There is a leading idea which runs through the whole of this work, which pervades and animates every page and every line of it; and that idea is embodied in the opening words of the Christian Creed,—I believe in God.

Yes, if this work differs from those of some other Economists, it is in this, that the latter appear to say, “We have but little faith in Providence, for we see that the natural laws lead to an abyss. And yet we say laissez faire! merely because we have still less faith in ourselves, and because we see clearly that all human efforts designed to arrest the action of these natural laws tend only to hasten the catastrophe.”

Again, if this work differs from the writings of the Socialists, it is in this, that the latter say, “We pretend to believe in God, but in reality we believe only in ourselves; seeing that we have no faith in the maxim, laissez faire, and that we all give forth our social nostrums as infinitely superior to the plans of Providence.”

For my part, I say, laissez faire; in other words, respect liberty, and the human initiative,105 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Responsibility, solidarity; mysterious laws, of [p466] which, apart from Revelation, it is impossible to appreciate the cause, but the effects and infallible action of which, on the progress of society, it is given us to appreciate—laws which, for the very reason that man is sociable, are linked together and act together, although they appear sometimes to run counter to each other; and which would require to be viewed in their ensemble, and in their common action, if science, with its feeble optics and uncertain steps, were not reduced to method—that melancholy crutch which constitutes its strength whilst it reveals its weakness.

Nosce te ipsum—know thyself: this, according to the oracle, is [p467] the beginning, the middle, and the end of the moral and political sciences.

As we have elsewhere remarked, in what concerns man or human society, Harmony can never mean Perfection, but only Improvement. Now improvement or perfectibility implies always, to a certain extent, imperfection in the future as well as in the past. If man could ever find his way into the promised land of absolute Good, he would no longer have occasion to use his understanding and his senses—he would be no longer man.

Evil exists. It is inherent in human infirmity. It manifests itself in the moral as in the material world; in the masses, as in the individual; in the whole as in the part. But because the eye may suffer and be lost, does the physiologist overlook the harmonious mechanism of that admirable organ? Does he deny the ingenious structure of the human body, because that body is subject to pain, to disease, and to death—to such extremity of suffering as caused Job, in the depth of his despair, “to say to corruption, Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister”? In the same way, because the social order will never bring mankind to the fancied haven of absolute good, is the economist to refuse to recognise all that is marvellous in the organization of the social order—an organization prepared with a view to the constantly-increasing diffusion of knowledge, of morality, and of happiness?

Strange! that we should deny to economic science the same right to admire the natural order of things which we concede to physiology. For, after all, what difference is there between the individual and the collective being, as regards the harmony displayed by final causes? The individual, no doubt, comes into existence, grows and is developed, educates and improves himself as life advances, until the time comes when his light and life are to be communicated to others. At that moment everything about him is clothed in the hues of beauty; all breathes grace and joy; all is expansion, affection, benevolence, love, and harmony. For a while, his intelligence continues to be enlarged and confirmed, as if to qualify him to be the guide of those whom he has just called to tread the crooked paths of human existence. But soon his beauty fades, his grace disappears, his senses are blunted, his body becomes feeble, his memory clouded, his thoughts less bright; his affections even (except in the case of some choice spirits) get clogged with egotism, and lose that charm, that freshness, that sincerity and simplicity, that depth and disinterestedness, which distinguished his [p468] earlier days;—the poetry of life has fled. In spite of all the ingenious precautions which nature has taken to retard his dissolution—precautions which physiology sums up in the phrase vis medicatrix—he treads back the path of improvement, and loses, one after another, all his acquisitions by the way; he goes on from privation to privation, until he reaches that which is the greatest of all, because it includes all. The genius of optimism itself can discover nothing consolatory, nothing harmonious in this slow but unavoidable decadence—in seeing that being once so proud and so beautiful descending sadly into the tomb. . . . .. The tomb!..... But is not that the door of another habitation?..... It is thus, when science stops short, that religion106 renews, even for the individual, in another region, the concordant harmonies which have been interrupted here.107

Despite this fatal dÉnoÛment, does physiology cease to see in the human body the most perfect masterpiece which ever proceeded from its Creator’s hands?

But if the social body is liable to suffering, if it may suffer even to death, it is not for that reason finally condemned. Let men say what they will, it has not, in perspective, after having been elevated to its apogee, an inevitable decline. The crash of empires even is not the retrogradation of humanity, and the ancient models of civilisation have only been dissolved in order to make room for a civilisation still more advanced. Dynasties may be extinguished; the forms of government may be changed; yet the progress of the human race may not the less be continued. The fall of States is like the fall of leaves in autumn. It fertilizes the soil; contributes to the return of spring; and promises to future generations a richer vegetation, and more abundant harvests. Nay, even in a purely national point of view, this theory of necessary decadence is as false as it is antiquated. In the life of no people can we possibly perceive any cause of inevitable decline. The analogy which has so frequently given rise to a comparison between a nation and an individual, and led men to attribute to the one as to the other an infancy and an old age, is nothing better than a false metaphor. A community is being incessantly renewed. Let its institutions be elastic and flexible, so that in place of coming in collision with [p469] those new powers to which the human mind gives birth, they shall be so organized as to admit of this expansion of intellectual energy and accommodate themselves to it; and we see no reason why such institutions should not flourish in eternal youth. But whatever may be thought of the fragility and fall of empires, it must never be forgotten that society, which in its aggregate represents the human race, is constituted upon more solid bases. The more we study it, the more we shall be convinced that it too, like the human body, is provided with a curative force, a vis medicatrix, which delivers it from the evils which afflict it; and that it carries in its bosom, moreover, a progressive force; and is by the latter urged on to improvements to which we can assign no limits.

If individual evil, then, does not weaken or invalidate physiological harmony, still less does collective evil weaken or invalidate social harmony.

But how are we to reconcile the existence of evil with the infinite goodness of God? I cannot explain what I do not understand.

All I shall say is, that this solution can no more be exacted from Political Economy than from Anatomy. These sciences, which are alike sciences of observation, study man as he is, without asking the Creator to reveal His impenetrable secrets.

Thus, I again repeat, harmony does not correspond with the idea of absolute perfection, but with that of indefinite improvement. It has pleased God to attach suffering to our nature, seeing that He has designed that in us feebleness should be anterior to force, ignorance to science, want to satisfaction, effort to result, acquisition to possession, destitution to wealth, error to truth, experience to foresight. I submit without murmuring to this ordinance, being able, moreover, to imagine no other combination. But if, by a mechanism as simple as it is ingenious, He has provided that all men should approximate to a common level, which is continually rising, if He assures them—by the very action of what we denominate evil—both of the duration and the diffusion of progress, then am I not only content to bow myself under His bountiful and almighty hand,—I bless that hand, I worship it, I adore it.

We have seen certain schools arise which have taken advantage of the insolubility (humanly speaking) of this question to embroil all others, as if it were given to our finite intelligence to [p470] comprehend and reconcile things which are infinite. Placing over the portal of social science this sentence, God cannot desire evil, they arrive at the following series of conclusions: “Evil exists in society; then society is not organized according to the designs of God. Let us change, and change again, and change continually this organization. Let us try about, and make experiments, until we have effaced all trace of suffering from the world. By that sign we shall know that the kingdom of God has come.”

Nor is this all. These schools have been led to exclude from their social plans liberty as well as suffering, for liberty implies the possibility of error, and consequently the possibility of evil. Addressing their fellow-men, they say, “Allow us to organize you—don’t you interfere—cease to compare, to judge, to decide anything by yourselves and for yourselves. We abhor the laissez faire; but we ask you to let things alone, and to let us alone. If we succeed in conducting you to perfect happiness, the infinite goodness of God will be vindicated.”

Contradiction, inconsistency, presumption,—we ask which is most apparent in such language?

One sect among others, not very philosophical, but very noisy, promises to mankind unmixed felicity. Only deliver over to that sect the government of the human race, and in virtue of certain formulas, it makes bold to rid men of every painful sensation.

But if you do not accord a blind faith to the promises of that sect, then, bringing forward that formidable and insoluble problem which has vexed philosophy since the beginning of the world, they summon you to reconcile the existence of evil with the infinite goodness of God. Do you hesitate? they accuse you of impiety.

Fourier rings the changes on this theme till he exhausts all its combinations.

“Either God has not been able to give us a social code of attraction, of justice, of truth, and of unity; in which case He has been unjust in giving us wants without the means of satisfying them.”

“Or He has not desired to give it us; and in that case He has deliberately persecuted us by creating designedly wants which it is impossible to satisfy:”

“Or He is able, and has not desired; in which case the principle of good would rival the principle of evil, having the power to establish good, and preferring to establish evil:” [p471]

“Or He has desired and has not been able; in which case He is incapable of governing us, acknowledging and desiring good, but not having the power to establish it:”

“Or He has been neither able nor willing; in which case the principle of good is below the principle of evil, etc.:”

“Or He has been both able and willing; in which case the code exists, and it is for us to promulgate it, etc.”

And Fourier is the prophet of this new revelation. Let us deliver ourselves up to him and to his disciples: Providence will then be justified, sensibility will change its nature, and suffering will disappear from the earth.

But how, I would ask, do these apostles of absolute good, these hardy logicians, who exclaim continually that “God being perfect, His work must be perfect also;” and who accuse us of impiety because we resign ourselves to human imperfection,—how, I say, do these men not perceive that, on the most favourable hypothesis, they are as impious as we are? I should like, indeed, that, under the reign of Messieurs ConsidÉrant, Hennequin, etc., no one in the world should ever lose his mother, or suffer from the toothache,—in which case he also might chant the litany, Either God has not been able or has not been willing; I should like much that evil were to take flight to the infernal regions, retreating before the broad daylight of the Socialist revelation—that one of their plans, phalanstÈre, crÉdit gratuit, anarchie, triade, atelier social,108 and so forth, had the power to rid us of all future evils. But would it annihilate suffering in the past? The infinite, observe, has no limits; and if there has existed on the earth since the beginning of the world a single sufferer, that is enough to render the problem of the infinite goodness of God insoluble in their point of view.

Let us beware, then, of linking the science of the finite to the mysteries of the infinite. Let us apply to the one reason and observation, and leave the other in the domain of revelation and of faith.

In all respects, and in every aspect, man is imperfect. In this world, at least, he encounters limits in all directions, and touches the finite at every point. His force, his intelligence, his affections, his life, have in them nothing absolute, and belong to a material mechanism which is subject to fatigue, to decay, and to death.

Not only is this so, but our imperfection is so great that we cannot even imagine perfection as existing either in ourselves or in the external world. Our minds are so much out of proportion to this idea of perfection that all our efforts to seize it are vain. The oftener we try to grasp it, the oftener it escapes us, and is lost in [p472] inextricable contradictions. Show me a perfect man, and you will show me a man who is exempt from suffering, and who has consequently neither wants, nor desires, nor sensations, nor sensibility, nor nerves, nor muscles; who can be ignorant of nothing, and consequently has neither the faculty of attention, nor judgment, nor reasoning, nor memory, nor imagination, nor brains; in short, you will show me a being who does not exist.

Thus, in whatever aspect we regard man, we must regard him as being subject to suffering. We must admit that evil has entered as one spring of action into the providential plan; and in place of seeking by chimerical means to annihilate it, our business is to study the part which it has to play, and the mission on which it is sent.

When it pleased God to create a being made up of wants, and of faculties to supply these wants, it was at the same time decreed that this being should be subject to suffering; for, apart from suffering, we could form no idea of wants, and, apart from wants, we could form no idea of utility, or of the use and object of any of our faculties. All that constitutes our greatness has its root in what constitutes our weakness.

Urged on by innumerable impulses, and indued with an intelligence which enlightens our exertions, and enables us to appreciate their results, we have free will to guide and direct us.

But free will implies error as possible, and error in its turn implies suffering as its inevitable effect. I defy any one to tell me what it is to choose freely, if it be not to run the risk of making a bad choice, and what it is to make a bad choice if it be not to prepare the way for suffering.

And this is, no doubt, the reason why those schools who are content with nothing less than absolute good are all materialist and fatalist. They are unable to admit free will. They see that liberty of acting proceeds from liberty of choosing; that liberty of choosing supposes the possibility of error; and that the possibility of error is the possibility of evil. Now, in an artificial society, such as our organisateurs invent, evil cannot make its appearance. For that reason, men must be exempted from the possibility of error; and the surest means to accomplish that is to deprive them of the faculty of acting and choosing—in other words, of free will. It has been truly said that Socialism is despotism incarnate.

In presence of these fooleries, it may be asked, By what right does the organizer of artificial systems venture to think, act, and choose, not only for himself, but for every one else? for, after all [p473] he belongs to the human race, and in that respect is fallible; and he is so much the more fallible in proportion as he pretends to extend the range of his science and his will.

No doubt the organisateur finds this objection radically unfounded, inasmuch as it confounds him with the rest of mankind. But he who professes to discover the defects of the Divine workmanship, and has undertaken to recast it, is more than a man; he is an oracle, and more than an oracle.....

Socialism has two elements: the frenzy of contradiction, and the madness of pride!

But when free will, which is the foundation of the whole argument, is denied, is not this the proper place to demonstrate its existence? I shall take good care not to enter upon any such demonstration. Every one feels that his will is free, and that is enough. I feel this, not vaguely, but a hundred times more intensely than if it had been demonstrated to me by Aristotle or by Euclid. I feel it with conscious joy when I have made a choice which does me honour; with remorse, when I have made a choice which degrades me. I find, moreover, that all men by their conduct affirm their belief in free will, although some deny it in their writings.109 All men compare motives, deliberate, determine, retract, try to foresee; all give advice, are indignant at injustice, admire acts of devotion. Then all acknowledge in themselves and in others the existence of free will, without which, choice, advice, foresight, morality, virtue, are impossible. Let us take care how we seek to demonstrate what is admitted by universal practice. Absolute fatalists are no more to be found, even at Constantinople, than absolute sceptics are to be met with at Alexandria. Those who proclaim themselves such may be fools enough to try to persuade others, but they are powerless to convince themselves. They prove with much subtlety that they have no will of their own; but when we see that they act as if they had it, we need not dispute with them.

Here, then, we are placed in the midst of nature and of our fellow-men—urged on by impulses, wants, appetites, desires—provided with various faculties enabling us to operate on man and on [p474] things—determined to action by our free will—indued with intelligence, which is perfectible and therefore imperfect, and which, if it enlightens us, may also deceive us with reference to the consequences of our actions.

Every human action—giving rise to a series of good or bad consequences, of which some fall back on the agent, and others affect his family, his neighbours, his fellow-citizens, and sometimes mankind at large—every such action causes the vibration of two chords, the sounds of which are oracular utterances—Responsibility and Solidarity.

As regards the man who acts, Responsibility is the natural link which exists between the act and its consequences. It is a complete system of inevitable Rewards and Punishments which no man has invented, which acts with all the regularity of the great natural laws, and which may, consequently, be regarded as of Divine institution. The evident object of Responsibility is to restrain the number of hurtful actions, and increase the number of such as are useful.

This mechanism, which is at once corrective and progressive, remunerative and retributive, is so simple, so near us, so identified with our whole being, so perpetually in action, that not only can we not ignore it, but we see that, like Evil, it is one of those phenomena without which our whole life would be to us unintelligible.

The book of Genesis tells us that, the first man having been driven from the terrestrial paradise, because he had learned to distinguish between good and evil, sciens bonum et malum, God pronounced this sentence on him: In laboribus comedes ex terr cunctis diebus vitÆ tuÆ. Spinas et tribulos germinabit tibi. In sudore vultÛs tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qu sumptus es: quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.110

Here, then, we have good and evil—or human nature. Here we have acts and habits producing good or bad consequences—or human nature. Here we have labour, sweat, thorns, tribulation, and death—or human nature.

Human nature, I say; for to choose, to be mistaken, to suffer, to rectify our errors—in a word, all the elements which make up the idea of Responsibility—are so inherent in our sensitive, rational, and free nature, they are so much of the essence of that nature [p475] itself, that I defy the most fertile imagination to conceive for man another mode of existence.

That man might have lived in an Eden, in paradiso voluptatis, ignorant of good and evil, we can indeed believe, but we cannot comprehend it, so profoundly has our nature been transformed.

We find it impossible to separate the idea of life from that of sensibility; that of sensibility from that of pleasure and pain; that of pleasure and pain from that of reward and punishment; that of intelligence from that of liberty and choice, and all these ideas from the idea of Responsibility; for it is the aggregate of all these ideas which gives us the idea of Being or Existence, so that when we think upon God, our reason, which tells us that He is incapable of suffering, remains confounded—so inseparable are our notions of sensibility and existence.

It is this undoubtedly which renders Faith the necessary complement of our destinies. It is the only bond which is possible between the creature and the Creator, seeing that God is, and always will be, to our reason, incomprehensible, Deus absconditus.

In order to be convinced how hard Responsibility presses us, and shuts us in on every side, we have only to attend to the most simple facts.

Fire burns us; the collision of bodies bruises us. If we were not indued with sensibility, or if our sensibility were not painfully affected by the approach of fire, and by rude contact with other bodies, we should be exposed to death every moment.

From earliest infancy to extreme old age, our life is only a long apprenticeship. By frequently falling, we learn to walk. By rude and reiterated experiments, we are taught to avoid heat, cold, hunger, thirst, excess. Do not let us complain of the roughness of this experience. If it were not so, it would teach us nothing.

The same thing holds in the social order. From the unhappy consequences of cruelty, of injustice, of fear, of violence, of deceit, of idleness, we learn to be gentle, just, brave, moderate, truthful, and industrious. Experience is protracted; it will never come to an end; but it will never cease to be efficacious.

Man being so constituted, it is impossible that we should not recognise in responsibility the mainspring to which social progress is specially confided. It is the crucible in which experience is elaborated. They, then, who believe in the superiority of times past, like those who despair of the future, fall into the most manifest contradiction. Without being aware of it, they extol error, and calumniate knowledge. It is as if they said, “The more I have learnt, the less I know. The more clearly I discern what is [p476] hurtful, the more I shall be exposed to it.” Were humanity constituted on such a basis as this, it would in a short time cease to exist.

Man’s starting-point is ignorance and inexperience. The farther we trace back the chain of time, the more destitute we find men of that knowledge which is fitted to direct their choice,—of knowledge which can be acquired only in one of two ways: by reflection or by experience.

Now it so happens that man’s every action includes, not one consequence only, but a series of consequences. Sometimes the first is good, and the others bad; sometimes the first is bad, and the others good. From one of our determinations there may proceed good and bad consequences, combined in variable proportions. We may venture to term vicious those actions which produce more bad than good effects, and virtuous those which produce a greater amount of good than of evil.

When one of our actions produces a first consequence which we approve, followed by many other consequences which are hurtful, so that the aggregate of bad predominates over the aggregate of good, such an action tends to limit and restrain itself, and to be abandoned in proportion as we acquire more foresight.

Men naturally perceive the immediate consequences of their actions before they perceive those consequences which are more remote. Whence it follows that what we have denominated vicious acts are more multiplied in times of ignorance. Now the repetition of the same acts constitutes habit. Ages of ignorance, then, are ages of bad habits.

Consequently, they are ages of bad laws, for acts which are repeated, habits which are general, constitute manners, upon which laws are modelled, and of which, so to speak, they are the official expression.

How is this ignorance to be put an end to? How can men be taught to know the second, the third, and all the subsequent consequences of their acts and their habits?

The first means is the exercise of that faculty of discerning and reasoning which Providence has vouchsafed them.

But there is another still more sure and efficacious,—experience. When the act is once done, the consequences follow inevitably. The first effect is good; for it is precisely to obtain that result that the act is done. But the second may inflict suffering, the third still greater suffering, and so on.

Then men’s eyes are opened, and light begins to appear. That action is not repeated; we sacrifice the good produced by the first [p477] and immediate consequence, for fear of the still greater evil which the subsequent consequences entail. If the act has become a habit, and if we have not power to give it up, we at least give way to it with hesitation and repugnance, and after an inward conflict. We do not recommend it; on the contrary, we blame it, and persuade our children against it; and we are certainly on the road of progress.

If, on the other hand, the act is one which is useful, but from which we refrain, because its first, and only known, consequence is painful, and we are ignorant of the favourable ulterior consequences, experience teaches us the effects of abstaining from it. A savage, for instance, has had enough to eat. He does not foresee that he will be hungry to-morrow. Why should he labour to-day? To work is present pain—no need of foresight to know that. He therefore continues idle. But the day passes, another succeeds, and as it brings hunger, he must then work under the spur of necessity. This is a lesson which, frequently repeated, cannot fail to develop foresight. By degrees idleness is regarded in its true light. We brand it; we warn the young against it. Public opinion is now on the side of industry.

But in order that experience should afford us this lesson, in order that it should fulfil its mission, develop foresight, explain the series of consequences which flow from our actions, pave the way to good habits, and restrain bad ones—in a word, in order that experience should become an effective instrument of progress and moral improvement—the law of Responsibility must come into operation. The bad consequences must make themselves felt, and evil must for the moment chastise us.

Undoubtedly it would be better that evil had no existence; and it might perhaps be so if man was constituted differently from what he is. But taking man as he is, with his wants, his desires, his sensibility, his free will, his power of choosing and erring, his faculty of bringing into play a cause which necessarily entails consequences which it is not in our power to elude as long as the cause exists; in such circumstances, the only way of removing the cause is to enlighten the will, rectify the choice, abandon the vicious act or the vicious habit; and nothing can effect this but the law of Responsibility.

We may affirm, then, that man being constituted as he is, evil is not only necessary but useful. It has a mission, and enters into the universal harmony. Its mission is to destroy its own cause, to limit its own operation, to concur in the realization of good, and to stimulate progress. [p478]

We may elucidate this by some examples which the subject which now engages us—Political Economy—presents.

Frugality.Prodigality.

Monopolies.

Population.111....