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nitudes and the relations of magnitudes to one another are treated of, it must be possible to subject them to calculation. Herbart has shown that this is so in the case of psychology;5 and all the sciences which treat of national life, especially our own, are psychological. But the advantages of the mathematical mode of expression diminish as the facts to which it is applied become more complicated. This is true even in the ordinary psychology of the individual. How much more, therefore, in the portraying of national life! Here the algebraic formulæ would soon become so con plicated, as to make all further progress in the operation next to impossible. Their employment, especially in a science whose sphere it is, at present, to increase the number of the facts observed, to make them the object of exhaustive investigation, and vary the combinations into which they may be made to enter, is a matter of great difficulty, if not entirely impossible. For, most assuredly, as our science has to do with men, it must take them and treat them as they actually are, moved at once by very different and non-economic motives, belonging to an entirely definite people, state, age etc. The abstraction according to which

5 Herbart, Ueber die Möglichkeit und Nothwendigkeit, Mathematik auf Psychologie anzuwenden; Kleinere Schriften, II, 417.

How detrimental it is to ignore the psychological nature of Political Economy is evident from the errors of Karl Marx, who personifies things in a manner almost mythological. Thus, according to him, modesty should be ascribed to a coat which exchanges for a piece of linen, and purpose to the linen, etc. (Das Kapital, 1867, I, 19, 22, seq.) The greatest fault of this intelligent but not very acute man, his inability to reduce complicated phenomena to their constituent elements, is greatly increased by his way of thus looking at things.

Compare J. B. Say, Traité I, introd. Thus, it would be certainly possible to describe every individual's physiognomy by means of a very compli cated mathematical formula, and yet there is no one who would not prefer the usual mode of taking pictures. The simple motions of the heavenly bodies, on the contrary, are always treated mathematically. (Lotze, Allgemeine Physiologie, 322 ft.)

8 When Fawcett says that all "principles of Political Economy are describing tendencies instead of actual results" (Manual of Political Economy, 1863, p. 90), our method, the historical, would give also the theory of the latter.

all men are by nature the same, different only in consequence of a difference of education, position in life etc., all equally well equipped, skillful and free in the matter of economic production and consumption, is one which, as Ricardo and von Thünen have shown, must pass as an indispensable stage in the preparatory labors of political economists. It would be especially well, when an economic fact is produced by the cooperation of many different factors, for the investigator to mentally isolate the factor of which, for the time being, he wishes to examine the peculiar nature. All other factors should, for a time, be considered as not operating, and as unchangeable, and then the question asked, What would be the effect of a change in the factor to be examined, whether the change be occasioned by enlarging or diminishing it? But it never should be lost sight of, that such a one is only an abstraction after all, for which, not only in the transition to practice, but even in finished theory, we must turn to the infinite variety of real life." There are two important inquiries in all sciences whose subject matter is national or social life: 1. What is? (What has been? How did it become so? etc.) 2. What should be? The greater number of political economists have confounded these questions one with the other, but not all to the same extent.10

'This was lost sight of by most writers during the second half of the eighteenth century, because they looked upon that equality as the really oldest condition, and its restoration the ideal to be striven for. How much of this still clings to the present free-trade school; see in Roscher, Gesch. der N. Ek. in Deutschland, 10 17 ff.

10 Thus, for instance, Ricardo examines, almost exclusively, the actual condition of things, while the socialists confine themselves, still more exclu sively, to the investigation of how things should be. It has been very usual in Germany since Rau wrote, to draw a distinction between theoretical and practical Political Economy. There are many who think that a good manual of practical Political Economy, dropping the introduction, demonstrations etc., would be also a good code of law, of universal application. Mercier de la Rivière has said that he wished to propose an organization which should be necessarily productive of all the happiness which can be enjoyed on earth. (Ordre essentiel et naturel (1767), Disc. prélim.) Compare, also, Sismondi, N. Principes, I, ch. 2.

When a careful distinction is made between them, the contrast between the (realistic) hysiological or historical, and the idealistic methods is brought out."

SECTION XXIII.

THE IDEALISTIC METHOD.

Any one who has read a goodly number of idealistic works treating of public economy (the state, law etc.) cannot have failed to be struck by the enormous differences, and even contradictions, as to what theorizers have considered desirable and

11 The word method is used in an essentially different sense, when the inquiry is, whether the inductive or deductive method is followed in Political Economy. F. S. Mill calls Political Economy, and, indeed, all "sociology," a concrete deductive science, whose a priori conclusions, based on the laws of human nature, must be tested by experience, either by comparing them with the concrete phenomena themselves, or with their emperical laws. It, in this, resembles astronomy and physics. (System of Logic VI, ch. 9. Essays on some unsettled questions of Political E., No. 5.) According to this, an economic fact can be said to have received a scientific explanation only when its deductive and inductive explanations have met and agreed. "Only those principles which, after they have been obtained by the one, are confirmed by the other method, can be said to have a scientific basis." (von Mangoldt, Grundriss, 8.) While I agree to this view, it seems necessary to me to mention points wherein caution is necessary: A. Even the deductive explanation of economic facts is based on observation, namely, on the self-observation of the person accounting for them, who, consciously or unconsciously, must always inquire: If I had experienced or accomplished the same fact, what should I have thought, willed and felt? The man who cannot translate himself into the souls of others, will give a wrong explanation of most economic facts. In the question, for instance, of the determination of the price of an article, the person who can look into the mind of one of the contracting parties only, will give a one-sided explanation of the facts. B. Moreover, every explanation, that is, satisfactory connection of the fact seeking explanation with other facts which are already clear, can be only provisional. The wider our horizon grows, the deeper should our solution of all questions become. A hundred years hence, should science increase in the mean time, the solutions which are satisfactory to us will be looked down upon by our posterity, as the speculations of our fathers antecedent to Adam Smith's time are looked down upon by us.

necessary. There is scarcely an important point which the highest authorities may not be cited for or against. We must not close our eyes to this fact. "The giddiness that comes from contemplating the depths of knowledge is the beginning of philosophy, as the god Thaumas was, according to the fable, the father of Iris." (Plato.) In a precisely similar manner, the student of public economy (politics, the philosophy of law etc.) must familiarize himself with the variations that have taken place in what men, at different periods of history, have required of the state and public economy, until he is lost in wonder at the contemplation.

SECTION XXIV.

THE IDEALISTIC METHOD.
(CONTINUED.)

It is impossible to fail to notice at once that those ideal descriptions which have enjoyed great fame and exerted great influence, depart very little from the real conditions of the public economy (of the state, law etc.) surrounding their authors.1 This is not mere chance. The power of great theorizers, as, indeed, of all great men, lies, as a rule, in this, that they satisfy the want of their own time to an unusual extent; and it is the peculiar task of theorizers to give expression to this want. with scientific clearness, and to justify it with scientific depth. But the real wants of a people will, in the long run, be satisfied in life, so far as this is possible to the moral imperfec

1 Tanquam e vinculis sermocinantur, says Bacon (De Dignit. et Augm. Scient., III, 3), of those who have written in a not non-practical way on the laws. Hugo, also (Naturrecht, 1819, p. 9), calls attention to the resemblance of the so-called laws of nature, to the positive law in force at the time. As to polit ical idealism, see Roscher: De historicæ doctrinæ apud sophistas majores vestigiis (Gött. 1838, 26 ff.). The only exceptions to this rule are the eclectics, who form their own system from the blossoms of all foreign ones, a system, indeed, without root, and which therefore must soon wither.

In this place, naturally, such an assertion can be made only as a programme to be carried out, the proof wherecf is to be sought in the rest of the

tion of man. We should at least be on our guard when we hear it said that whole nations have been forced into an "unnatural" course by priests, tyrants and cavilers. For, to leave human freedom and divine Providence out of consideration entirely, how is such a thing possible? The supposed tyrants are generally part and parcel of the people themselves; all their resources are derived from the people. They must have been new Archimedeses standing outside of their own world. (Compare, however, infra, § 263.)

It is true, that if the result of the growth of generations be to gradually produce a different people, these different men may require different institutions. Then a struggle arises between the old and those of the younger generation; the former wish to retain what has been tested by time, the latter to seek for the satisfaction of their new wants by new means. As the sea always oscillates between the flowing and ebbing of the tides, so the life of nations, between periods of repose and of crisis: periods of repose, when existing forms answer to the real substance of things, and of crisis, when the changed substance or contents seeks to build up a new form for itself. Such crises are called reforms when they are effected in a peaceful way, and in accordance with positive law. When accomplished in violation of law, they are called revolutions.3

That every revolution, it matters not how great the need of the change produced by it, is as such an enormous evil, a seriwork. By "the people," we do not mean the governed, to the exclusion of the governing classes, but both classes together. We attach to the expression the most extensive meaning possible. We do not limit it to the present generation, but intend it to cover all the generations from the beginning of a people's history to its end.

3 The custom, which has become general, of calling all democratic movements, and them only, revolutions (thus Stahl: Was ist Revolution? 1852, and many other writers of an entirely opposite tendency, especially in France), is not warranted. It is true that democratic (and imperial) revolutions are more frequent than others in our times, just as aristocratic revolutions were in the middle ages, and monarchical at the beginning of modern history. The essence of revolution, however, is in the operation of change contrary to positive law, acknowledged as such by the consciousness of the people.

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