The study of history is the best and most powerful antidote against social romances and ideal fancies. François Beaudouin was right when he said: “Cæca sine historia jurisprudentia;” and we are very sure that, without history as an element in it, Political Economy runs a great risk of walking blindfold.
The human mind has need of being able to know where it is at any moment, surrounded, as it is, by so many roads, running in so many different directions. It ought to account to itself for its progress, its deviations from the right path, and for its mistakes.[20] History alone can throw any light on questions which are not simply intellectual curiosities, but which, rather, are most deeply concerned with the vital interests of society. It confirms the noble teachings of philosophy, by showing how our life is made up of one unchanging tissue of relations, and how man, even if he may vary their colors, and change their design, cannot renew their texture.
It teaches us to admire nothing, and to despise nothing, beyond [pg 019] measure. It enlightens us concerning questions of a very complicated nature. Witnessing the evolutions of humanity, following the development of social facts and theories, we better discern principles, and grow wary in relation to the alchemists of thought, who imagine that society may be made to undergo a transformation between the rising and the setting of the sun.
As there is a natural law, so, too, there are certain principles of Political Economy which emanate from philosophy, and may be reduced to one supreme principle; that of liberty and responsibility. The domain of Political Economy is the labor of generations. But we reject with all our strength, the materialistic doctrine which, inexplicably confusing matters, endeavors to assimilate ideas so distinct as intelligence and things; and which would descend so low as to employ the dynamometer to measure the creative force of man and its results, and which sees only figures where there is a living soul.
Man is an intelligent being, served by organs,[21] by personal organs, with which the Creator has endowed him, by giving him a body provided with marvellous aptitudes, by external organs which he finds in nature subjected to his power. Man was created in the image of God, say the Scriptures, and these words contain a deep meaning. He alone, of all terrestrial beings, possesses a spark of divine intelligence. He alone has been called to pursue the magnificent work of creation, by giving a new face to a world to which he cannot add so much as an atom.
Labor is nothing but the action of spirit on itself and on matter.[22] Hence its dignity and grandeur. Hence, also, the difficulties in the way of economic studies; since, to consider them only as concerned with questions of material production, is to forget that the products of industry are made for man, not man for industrial products; to ignore the close relationship [pg 020] between their fruitful investigations and the whole circle of the moral sciences; to debase them and to mutilate them.
From the moment that science concerns itself with man only, and the action of the mind; from the moment that its end becomes not simply material enjoyment, but moral elevation, the questions it discusses become indeed more complex, but the answer, when found, is more prolific in results. Wealth, then, is treated only as one of the forces of civilization. Other interests than purely material ones occupy the first place. This matter-of-fact philosophy which, according to Bacon's precept, seeks to improve the conditions of life, bears in mind, that the most fruitful source of material development lies in intellectual development. It humbly recognizes that it is not the first-born of the family, and draws new strength from this avowal. From the moment that it is the mind which produces and which governs the world, intellectual and moral perfection become the cause and effect of material progress. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The increase of production, then, appears an instrument of elevation in the moral order.[23] It is energy of soul, intelligence and manly virtue which constitute the chief source of the wealth of nations; which create it, develop it, and preserve it. Wealth increases, declines, and disappears with the increase, decline and disappearance of these noble attributes of the soul.
Labor is the child of thought. Nothing happens in the external world which was not first conceived in the mind. The hand is the servant of the intellect; and its work is successful, beautiful or useful in proportion to the activity and development of the intellect, and in proportion as the just, the beautiful and the good exert their power over it.
Production is, therefore, not a material, but a spiritual, work. How, then, can acts and their morality be separated? How not understand that the market of labor has its own distinct [pg 021] laws, and that education, even from a material stand-point, becomes the highest interest and the most important duty of society, since on it depends the efficiency of labor?