Modern Times:First and Second Phases The close of the Middle Ages,as Comte has shown,must be placed at the end,not of the fifteenth but of the thirteenthcentury.The modern period,which then began,is filled by a development exhibiting three successive phases,and issuing inthe state of things which characterises our own epoch.
I.During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Catholico-feudal system was breaking down by the mutual conflicts of itsown official members,whilst the constituent elements of a new order were rising beneath it.On the practical side theantagonists matched against each other were the crown and the feudal chiefs;and these rival powers sought to strengthenthemselves by forming alliances with the towns and the industrial forces they represented.The movements of this phase canscarcely be said to find an echo in any contemporary economic literature.
II.In the second phase of the modern period,which opens with the beginning of the sixteenth century,the spontaneouscollapse of the medieval structure is followed by a series of systematic assaults which still further disorganize it.During thisphase the central temporal power,which has made a great advance in stability and resources,lays hold of the rising elementsof manufactures and commerce,and seeks,whilst satisfying the popular enthusiasm for their promotion,to use them forpolitical ends,and make them subserve its own strength and splendour by furnishing the treasure necessary for militarysuccess.With this practical effort,and the social tendencies on which it rests,the Mercantile school of political economy,which then obtains a spontaneous ascendency,is in close relation.Whilst partially succeeding in the policy we haveindicated,the European Governments yet on the whole necessarily fail,their origin and nature disqualifying them for the taskof guiding the industrial movement;and the discredit of the spiritual power,with which most of them are confederate,further weakens and undermines them.
III.In the last phase,which coincides approximately with the eighteenth century,the tendency to a completely new system,both temporal and spiritual,becomes decisively pronounced,first in the philosophy and general literature of the period,andthen in the great French explosion.The universal critical doctrine,which had been announced by the Protestantism of theprevious phase,and systematised in England towards the close of that phase,is propagated and popularised,especially byFrench writers.The spirit of individualism inherent in the doctrine was eminently adapted to the wants of the time,and thegeneral favour with which the dogmas of the social contract and laisser faire were received indicated a just sentiment of theconditions proper to the contemporary situation of European societies.So long as a new coherent system of thought and lifecould not be introduced,what was to be desired was a large and active development of personal energy under no furthercontrol of the old social powers than would suffice to prevent anarchy.Governments were therefore rightly called on toabandon any effective direction of the social movement,and,as far as possible,to restrict their intervention to themaintenance of material order.This policy was,from its nature,of temporary application only;but the negative school,according to its ordinary spirit,erected what was merely a transitory and exceptional necessity into a permanent and normallaw.The unanimous European movement towards the liberation of effort,which sometimes rose to the height of a publicpassion,had various sides,corresponding to the different aspects of thought and life;and of the economic side the Frenchphysiocrats were the first theoretic representatives on the large scale,though the office they undertook was,both in itsdestructive and organic provinces,more thoroughly and effectively done by Adam Smith,who ought to be regarded ascontinuing and completing their work.
It must be admitted that with the whole modern movement serious moral evils were almost necessarily connected.Thegeneral discipline which the Middle Ages had sought to institute and had partially succeeded in establishing,though onprecarious bases,having broken down,the sentiment of duty was weakened along with the spirit of ensemble which is itsnatural ally,and individualism in doctrine tended to encourage egoism in action.In the economic field this result is speciallyconspicuous.National selfishness and private cupidity increasingly dominate;and the higher and lower industrial classes tendto separation and even to mutual hostility.The new elements --science and industry --which were gradually acquiringascendency bore indeed in their bosom an ultimate discipline more efficacious and stable than that which had been dissolved;but the final synthesis was long too remote,and too indeterminate in its nature,to be seen through the dispersive andseemingly incoherent growth of those elements.Now,however,that synthesis is becoming appreciable;and it is the efforttowards it,and towards the practical system to be founded on it,that gives its peculiar character to the period in which welive.And to this spontaneous nisus of society corresponds,as we shall see,a new form of economic doctrine,in which ittends to be absorbed into general sociology and subordinated to morals.
It will be the object of the following pages to verify and illustrate in detail the scheme here broadly indicated,and to pointout the manner in which the respective features of the several successive modern phases find their counterpart and reflectionin the historical development of economic speculation.
FIRST MODERN PHASE
