Although the higher science of Political Economy has, nearly always, been conceived[114] as treating of the aggregate national activity of a people, there have been many, recently, who consider Political Economy as no real whole, but only as a mere abstraction. This is true, especially of many unconditional free-trade theorizers, partly from a repugnance toward the governmental guardianship of private businesses or economy. It is true, also, of certain philosophers who consider the idea, “the people,” as merely nominal.[115] There are, however, [pg 079] two things necessary to warrant us to call a thing made up of a number of parts, one real whole: the parts and the whole must have a reciprocal action upon one another, and the whole, as such, must have a demonstrable action of its own. (Drobisch.) In this sense, “the people” is, unquestionably, a [pg 080] reality, and not alone the individuals who constitute the “people.” Besides, it is truly said that all husbandry or economy supposes a will (“systematized activity” etc., supra, § [2]). Such a will is ascribed to individuals, to legal persons, to the state, but not, however, to “the people,” as a whole. But this will need not be an entirely conscious one, as is plain from the case of the less gifted and less cultured individuals engaged in household economy. The systemization in the public economy of a people finds its clearest expression in economic laws, and in the institutions of the state. But it finds expression, also, without the intervention of the state, in the laws established by use, and by the opinions of jurists or courts, in community of speech, of customs and tastes etc.: things which have an important economic meaning, which depend on the common nature of the land, of race and history, and which influence the state, at least as much as they are influenced by it.[116][117]
The most that can be said, at present, so far as an economy of mankind, or a world-economy, is concerned, is, that it may be shown that important preparations have been made for it. We are approaching more nearly to it by the ways of the more and more cosmopolitan character of science, the increasing international coöperation of labor, the improvement in the means of transportation, growing emigration, the greater love of peace, and the greater toleration of nations etc.
Section XIII.
Political Economy.—The Economic Organism.
The idea conveyed by the word organism, is doubtless, one of the most obscure of all ideas; and I am so far from desiring to explain[118] by that idea, the meaning of public or national economy, that I would only use the word organism as the shortest and most familiar expression of a number of problems, which it is the purpose of the following investigation to solve.
There are two points, especially, of importance here. In the motion of any machine, it is possible to distinguish with the utmost accuracy, between the cause and the effect of the motion: the blowing of the wind, for instance, is simply and purely, the cause of the friction of the mill-stones in a wind-mill, and is not in the least influenced or conditioned by the latter. But, in the public economy of every people, patient thought soon shows the observer, that the most important simultaneous events or phenomena mutually condition one another. Thus, a flourishing state of agriculture is impossible without flourishing industries; but, conversely, the prosperity of the latter supposes the prosperity of the former, as a condition precedent. It is as in the human body. The motions of respiration are produced by the action of the spinal cord; and the spinal cord, in turn, continues to work only through the blood, that is, [pg 082] by the help of respiration. In all cases like this, we are forced, when accounting for phenomena, to move about in a circle, unless we admit the existence of an organic life, of which every individual fact is only the manifestation.[119][120]
It is, also, undeniable, that human insight into the operation and utility of a machine must always precede the existence of the machine itself. This human insight is parent to the plan, and the plan, in turn, is parent to the machine. The very reverse of this is true in the case of organisms, those “divine machines” as Leibnitz called them. Men had digested food and reproduced their kind, thousands of years before physiologists had attained to a true theory of digestion or reproduction. I do not, indeed, by any means, pretend, that the public economy of nations is governed by natural necessity, in the same degree, as for instance, the human body. We shall find, however, that the minute arbitrary variations usual here and there in the course of its development, generally compensate for one another, in accordance with the law of large numbers. Here, too, we find harmonies, frequently of wonderful beauty, which existed long before any one dreamt of them; innumerable [pg 083] natural laws,[121] whose operation does not depend on their recognition by individuals, and, over which, only he can obtain power who has learned to obey them. (Bacon)[122][123][124] But [pg 084] it should never be lost sight of, that the natural laws governing the public economy of a people, like those of the human mind, are distinguished in one very essential point from those of the material world. They have to do with free rational beings, who, because they are thus free and rational, are responsible to God and their conscience, and constitute in their aggregate a species capable of progress.