[179] Dynamic Sociology, II, 90.(New York, 1883.)
CHAPTER VIII
COMPETITION
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Popular Conception of Competition
Competition, as a universal phenomenon, was first clearly conceived and adequately described by the biologists. As defined in the evolutionary formula "the struggle for existence" the notion captured the popular imagination and became a commonplace of familiar discourse. Prior to that time competition had been regarded as an economic rather than a biological phenomenon.
It was in the eighteenth century and in England that we first find any general recognition of the new rôle that commerce and the middleman were to play in the modern world. "Competition is the life of trade" is a trader's maxim, and the sort of qualified approval that it gives to the conception of competition contains the germ of the whole philosophy of modern industrial society as that doctrine was formulated by Adam Smith and the physiocrats.
The economists of the eighteenth century were the first to attempt to rationalize and justify the social order that is based on competition and individual freedom. They taught that there was a natural harmony in the interests of men, which once liberated would inevitably bring about, in the best of all possible worlds, the greatest good to the greatest number.