant advantages—such are the conditions essential to the formation of capital; and capital, as we have already partially seen, is itself the essential condition of all labour that is in any degree complicated or prolonged. It is quite evident that if we suppose two men placed in identically the same position, and possessed of the same amount of intelligence and activity, that man would make the most progress who, having accumulated provisions, had placed himself in a situation to undertake protracted works, to improve his implements, and thus to make the forces of nature co-operate in the realization of his designs.
I shall not dwell longer on this. We have only to look around us to be convinced that all our forces, all our faculties, all our virtues, concur in furthering the advancement of man and of society.
For the same reason, there are none of our vices which are not directly or indirectly the causes of poverty. Idleness paralyzes efforts, which are the sinews of production. Ignorance and error give our efforts a false direction. Improvidence lays us open to deceptions. Indulgence in the appetites of the hour prevents the accumulation of capital. Vanity leads us to devote our efforts to factitious enjoyments, in place of such as are real. Violence and [p094] fraud provoke reprisals, oblige us to surround ourselves with troublesome precautions, and entail a great waste and destruction of power.
I shall wind up these preliminary observations on man with a remark which I have already made in relation to his wants. It is this, that the elements discussed and explained in this chapter, and which enter into and constitute economical science, are in their nature flexible and changeable. Wants, desires, materials and powers furnished by Nature, our muscular force, our organs, our intellectual faculties, our moral qualities, all vary with the individual, and change with time and place. No two men, perhaps, are entirely alike in any one of these respects, certainly not in all—nay more, no man entirely resembles himself for two hours together. What one knows another is ignorant of—what one values another despises—here nature is prodigal, there niggardly—a virtue which it is difficult to practise in one climate or latitude becomes easy in another. Economical science has not, then, like the exact sciences, the advantage of possessing a fixed measure, and absolute unconditional truths—a graduated scale, a standard, which can be employed in measuring the intensity of desires, of efforts, and of satisfactions. Were we even to devote ourselves to solitary labour, like certain animals, we should still find ourselves placed in circumstances in some degree different; and were our external circumstances alike, were the medium in which we act the same for all, we should still differ from each other in our desires, our wants, our ideas, our sagacity, our energy, our manner of estimating and appreciating things, our foresight, our activity—so that a great and inevitable inequality would manifest itself. In truth, absolute isolation, the absence of all relations among men, is only an idle fancy coined in the brain of Rousseau. But supposing that this antisocial state, called the state of nature, had ever existed, I cannot help inquiring by what chain of reasoning Rousseau and his adepts have succeeded in planting Equality there? We shall afterwards see that Equality, like Wealth, like Liberty, like Fraternity, like Unity, is the end; it is not the starting point. It rises out of the natural and regular development of societies. The tendency of human nature is not away from, but towards, Equality. This is most consoling and most true.
Having spoken of our wants, and our means of providing for them, it remains to say a word respecting our satisfactions. They are the result of the entire mechanism we have described.
It is by the greater or less amount of physical, intellectual, and moral satisfactions which mankind enjoy, that we discover whether [p095] the machine works well or ill. This is the reason why the word consommation [consumption[24]], adopted by our Economists would have a profound meaning if we used it in its etymological signification as synonymous with end, or completion. Unfortunately, in common, and even in scientific, language, it presents to the mind a gross and material idea, exact without doubt when applied to our physical wants, but not at all so when used with reference to those of a more elevated order. The cultivation of corn, the manufacture of woollen cloth, terminate in consumption [consommation]. But can this be said with equal propriety of the works of the artist, the songs of the poet, the studies of the lawyer, the prelections of the professor, the sermons of the clergyman? It is here that we again experience the inconvenience of that fundamental error which caused Adam Smith to circumscribe Political Economy within the limits of a material circle; and the reader will pardon me for frequently making use of the term satisfaction, as applicable to all our wants and all our desires, and as more in accordance with the larger scope which I hope to be able to give to the science.
Political Economists have been frequently reproached with confining their attention exclusively to the interests of the consumer. “You forget the producer,” we are told. But satisfaction being the end and design of all our efforts—the grand consummation or termination of the economic phenomena—is it not evident that it is there that the touchstone of progress is to be found? A man’s happiness and well-being are not measured by his efforts, but by his satisfactions, and this holds equally true of society in the aggregate. This is one of those truths which are never disputed when applied to an individual, but which are constantly disputed when applied to society at large. The phrase to which exception has been taken only means this, that Political Economy estimates the worth of what we do, not by the labour which it costs us to do it, but by the ultimate result, which resolves itself definitively into an increase or diminution of the general prosperity.
We have said, in reference to our wants and desires, that there are no two men exactly alike. The same thing may be said of our satisfactions: they are not held in equal estimation by all, which verifies the common saying, that tastes differ. Now it is by the intensity of our desires, and the variety of our tastes, that the direction of our efforts is determined. It is here that the influence of morals upon industry becomes apparent. Man, as an individual, may be the slave of tastes which are factitious, puerile, and [p096] immoral. In this case it is self-evident that, his powers being limited, he can only satisfy his depraved desires at the expense of those which are laudable and legitimate. But when society comes into play, this evident axiom is marked down as an error. We are led to believe that artificial tastes, illusory satisfactions, which we acknowledge as the source of individual poverty, are nevertheless the cause of national wealth, as opening a vent to manufactures. If it were so, we should arrive at the miserable conclusion, that the social state places man between poverty and vice. Once more, Political Economy reconciles, in the most rigorous and satisfactory manner, these apparent contradictions. [p097]