The less then we trouble ourselves with scholastic inquiries as to whether a certain consideration comes within the scope of economics, the better.If the matter is important let us take account of it as far as we can.If it is one as to which there exist divergent opinions, such as cannot be brought to the test of exact and well-ascertained knowledge; if it is one on which the general machinery of economic analysis and reasoning cannot get any grip, then let us leave it aside in our purely economic studies.But let us do so simply because the attempt to include it would lessen the certainty and the exactness of our economic knowledge without any commensurate gain; and remembering always that some sort of account of it must be taken by our ethical instincts and our common sense, when they as ultimate arbiters come to apply to practical issues the knowledge obtained and arranged by economics and other sciences.
NOTES:
1.Some remarks on the relation of economics to the sum total of social science will be found in Appendix C, sections 1, 2.
2.The objections raised by some philosophers to speaking of two pleasures as equal, under any circumstances, seem to apply only to uses of the phrase other than those with which the economist is concerned.It has however unfortunately happened that the customary uses of economic terms have sometimes suggested the belief that economists are adherents of the philosophical system of Hedonism or of Utilitarianism.For, while they have generally taken for granted that the greatest pleasures are those which come with the endeavour to do one's duty, they have spoken of "pleasures" and "pains" as supplying the motives to all action;and they have thus brought themselves under the censure of those philosophers, with whom it is a matter of principle to insist that the desire to do one's duty is a different thing from a desire for the pleasure which, if one happens to think of the matter at all, one may expect from doing it; though perhaps it may be not incorrectly described as a desire for "self-satisfaction" or "the satisfaction of the permanent self."(See for instance T.H.Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, pp.165-6)It is clearly not the part of economics to appear to take a side in ethical controversy: and since there is a general agreement that all incentives to action, in so far as they are conscious desires at all, may without impropriety be spoken of shortly as desires for "satisfaction," it may perhaps be well to use this word instead of "pleasure," when occasion arises for referring to the aims of all desires, whether appertaining to man's higher or lower nature.The simple antithesis to satisfaction is "dissatisfaction": but perhaps it may be well to use the shorter and equally colourless word "detriment".in its place.
It may however be noted that some followers of Bentham (though perhaps not Bentham himself) made this large use of "pain and pleasure" serve as a bridge by which to pass from individualistic Hedonism to a complete ethical creed, without recognizing the necessity for the introduction of an independent major premiss; and for such a premiss the necessity would appear to be absolute, although opinions will perhaps always differ as to its form.Some will regard it as the Categorical Imperative;while others will regard it as a simple belief that, whatever be the origin of our moral instincts, their indications are borne out by a Verdict of the experience of mankind to the effect that true happiness is not to be had without self-respect, and that self-respect is to be had only on the condition of endeavouring so to live as to promote the progress of the human race.
3.Compare Edgeworth's Mathematical Psychics.
4.This is specially true of that group of gratifications, which is sometimes named "the pleasures of the chase." They include not only the light-hearted emulation of games and pastimes, of hunts and steeplechases, but the more serious contests of professional and business life: and they will occupy a good deal of our attention in discussions of the causes that govern wages and profits, and forms of industrial organization.
Some people are of wayward temperament, and could give no good account even to themselves of the motives of their action.
But if a man is steadfast and thoughtful, even his impulses are the products of habits which he has adopted more or less deliberately.And, whether these impulses are an expression of his higher nature or not; whether they spring from mandates of his conscience, the pressure of social connection, or the claims of his bodily wants, he yields a certain relative precedence to them without reflection now, because on previous occasions he has decided deliberately to yield that relative precedence.The predominant attractiveness of one course of action over others, even when not the result of calculation at the time, is the product of more or less deliberate decisions made by him before in somewhat similar cases.
5.See an admirable essay by Cliffe Leslie on The Love of Money.
We do indeed hear of people who pursue money for its own sake without caring for what it will purchase, especially at the end of a long life spent in business: but in this as in other cases the habit of doing a thing is kept up after the purpose for which it was originally done has ceased to exist.The possession of wealth gives such people a feeling of power over their fellow-creatures, and insures them a sort of envious respect in which they find a bitter but strong pleasure.
6.In fact a world can be conceived in which there is a science of economics very much like our own, but in it there is no money of any sort.See Appendices B, sec.8 and D, sec.2.
7.Some remarks on the large scope of economics as conceived in Germany will be found in Appendix D, sec.3.
