Economists From England

"I used to think I should like to be a bookbinder or bookseller it seemed to me a most delightful trade and I wished or thought of nothing better. More lately I thought I should be a minister, it seemed so serious and useful a profession, and I entered but little into the merits of religion and the duties of a minister. Every one dissuaded me from the notion, and before I arrived at any age to require a real decision, science had claimed me."

"It was during the year 1851, while living almost unhappily among thoughtless, if not bad companions, in Gower Street a gloomy house on which I now look with dread it was then, and when I had got a quiet hour in my small bedroom at the top of the house, that I began to think that I could and ought to do more than others. A vague desire and determination grew upon me. I was then in the habit of saying my prayers like any good church person, and it was when so engaged that I thought most eagerly of the future, and hoped for the unknown. My reserve was so perfect that I suppose no one had the slightest comprehension of my motives or ends. My father probably knew me but little. I never had any confidential conversation with him. At school and college the success in the classes was the only indication of my powers. All else that I intended or did was within or carefully hidden. The reserved character, as I have often thought, is not pleasant nor lovely. But is it not necessary to one such as I? Would it have been sensible or even possible for a boy of fifteen or sixteen to say what he was going to do before he was fifty? For my own part I felt it to be almost presumptuous to pronounce to myself the hopes I held and the schemes I formed. Time alone could reveal whether they were empty or real; only when proved real could they be known to others."

"When quite young I can remember I had no thought or wish of surpassing others. I was rather taken with a liking of little arts and bits of learning. My mother carefully fostered a liking for botany, giving me a small microscope and many books, which I yet have. Strange as it may seem, I now believe that botany and the natural system, by exercising discrimination of kinds, is the best of logical exercises. What I may do in logic is perhaps derived from that early attention to botany."

"I cannot consent with the Radical party to obliterate a glorious past, nor can I consent with the Conservatives to prolong abuses into the present. I wish with all my heart to aid in securing all that is good for the masses, yet to give them all they wish and are striving for is to endanger much that is good beyond their comprehension. I cannot pretend to underestimate the good that the English monarchy and aristocracy, with all the liberal policy actuating it, does for the human race, and yet I cannot but fear the pretensions of democracy against it are strong, and in some respects properly strong. This antithesis and struggle, perhaps, after all, is no more than has always more or less existed, but is now becoming more marked. Compromise, perhaps, is the only resource. Those who rightly possess the power in virtue of their superior knowledge must yield up some, that they may carry with them the honest but uncertain wills of those less educated but more numerous and physically powerful."

"You will perceive that economy, scientifically speaking, is a very contracted science; it is in fact a sort of vague mathematics which calculates the causes and effects of man's industry, and shows how it may be best applied. There are a multitude of allied branches of knowledge connected with mans condition; the relation of these to political economy is analogous to the connexion of mechanics, astronomy, optics, sound, heat, and every other branch more or less of physical science, with pure mathematics."

"One of the most important axioms is, that as the quantity of any commodity, for instance, plain food, which a man has to consume, increases, so the utility or benefit derived from the last portion used decreases in degree. The decrease in enjoyment between the beginning and the end of a meal may be taken as an example. And I assume that on an average, the ratio of utility is some continuous mathematical function of the quantity of commodity. This law of utility has, in fact, always been assumed by political economists under the more complex form and name of the Law of Supply and Demand. But once fairly stated in its simple form, it opens up the whole of the subject."

"Thus monopoly is limited by competition, and no owner, whether of labour, land or capital, can, theoretically speaking,obtain a larger share of produce for it than what other owners of exactly the same kind of property are willing to accept."

"we often observe that there is abundance of capital to be had at low rates of interest, while there are also large numbers of artisans starving for want of employment."

"In short, I do not write for mathematicians, nor as a mathematician, but as an economist wishing to convince other economists that their science can only be satisfactorily treated on an explicitly mathematical basis."

"Pray accept my best thanks for your kindness in sending me a copy of your Memoir, and for the very courteous letter in which you draw my attention to it. When your letter came I had, indeed, already noticed in the Journal des Economistes your very remarkable theory. I felt the greater interest in the subject because my own speculations have led me in the same direction, now for the last twelve years or more. It is satisfactory to me to find that my theory of exchange, which, when published in England, was either neglected or criticised, is practically confirmed by your researches. I do not know whether you are acquainted with my writings on the subject. All the chief points of my mathematical theory were clear to my own mind by the year 1862, when I drew up a brief account of it, which was read at the meeting of the British Association at Cambridge... A very brief abstract was then alone inserted in the report, but the original paper was printed in the journal of the London Statistical Society in 1866... Finally, in 1871, I caused to be published... the Theory of Political Economy, in which is given a full explanation of the theory, with the aid of mathematical symbols. [...] You will find, I think, that your theory substantially coincides with and confirms mine, although the symbols are differently chosen, and there are incidental variations. You will see that the whole theory rests on the notion... that the utility of a commodity is not proportional to its quantity; what you call the rarity of a commodity appears to be exactly what I called the coefficient of utility at first, and afterwards the degree of utility, which... was really the differential coefficient of the utility considered as the function of the quantity of commodity. The theory of exchange is given... and may be considered to be contained in one sentence. An equation may thus be established on either side between the utility gained and sacrificed at the ratio of exchange of the whole commodities, upon the last increments exchanged. Now in my book of 1871, I show fully how this theory may be expressed in symbols. [...] Indeed, when the meaning of the terms is explained, your proposition 'Les prix courants ou prix d'equilibre sont égaux aux rapports des raretés' is seen to coincide precisely with my theory, except that you do not point out how many equations are requisite, or how many unknown quantities there are. The publication of your paper... tends to confirm my belief in the correctness of the theory, but it might lead to misapprehensions as to the originality and priority... I shall therefore take it as a favour if you will kindly inform me whether you are sufficiently acquainted with my writings, or whether you would desire me to forward a copy of my Theory of Political Economy."

"There is no such thing as absolute cost of labour; it is all a matter of comparison. Every one gets the most which he can for his exertions; some can get little or nothing, because they have not sufficient strength, knowledge or ingenuity; others get much, because they have, comparatively speaking, a monopoly of certain powers."

"To me it is far more pleasant to agree than to differ; but it is impossible that one who has any regard for truth can long avoid protesting against doctrines which seem to him to be erroneous. There is ever a tendency of the most hurtful kind to allow opinions to crystallise into creeds. Especially does this tendency manifest itself when some eminent author, enjoying power of clear and comprehensive exposition, becomes recognised as an authority. His works may perhaps be the best which are extant upon the subject in question; they may combine more truth with less error than we can elsewhere meet. But "to err is human," and the best works should ever be open to criticism. If, instead of welcoming inquiry and criticism, the admirers of a great author accept his writings as authoritative, both in their excellences and in their defects, the most serious injury is done to truth. In matters of philosophy and science authority has ever been the great opponent of truth. A despotic calm is usually the triumph of error. In the republic of the sciences sedition and even anarchy are beneficial in the long run to the greatest happiness of the greatest number."

"Even if the constants which economists wish to determine were less numerous, and the method of experiment more accessible, we should still be faced with the fact that the constants themselves are different at different times. The gravitation constant is the same always. But the economic constants — these elasticities of demand and supply — depending, as they do, upon human consciousness, are liable to vary. The constitution of the atom, as it were, and not merely its position, changes under the influence of environment."

"One who desired knowledge of man apart from the fruits of knowledge would seek it in the history of religious enthusiasm, of martyrdom, or of love; he would not seek it in the market-place. When we elect to watch the play of human motives that are ordinary — that are sometimes mean and dismal and ignoble — our impulse is not the philosopher's impulse, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but rather the physiologist's, knowledge for the healing that knowledge may help to bring."

"Wonder, Carlyle declared, is the beginning of philosophy. It is not wonder, but rather the social enthusiasm which revolts from the sordidness of mean streets and the joylessness of withered lives, that is the beginning of economic science. Here, if in no other field, Comte's great phrase holds good: "It is for the heart to suggest our problems; it is for the intellect to solve them.... The only position for which the intellect is primarily adapted is to be the servant of the social sympathies.""

"If it were not for the hope that a scientific study of men's social actions may lead, not necessarily directly or immediately, but at some time and in some way, to practical results in social improvement, not a few students of these actions would regard the time devoted to their study as time misspent. That is true of all social sciences, but especially true of economics. For economics "is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life"; and it is not in the ordinary business of life that mankind is most interesting or inspiring."

"Prosperity ends in a crisis. The era of optimism dies in the crisis, but in dying it gives birth to an era of pessimism. This new era is born, not an infant, but a giant; for an industrial boom has necessarily been a period of strong emotional excitement, and an excited man passes from one form of excitement to another more rapidly than he passes to quiescence. Under the new error, business is unduly depressed."

"When a man sets out upon any course of inquiry, the object of his search may be either light or fruit — either knowledge for its own sake or knowledge for the sake of good things to which it leads. In various fields of study these two ideals play parts of varying importance. In the appeal made to our interest by nearly all the great modern sciences some stress is laid both upon the light-bearing and upon the fruit-bearing quality, but the proportions of the blend are different in different sciences. At one end of the scale stands the most general science of all, metaphysics, the science of reality. Of the student of that science it is, indeed, true that "he yet may bring some worthy thing for waiting souls to see"; but it must be light alone, it can hardly be fruit that he brings. Most nearly akin to the metaphysician is the student of the ultimate problems of physics. The corpuscular theory of matter is, hitherto, a bearer of light alone. Here, however, the other aspect is present in promise; for speculations about the structure of the atom may lead one day to the discovery of practical means for dissociating matter and for rendering available to human use the overwhelming resources of intra-atomic energy."

"It is not pretended that, at the present stage of its development, economic science is able to provide an organon even remotely approaching to what it imagines for itself as its ideal."

"Though a skilled mathematician, Alfred Marshall used mathematics sparingly. He saw that excessive reliance on this instrument might lead us astray in pursuit of intellectual toys, imaginary problems not conforming to the conditions of real life: and further, might distort our sense of proportion by causing us to neglect factors that could not easily be worked up in the mathematical machine."

"I was brought up to believe that cricket is the most important activity in men's lives, the most important thread in the fabric of the cosmos."

"Before we were old enough to practise at the nets with the Burslem men, we played most of our cricket on waste land that had been trampled flat by the clogs and boots of generations of miners."

"It is the great fallacy of Dr. Mandeville's book to represent every passion as wholly vicious, which is so in any degree and in any direction. It is thus that he treats every thing as vanity which has any reference, either to what are, or to what ought to be the sentiments of others: and it is by means of this sophistry, that he establishes his favourite conclusion, that private vices are public benefits. If the love of magnificence, a taste for the elegant arts and improvements of human life, for whatever is agreeable in dress, furniture, or equipage, for architecture, statuary, painting, and music, is to be regarded as luxury, sensuality and ostentation, even in those whose situation allows, without any inconveniency, the indulgence of those passions, it is certain that luxury, sensuality, and ostentation are public benefits: since, without the qualities upon which he thinks proper to bestow such opprobrious names, the arts of refinement could never find encouragement, and must languish for want of employment. Some popular ascetic doctrines which had been current before his time, and which placed virtue in the entire extirpation and annihilation of all our passions, were the real foundation of this licentious system. It was easy for Dr. Mandeville to prove, first, that this entire conquest never actually took place among men; and, secondly, that if it was to take place universally, it would be pernicious to society, by putting an end to all industry and commerce, and in a manner to the whole business of human life. By the first of these propositions he seemed to prove that there was no real virtue, and that what pretended to be such, was a mere cheat and imposition upon mankind; and by the second, that private vices were public benefits, since without them no society could prosper or flourish."

"If there be no real distinction between virtue and vice—if the account given by Mandeville of the constitution of our nature be a just one—why do his reasonings render us dissatisfied with our own characters, or inspire us with a detestation and contempt for mankind? Why do we turn with pleasure from the dark and uncomfortable prospects which he presents to us, to the delightful and elevating views of human nature which are exhibited in those philosophical systems which he attempts to explode? It will be said, perhaps, that all this arises from pride or vanity. When we read Mandeville we are ashamed of the species to which we belong; while, on the contrary, our pride is gratified by those sublime but fallacious descriptions of disinterested virtue, with which the weakness or hypocrisy of some popular writers has flattered the moral enthusiasm of the multitude."

"He can hardly be called a "moralist;" and though it is impossible to deny him a considerable share of philosophical penetration, his anti-moral paradoxes have not even apparent coherence. He is convinced that virtue (where it is more than a mere pretence) is purely artificial; but he is not quite certain whether it is a useless trammel of appetites and passions that are advantageous to society, or a device creditable to the politicians who introduced it by playing upon the "pride and vanity" of the "silly creature man." The view, however, to which he gave eccentric expression, that moral regulation is something alien to the natural man and imposed on him from without, seems to have been very current in the polite society of his time, as we learn both from Berkeley's Alciphron and from Butler's more famous sermons."

"Shaftesbury's book is full of fine declamation about the worth and excellence of men's reason and natural qualities, with an obvious intention to set these up against Revelation. It was against this system that Mandeville wrote his 'Fable of the Bees.' This book has anticipated the French writers in all their offensive representations of human nature, and it is remarkable that the severely religious parties have always had a sneaking kindness for Mandeville, at least, they hate the Shaftesbury school more, and for an obvious reason. If man's nature be as Shaftesbury represented it, religion is by no means necessary. Mandeville, on the contrary, shows man in his fallen state, and so points out the necessity of a Redeemer."

"The wickedest cleverest book in the English language."

"The natural depravity of mankind and remains of original sin were so fixed in Mr. Johnson's opinion, that he was indeed a most acute observer of their effects; and used to say sometimes; half in jest half in earnest, that they were the remains of his old tutor Mandeville's instructions. As a book however, he took care always loudly to condemn the Fable of the Bees, but not without adding, "that it was the work of a thinking man.""

"I looked over a celebrated book, "The Fable of the Bees." Till now I imagined there had never appeared in the world such a book as the works of Machiavel: but Dr. Mandeville goes far beyond it. The Italian only recommends a few vices, as useful to some particular men, and on some particular occasions: but the Englishman loves and cordially recommends vice of every kind; not only as useful now and then, but as absolutely necessary, at all times for all communities! Surely Voltaire would hardly have said so much! And even Mr. Sandiman could not have said more!"

"There is not a book in the English language which is less chargeable with the guilt of administering incentives to the appetites and tastes of the vulgar. Improper gratifications are never spoken of but in a way to make them odious, even when the paradox is maintained, that certain things called public benefits are promoted by them. The object rather is, to degrade the things denominated benefits, than to exalt the things which cause them; from the baseness of which, on the other hand, is inferred the baseness of the things which spring from them."

"It [The Fable of the Bees] is a satire upon artificial society; and like other satires partakes of the nature of a caricature. The end is to expose the mummery of the world, and the affectations of those who laid traps for praise by singing eulogiums on the dignity of human nature; to which end he shews, how much of fair appearance there is which is nothing but pretence; and how much of the fine things, and fine actions, on which we pride ourselves, are the result of qualities in us of which we are ashamed, and which we never cease to decry."

"Mandeville, the buffoon and sophister of the alehouse."

"Mandeville was one of those who helped to give currency to the premise accepted by the primitivists: science, industry, the arts, luxury and trade are all born of pride. But from this premise he drew the opposite inference; since civilization, if not a good, is at least a necessary evil, "pride," which is its moving force, is a kind of useful folly."

"Though licentious and in many respects objectionable, there are a great number of valuable remarks and of just and profound observations in this work [The Fable of the Bees], especially with reference to the improvement of arts and the increase of wealth. Mandeville, indeed, by way of establishing his leading doctrine, that "private vices are public benefits," has represented sundry passions and desires as vicious which do not deserve any such character. Thus, the desire to rise in the world, to enjoy an increased command over necessaries and luxuries, and to attain to distinction, is said by him to be a vice: but it would be more correct to call it a cardinal virtue. So long as it is pursued by fair and proper means, and without injury or prejudice to the rights and interests of others, it is worthy of every commendation; and is, in fact, the prolific source of wealth, science, and civilization. Luxury and ostentation is also one of the vices on which Mandeville lays the greatest stress, as contributing to national opulence. But luxury is a most ambiguous term, and it is very difficult to say when it is or is not censurable... But however incorrect his classification of virtues and vices, and however lax his morality, his book contains a great many paragraphs that strikingly illustrate the progress of society, and may, therefore, be advantageously referred to by the political economist."

"The poem in itself was not much more than a clever jeu d'esprit, but the Remarks and the Inquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue, which he published in defence of his thesis, are among the acutest psychological tracts of the age... The passions which produce the effect of virtue are those that spring from pride and the sense of power and the desire of luxury... Such a theory of the passions is a legitimate, if onesided, deduction from the naturalistic philosophy as it left the hands of Locke; the ethical conclusions, it will be observed, have a curious similarity with the later system of Nietzsche. The theory of Mandeville was too violently in opposition to the common sense of mankind to produce much direct influence, but it remained as a great scandal of letters."

"If Shakspeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees."

"The fallacy of that book is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among vices everything that gives pleasure. He takes the narrowest system of morality, monastick morality, which holds pleasure itself to be a vice, such as eating salt with our fish, because it makes it taste better; and he reckons wealth as a publick benefit, which is by no means always true. Pleasure of itself is not a vice."

"I read Mandeville forty, or, I believe, fifty years ago. He did not puzzle me; he opened my views into real life very much."

"Mandeville's essay [The Fable of the Bees] was a clever and cynical defence of licence and selfishness."

"I do not intend to pitch my claim on behalf of Mandeville higher than to say that he made Hume possible. It is indeed my estimate of Hume as perhaps the greatest of all modern students of mind and society which makes Mandeville appear to me so important. It is only in Hume's work that the significance of Mandeville's efforts becomes wholly clear, and it was through Hume that he exercised his most lasting influence. Yet to have given Hume some of his leading conceptions seems to me sufficient title for Mandeville to qualify as a master mind."

"How much Mandeville's contribution meant we recognise when we look at the further development of those conceptions which Hume was the first and greatest to take up and elaborate. This development includes...the great Scottish moral philosophers of the second half of the century, above all Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, the latter of whom, with his phrase about the "results of human action but not of human design", has provided not only the best brief statement of Mandeville's central problem but also the best definition of the task of all social theory... [T]he tradition which Mandeville started includes Edmund Burke, and, largely through Burke, all those "historical schools" which, chiefly on the Continent, and through men like Herder and Savigny, made the idea of evolution a commonplace in the social sciences of the nineteenth century long before Darwin. And it was in this atmosphere of evolutionary thought in the study of society, where "Darwinians before Darwin" had long thought in terms of the prevailing of more effective habits and practices, that Charles Darwin at last applied the idea systemically to biological organisms. I do not, of course, mean to suggest that Mandeville had any direct influence on Darwin (though David Hume probably had). But it seems to me that in many respects Darwin is the culmination of a development which Mandeville more than any other single man has started."

"That we do not know why we do what we do, and that the consequences of our decisions are often very different from what we imagine them to be, are the two foundations of that satire on the conceits of a rationalist age which was his initial aim... [T]he speculations to which that je d'esprit led him mark the definite breakthrough in modern thought of the twin ideas of evolution and of the spontaneous formation of an order... Though Mandeville may have contributed little to the answers of particular questions of social and economic theory, he did, by asking the right questions, show that there was an object for a theory in this field. Perhaps in no case did he precisely show how an order formed itself without design, but he made it abundantly clear that it did, and thereby raised the questions to which theoretical analysis, first in the social sciences and later in biology, could address itself."

"I send you some books, one very good book among them, the works of a Saint, and one very bad book, Fable of the Bees—one of those books which are condemned equally by the world and the Church; by the world because it is partly true, and by the Church because it is partly false, or vice versa—one of those books which delight in turning out the seamy side of society to the light. (Don't read it if you object to the coarseness of parts.)"

"My pamphlet by some means falling into the hands of one Lyons, a surgeon, author of a book entitled "The Infallibility of Human Judgment," it occasioned an acquaintance between us; he took great notice of me, called on me often to converse on those subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale alehouse in —— lane, Cheapside, and introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of the Fable of the Bees, who had a club there, of which he was the soul, being a most facetious, entertaining companion."

"Read Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, and his Enquiry into the Origin of Virtue. In the latter, he ascribes entirely to the policy of Lawgivers, the infusion of that controlling principle which results from the constitution of our nature; and nicknames its operation, Pride and Shame. With respect to his capital and offensive paradox, that private vices are public benefits, Mandeville's whole art consists, in denominating our passions by the appellation assigned to their vicious excess; and then proving them, under this denomination, useful to society. There is a lively force, and caustic though coarse wit, in his performance, which occasionally reminds one of Paine."

"If we bear in mind Smith's criticism of Hutcheson and Mandeville in adjoining chapters of the Moral Sentiments, and remember further that he must almost certainly have become acquainted with the Fable of the Bees when attending Hutcheson's lectures or soon afterwards, we can scarcely fail to suspect that it was Mandeville who first made him realise that "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest"."

"I flatter my self to have demonstrated that, neither the Friendly Qualities and kind Affections that are natural to Man, nor the real Virtues he is capable of acquiring by Reason and Self-Denial, are the Foundation of Society; but that what we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural, is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures, the solid Basis, the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without Exception: That there we must look for the true Origin of all Arts and Sciences, and that the Moment Evil ceases, the Society must be spoiled, if not totally dissolved."

"Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits."

"La doctrine économique d'Adam Smith, c'est la doctrine de Mandeville, exposée sous une forme non plus paradoxale et littéraire, mais rationnelle et scientifique."

"Mandeville examined not what human nature ought to be, but what it really is. In contrast, therefore, to the moralists that distinguish between a higher and a lower in our nature, attributing to the higher everything good and noble, while the lower ought to be persecuted and despised, Mandeville declares the fancied higher parts to be the region of vanity and imposture, while the renowned deeds of men, and the greatness of kingdoms, really arise from the passions usually reckoned base and sensual."