Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1

by Wilhelm Roscher

and make himself worthy of liberty, by the exercise of manly virtue! Because the form has been changed, we believe that we have changed human nature.

It is easy to understand, why, where these ideas prevail, the study of the past should be neglected and despised. Efforts are made to avoid it. Why, it is asked, revive memories of oppression and misery? The old world is wrecked. It is annihilated. Peace to its ashes! Or else, after it has been destroyed, it is sought for again; and, under pretext of eradicating the evils existing in it, an attack is made on the eternal basis on which human society rests, on the laws not made by man, and which it is not given to man to change. The world becomes one vast laboratory, in which the rashest experiments are multiplied in number, in which mankind is but clay in the hands of the potter which every pretended “thinker” may mould at will, by giving him the false appearances of independence and of an emancipated being.

And, indeed, if the will of man be all-powerful, if states are to be distinguished from one another only by their boundaries, if everything may be changed like the scenery in a play by a flourish of the magic wand of a system, if man may arbitrarily make the right, if nations can be put through evolutions like a regiment of troops; what a field would the world present for attempts at the realization of the wildest dreams, and what a temptation would be offered to take possession, by main force, of the government of human affairs, to destroy the rights of property and the rights of capital, to gratify ardent longings without trouble, and provide the much coveted means of enjoyment. The Titans have tried to scale the heavens, and have fallen into the most degrading materialism. Purely speculative dogmatism sinks into materialism.

All is changed, both men and things. Yet we hear the same old style of declamation. There are those who wish to plough up the soil which the harrow of the revolution went over yesterday; and they believe they are marching in the way of progress. They do not see that they have mistaken their age, and that the bold attempts of the past have now come to possess a directly opposite meaning. Without stopping to inquire to what side the new world inclines, they repeat the same words, and swear in verba magistri, and go the road of destruction, believing themselves to be creating the world anew!

Nothing is more natural than that these excesses should produce other excesses, in a contrary direction. Moved by hatred or fear of revolutionary absolutism, nations seek an asylum in governmental absolutism, or they retrograde towards the middle ages, and consider the mutual bond of protection and dependence of that period as the ideal and the realization of true liberty. History is no longer the organic development of social life, and man, like a soldier that thoughtlessly and capriciously has gone beyond his place of supplies, is obliged to retrace his steps. The reaction is clearly defined. The past is opposed to the present, not as a [pg 008] lesson to be turned to advantage, but as a model which must be hastily accepted; and men become revolutionary in a backward direction.

However, history, rigorously studied, knows neither these complaisances nor these weaknesses. It does not descend to the apotheosis of a past which cannot return again. The real historical spirit consists in rightly discerning what belongs to each epoch. Its object is, by no means, to call back the dead to life, but to explain why and how they lived. In harmony with a healthy philosophy, it assigns a limit to the vagaries of arbitrary will, beyond which the latter cannot go. It unceasingly calls us back, from the heights of abstraction, to positive facts and things.

In the creation of systems, only one thing was wont to be forgotten, men, who were treated, in them, like so many ciphers; for intellectual despotism has this in common with all despotic authority. History teaches us that we can reach nothing great or lasting, but by addressing ourselves to the soul. If the soul decays, there can be no longer great thoughts or great actions. Society lives by the spirit which inhabits it. It may, for an instant, submit to the empire of force, but, in the long run, it hearkens only to the voice of justice. It was thus that the greatest revolution which history records, that of Christianity, was accomplished. It addressed itself only to the soul; but by changing the hearts of men, it transformed society entirely.

The violent struggle between an imperious dogmatism and an unintelligent and mistaken attempt at a retrogressive movement is resolved into a higher view, which permits the union of conservatism and progress. Violent attempts and rash endeavors made, threatened to bring contempt on the noblest teachings of philosophy, and to make them repulsive to man; and, on the other hand, a blind respect for the institutions consecrated by history threatened to stifle all examination and all freedom of judgment.

But a healthier doctrine has permitted us to understand, that [pg 009] we are continuing the work of preceding generations; that we are developing the germs which they successively sowed; that we are perfecting that which they had only sketched, and that we are letting drop that which has no support in the social condition of man. Every thing is connected; each thing is linked to every other; nothing is repeated. The hopes of sudden and total renovation, based on absolute formulas, vanish before the touch of this solid study. This shows us how firm and unshaken are those reforms which have begun by taking hold of the minds of men, the precise spirit of which had penetrated into the souls of whole nations before they had manifested themselves in facts.

Law and Economy constitute a part of the life of nations in the same way that language and customs do. The power of history in no way contradicts the supremacy of reason.