History of Economic Analysis part 45 ppt

the emphasis upon the original document was quite general. It constitutes the main
scholarly merit of Michelet. We find it also in writers whom we do not value primarily as
scholars, for example, Thiers, the politician. We find it even in the creators of the realistic
novel, for example, the brothers Goncourt.
In the second place, historians developed a bent for sociological analysis that benefited
from its proximity to facts. Niebuhr’s attention to institutions and to the question of the
effects of policies and reforms and Thierry’s attention to racial factors may serve as
examples. This hardly ever amounted to explicit theorizing, but it very often implied
sociological theories though, needless to say, they were none the better for not being
properly articulated. Moreover, much more than before, we observe interest in economic
phenomena per se. This interest manifested itself even where we should least expect it, in
the field of ancient history,
14
on the one hand, and in the ‘pictorial’ history of the period,
on the other. Lord Macaulay’s History of England (1848–61) illustrates to perfection
what I mean by pictorial history—history that concentrates on the picturesque military or
political events and narrates them with an eye to stirring effect. But Macaulay has
chapters descriptive of economic and social conditions that are indeed effective pictures
but entirely different ones. An analogous statement holds for L.A.Thiers’ History of the
French Revolution (1st French ed., 1823–7; English trans. 1838).
In the third place, there was a literature, important by virtue of achievement but still
more important as the basis of later developments, that may be described as the product
of the purely scientific wing of the historical school of jurisprudence or as the product of
the institutionalist wing of the historians. I shall illustrate this by the names of four
eminent men whose lines of research, widely though they differed from one another, all
come within the category envisaged. Maurer
15
was the leading though not unchallenged
authority on the social organization of medieval Germany, and his theories exerted
influence far and wide throughout the nineteenth century—even after they had become

obsolete. Fustel de Coulanges’ famous book, which penetrated into the general reading of
the educated (but not, so far as I can see, into that of economists), arranged the fruits of
scholarly work around a theory to the effect that religion is the most important factor in
shaping the legal and political institutions of a society, a theory that, owing to the close
correlation between the various departments of national life, will never be contradicted
by facts, even though it should be wrong or inadequate.
16
Sir Henry Maine’s (1822–88)
leadership belongs to the next period, but the work that spread his fame belongs to this. It

14
Examples are, Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, a study of Athenian finance by August Böckh
(1817) and, still more significant, the Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr, und den Handel der
vornehmsten Völker der alten Welt (1793–1812, English trans. 1833–4) by A.H.L.Heeren. The
influence of this great scholar and teacher extended over a wide domain that also included political
geography.
15
G.L.von Maurer (1790–1872), Geschichte der Markenverfassung in Deutschland (1856);
Geschichte der…Hofverfassung in Deutschland (1862–3); Geschichte der Dorfverfassung in
Deutschland (1865–6); Geschichte der Städteverfassung in Deutschland (1869–71).
16
N.D.Fustel de Coulanges (1830–89), La Cité antique (mainly the Greek city state or polis), 1864;
English trans. 1874.
History of economic analysis 402
presents a most instructive piece of a historian’s theorizing.
17
Finally, the historico-
ethnological work of J.J.Bachofen
18
must be mentioned, though its influence also belongs

in the next period.
Finally, in the fourth place, Kulturgeschichte,
19
though not of course a new
phenomenon, established itself as a recognized specialty. Its bearings upon our subject
are obvious. It may paint murals or it may paint miniatures. The footnote below mentions
the outstanding masters of the two forms, Burckhardt and Riehl.
20

3. SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE:
ENVIRONMENTALISM
We know that sociology dates from the scholastics and even from the Greeks. But the
status of a recognized field of research it did not acquire before the next period (see Part
IV, ch. 3). In the period under discussion sociology was indeed, as we have put it above,
baptized by Comte, but no great importance should be attributed to this fact. It is true that
there was plenty of important sociological work. But it remained unco-ordinated and
unsystematized. Most of it we have noticed already. We may speak of a philosopher’s
sociology, a lawyer’s sociology, a historian’s sociology. Each of them took many forms
that differ widely from, and stand in the most varied relations to, one another. It is

17
Sir Henry Maine, Ancient Law (1861). Students of economics should know more about Maine’s
work than the slogan ‘from status to contract.’
18
That is, the one work of Bachofen’s that I shall mention: Mutterrecht (1861), the fountainhead of
a whole literature on matriarchy.
19
Another word that is refractory to translation except by the un-English phrase, history of culture.
History of civilization is not quite right. History of civil society would be still more misleading.
20

Of Jakob Burckhardt’s (1818–97) imposing works, it will suffice, for our purpose, to mention
Die Kultur der Renaissance (1860; English trans. 1878). The nature of the performance, which I
trust is familiar to every reader, is difficult to define in general terms. Perhaps this phrase will come
as near to defining it as it is within my power: a vision of an epoch’s life in terms of art and politics
(both taken in the widest possible sense). The essential point that differentiates such a structure
from the history of any of the things that furnish the material for it—from the history of art and
literature per se, or science per se, or economic, social, or any other politics per se—is that these
things do not stand in the structure for their own sake, but for the sake of expressing, functionally,
some larger and deeper reality. Jakob Burckhardt’s place in the history of thought transcends this
performance, and the influences (Ranke’s among them) that helped to form him and the influences
that emanated from him would be interesting to analyze. But the popularity of the work I
mentioned must not deceive us concerning his influence as a social philosopher or political thinker,
He was too far removed from the liberal slogans of his time and then again too far removed from
any prophetic wrath about them to wield much influence.
W.H.Riehl (1823–97) might have been included in the next section’s report. For his work is still
more definitely relevant to professional sociology than is Burckhardt’s. But the elements of his
sociology (some of them anything but bombproof) would have to be picked out from what,
fortunately, always remained historical work. I do not think that his influence went much beyond
Germany’s frontiers. But perusal of his Kulturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten (1859) would do a lot
of good to students of economics. This book might be an excellent substitute for some of the items
on our current reading lists.
The Intellectual scenery 403
dangerous to force these forms into large categories. But, for the purpose of a summary
review, they may be divided into an ‘abstract’ and a ‘historical’ compound. In practical
importance, Benthamite utilitarianism stands first among the former,
1
historical
jurisprudence first among the latter. In this section we shall adopt, as far as possible, this
schema. In addition an attempt will be made to supplement our sociological harvest by
whatever we can glean from the period’s literature on government and politics, for which

the phrase Political Science then came increasingly into use, and by a brief glance at a
line of thought that should interest economists particularly, Environmentalism.
(a) The Natural-Law Sociology of Government and Politics.
Let us recall three results that have been established previously at various turns of our
way. First, the historical origin of all social science is in the concept of Natural Law,
which was from very early stages associated with more or less definite concepts of
‘community’ or ‘society.’ The Greeks may have confused the latter with the concept of
government. It would have been natural for them to do so under the conditions of the
polis. But the scholastic doctors were proof against this analytic mistake, because the
practical problems of their age and their own position in the social organism could not
fail to make it clear to them that the State or the Government—or the ‘Prince’—is a
distinct agent with interests of its own that do not necessarily coincide with the interests
of the people or the community (the Common Good). That ‘society’ was a discovery of
the philosophers of natural law, of the romanticists, or of still later groups is one of the
legends of the history of sociology.
2
Second, we have seen that utilitarianism was a
natural-law system. Like all natural-law systems, it was all-embracing in principle and
very nearly so in actual practice. It was conceived as a unitary social science that was
both normative and analytic and, among other things, included ethics, government, and
legal institutions down to all the details of judicial procedure and criminological
practice—in both of which Bentham himself was at least as intensely interested as he was
in any economic question. Third, we know that this unitary social science of
utilitarianism was individualist, empiricist, and ‘rationalist,’ the last term meaning here
simply that the system, both in its analytic and in its normative aspects, strictly excluded
everything that would not pass the test of utilitarian or hedonist rationality. The reader
will save himself much trouble and greatly improve his understanding of doctrinal history
if he gives due consideration to two vital facts. First, individualism does not necessarily
1
Other types of sociologies, or fragments of sociologies, that were abstract in the sense that they

proceeded from a few ‘first principles,’ are to be found chiefly in the writings of speculative
philosophers. Thus, Kant presented what he described as Metaphysical Elements (Anfangsgründe)
of the Theory of Law (Werke IX, pp. 72 et seq.). This theory was ‘abstract’ and nonhistorical
enough. But it was, of course, anything but utilitarian.
2
If there is a writer who actually can be accused of confusing the State with Society, that writer is
the romanticist A.Müller, for he called the state the ‘totality of human affairs’ (Elemente, vol. I, p.
60).
History of economic analysis 404
Involve empiricism or rationalism in this sense;
3
empiricism does not necessarily involve
individualism and rationalism in this sense; and rationalism in this sense does not
necessarily involve individualism and empiricism. But, second, so powerful a synthesis
as Bentham’s was bound to create, in the minds of foes as well as friends, an association
between all the elements that enter into it which gave the impression of logical
connection even where none existed.
4

Now, by virtue of its very nature, this system is incapable of taking account of the
facts of political life and of the way in which states, governments, parties, and
bureaucracies actually work. We have seen that its fundamental preconceptions do little
harm in fields such as that part of economics where its ‘logic of stable and barn’ may be
considered as a tolerable expression of actual tendencies. But its application to political
fact spells unempirical and unscientific disregard of the essence—the very logic—of
political structures and mechanisms, and cannot produce anything but wishful daydreams
and not very inspiring ones at that. The freely voting rational citizen, conscious of his
(long-run) interests, and the representative who acts in obedience to them, the
government that expresses these volitions—is this not the perfect example of a nursery
tale? Accordingly, we shall expect no contributions to a serviceable sociology of politics

from this source. And this expectation is almost pathetically verified. Strong common
sense redeems, to some extent, Bentham’s philosophy of government as presented in the
Fragment on Government (1776) and, of course, very many of his practical
recommendations on judicial procedure and the like. But James Mill’s ‘Essay on
Government’
5
can be described only as unrelieved nonsense though, so it seems, also
ineradicable nonsense. Moreover, its purely speculative character—so unlike the
character of the same author’s no doubt abstract argument in his book on economic
theory
6
—is
3
This sense of the term rationalism has, of course, nothing to do with the sense which we attributed
to it in another place (II, ch. 1, sec. 6). But all along, these two and other meanings have been
confused by many writers—a fertile source of mutual misunderstandings and of pointless
antagonisms and controversies.
4
Actually, the situation was and is further complicated by the fact that, of the terms mentioned,
only ‘empiricist’ (in the sense of antimetaphysical) has a fairly stable meaning. The preceding
footnote shows that this is not so in the case of ‘rational’ or ‘rationalistic.’ The case of the term
‘individualism’ is still worse.
5
Encyclopaedia Britannica (suppl., 1823).
6
After all that has been said above, the difference should be obvious. But the point is important
both for our immediate object, which is to show why general objections against utilitarian
premisses do not necessarily constitute objections in the particular case of economic theory, and for
our wider aim, which is to understand why general objections against any philosophy do not in
themselves dispose of any particular theory that, actually or apparently, links up with that

philosophy. Therefore, let me restate the argument in still a different form: any theory involves
abstractions and therefore will never fit reality exactly, hence economic theory is inevitably
unrealistic in this sense; but its premisses are induced from realistic observation of the profit-
seeking and calculating businessman; the premisses of political theory (style James Mill) are not
induced from observations of the agent of politics, the politician, but postulated from a completely
imaginary agent, the rational voter; therefore these premisses, hence results that are derived from
them, are not merely abstract but also unrealistic in a different sense.

The Intellectual scenery 405
obvious. This was realized at the time by many non-utilitarians such as Macaulay. But
much more important is it that J.S.Mill (without mentioning his father’s name) applied to
the political theory of the Benthamite school the unflinching epithet ‘unscientific’ (Logic,
VI, ch. 8,
3) and that in addition, his sentences vibrating with suppressed impatience, he
said practically everything else that needs to be said about it. In this, as in so many
respects, he rose above his early Benthamism. But he never shook off its shackles
entirely: though his essays On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government
are no doubt redeemed, in part, by wider horizons and deeper insight, they are still
‘philosophical radicalism.’ It will thus remain forever a matter of the historian’s personal
equation whether J.S.Mill’s theory spells abandonment or improvement of that of his
father.
7

Non-utilitarian and anti-utilitarian philosophers also continued to produce systems of
natural law—and corresponding philosophies of the state—but of much more restricted
scope, most of which reflect the influence of the romantic mood or else the influence of
Kant or Hegel.
8
The harvest to be gathered for our purposes from this field is small
indeed. Lawyers, too, continued to produce natural-law speculations. The most valuable

ones were, however, in special fields, such as constitutional or criminal law.
9
More
comprehensive enterprise of this type was being rapidly discouraged by the rising
prestige of the historical school.
10
An extremely influential performance of this kind,
Stahl’s, must however be noticed.
11
For the rest, lecturers

7
Exactly as in the case of the theory of value, as we shall see more fully later on; in all parts of his
wide domain, J.S.Mill’s intellectual situation and character asserted themselves in precisely the
same way.
8
A fairly long list, chiefly of German performances—for England, T.H.Green’s would have to be
mentioned—could be compiled. We merely recall one of the earliest and most influential that has
been mentioned already, Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts (1796–7). Hegel’s glorification of the
state as the embodiment of Absolute Reason is mentioned as a curiosum only. No wonder he was
popular with the Prussian bureaucracy.
9
As an example, I mention P.J.A.von Feuerbach’s (not to be confused with the philosopher
L.A.Feuerbach) criminology: Kritik des natürlichen Rechts (1796).
10
But let the reader keep this in mind: the historical school fought abstract speculation of either the
Benthamite ‘empiricist’ or the German ‘idealistic’ types, because these were the types with which
natural law had become identified; they fought natural law as such. From out standpoint, however,
there is no point in doing this, and any generalization produced by jurists of the historical school
should also be included in the corpus of natural law, just as the historical economist’s

generalizations are still economics and may even enter the concept of economic theory (e.g. in the
case of ‘theories’ of the origins of markets).
11
F.J.Stahl (Philosophie des Rechts nach geschichtlicher Ansicht, vol. I, 1850; vol. II, 1837) was a
sort of Lutheran Filmer and rose to be a power in the intellectual life of Prussia in the era of
Frederick William IV. The title of that work is justified in the case of vol. I by its attack upon
utilitarian natural-law rationalism (and, incidentally to this, by sympathy with the standpoint of the
historical school of jurisprudence) but is a misnomer for vol. II, where Stahl, having found his
bearings, attacked the historical school of jurisprudence and based himself squarely upon Lutheran
theology. Informed readers will miss the name of K.Frantz (Naturlehre des Staates, 1870), as they
will many others, e.g. that of Joseph de Maistre, and the whole contiguous literature on Church and
State. In defense, I can only point to the particular purposes of this fragmentary sketch.


History of economic analysis 406
displayed a significant tendency to turn their lectures on philosophy of law into lectures
on the history of the philosophy of law.
12

(b) The Historians’ Sociology of Government and Politics.
Writers who were professional historians or at least had an eye for historical reality were
bound to do better than utilitarian or other theorists as far as politics is concerned, for it is
more difficult for historians to neglect facts that stare them in the face. Edmund Burke,
for example, was a man who saw the concrete situation with passionate energy—whether
indulging in bursts of wrath or proffer-ing sober advice—and knew how to distill
generalizations from them that have established the reputation of his writings as a
storehouse of political wisdom even with people who bore no love to his politics: it might
be said that he taught politics by the case method and, as everyone knows, very
effectively.
13

Again, nobody has ever commended Lord Macaulay for profundity of
thought. But as regards insight into the nature of political processes, he was
immeasurably superior to James Mill, and his criticism of the latter’s presentation of the
political theory of utilitarianism in the Edinburgh Review (1829) was perfectly adequate
as far as it went although it did not go very far. Politics was still a ‘science’ to him (not
the object of a science) though an ‘experimental’
14
one—by which he simply meant that

12
It is with reluctance that I leave a topic that was a close neighbor of economics on the continent
of Europe and in whose province the explanation may be found of many a peculiarity of continental
economics, among other things, of the proficiency of German economists on the institutionalist side
of their science: links that had to be fought for elsewhere, especially in the United States at the time
of the institutionalist controversy, were a matter of course for the products of many, if not most,
continental universities. The continental student of economics absorbed a sociology of legal
institutions—that meant much for his intellectual equipment—in many cases before he had had a
word of technical economics. I shall therefore mention the names of two eminent men, who were
no doubt jurists first and last but who nevertheless helped to form many an economist. Their
influence belongs in the next period rather than in the one under discussion, but both published
their most characteristic work before 1870. Rudolph von Gneist (1816–95) was a typically
Anglophile German liberal, an authority in many fields but especially in constitutional and
administrative law. See Das heutige englische Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsrecht (1857–63).
Rudolph von Jhering (1818–92), Geist des römischen Rechts (1852–65). Neither has been
translated so far as I know, although later works of both of them were (e.g. Gneist’s Englische
Verfassungsgeschichte, 1882, English trans. 1889; Jhering’s Zweck im Recht, 1877–83, English
trans. 1913).
13
Edmund Burke’s (1729–97) name—no particulars are necessary—cannot be omitted from any
survey, however sketchy, of the intellectual scenery of the period, though chronologically his most

characteristic performances belong to the preceding one. Students of economics should peruse his
writings carefully to learn not only how people should reason on political questions but also how
people do reason in these matters. As the reader sees, I find it difficult to join the general chorus of
admiration for Burke as a thinker. In fact, the man who defined a political party as a group of
people who co-operate in order to further the public interest on some principles on which they are
all agreed was certainly no profound analyst; moreover, he was clearly infected by the tendency of
his time to take rationalizations for analytic explanation. The reader can easily satisfy himself of the
lack of realism in Burke’s definition by trying to apply it, e.g., to the two great American parties.
14
It is amusing to observe this use of the term ‘experimental.’ The utilitarians, being empiricist
philosophers and believers in the application of the methods of physics, specifically claimed that
The Intellectual scenery 407
their procedure was ‘experimental.’ These attempts by both ‘theorists’ and ‘antitheorists’ to
appropriate a term that, through the successes of physical experimentation, had acquired a
eulogistic connotation also runs through the whole history of economics from the seventeenth
century as will be noted again and again. Actually the term as applied to social phenomena is next
to meaningless; what the writers who use it mean to convey must be ascertained separately in each
case.

the utilitarian principles of politics were out of contact with political reality and that
generalizations could be arrived at only by observations of political reality. He did not try
to formulate such generalizations explicitly. Had he done so, they would, we may be sure,
have turned out to be idealized Whig politics. This was the case also with those historians
who did try their hands at political generalization.
15
Finally, let us recall what I believe to
be the finest flower of the period’s literature of political analysis: de Tocqueville’s De la
Démocratie en Amérique (1835–40).
16
What is the nature of the performance that

produced one of the ‘great books’ of the period? It conveyed no discovery of fact or
principle; it did not use any elaborate technique; it did nothing to court the public
(especially the American public). An extremely intelligent mind, nurtured on the fruits of
an old civilization, took infinite trouble as to observations and brilliantly subdued them to
serve an analytic purpose. This was all. But it is much. And I know of no other book that
would train us better in the art of succeeding in this particular kind of political analysis.
But the period’s great performance in the field of political sociology stands in the
name of Karl Marx. We are not yet in possession of the facts that are necessary to
establish this. They will be supplied in the next section (4b). Here I wish merely to say by
way of anticipation that Marx’s theories of history, of social classes, and of the state
(government)
17
constitute, on the one hand, the first serious attempts to bring the state

15
The subject being very important for us, I shall mention a few examples: the Grundzüge der
Politik (1862) by the historian Georg Waitz is by far the most creditable one I know, though not
free from intellectualist fallacies; the Politik auf den Grund und das Maass der gegebenen Zustände
zurückgeführt (1835) by the strongly partisan (liberal) historian F.C.Dahlmann is an able piece of
analysis; the Lehrbuch des Vernunftrechts und der Staatswissenschaften (1829–35) by the still
more partisan (radical) historian K.W.R.von Rotteck is an illustration of the truth that, given
sufficiently close-fitting blinkers, a man may completely lose that sense for historical reality which
is the main practical advantage to be derived from historical study. Finally, it is convenient to
mention in this place a book that belongs chronologically in the next period but is an excellent
example of the Political Science of the best historians of the period under discussion: J.R.Seeley’s
Introduction to Political Science (first edited by H.Sidgwick in 1896—the gleanings from Seeley’s
‘conversation classes’ on the subject that were so interesting a deviation from the current practice
of formal lectures).
16
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) needs no introduction, for his name and work have penetrated

into secondary schools—a success only the more difficult to explain because it was so thoroughly
deserved. Attention is invited to the rest of his writings. See Oeuvres completes (ed. Beaumont,
1860–65).
17
Marx’s truly sociological, i.e. nonspeculative, theory of the state is contained, in a nutshell, in the
Communist Manifesto and is there summed up in the pithy sentence that a government is a
committee for the management of the common interests of the bourgeoisie. There is, therefore, no
such thing as a socialist state—the state as such dies in the transition to socialism, a proposition that
has been taken over and much emphasized by Lenin (!). It is impossible to say here all that should
be said about this theory of the state and of politics. That central sentence is, of course, a half-truth
History of economic analysis 408
at best. But it suggests indirectly something that is much more important than is that half-truth, viz.
the idea that the state (government, politicians, and bureaucrats) is not something to philosophize
on or to adore but something to be analyzed as realistically as we analyze, e.g., any industry.


down from the clouds and, on the other hand, the best criticism, by implication, of the
Benthamite construct. Unfortunately, this scientific theory of the state, like so much else
in Marxist thought, is all but spoiled by the particularly narrow ideology of its author.
What a pity, but at the same time, what a lesson and what a challenge! Two examples
will illustrate another type of political analysis that, from negligible beginnings in the
eighteenth century, made some advance during that period, though it did not get very far.
As soon as political analysis becomes alive to the claims of scientific methods, it is bound
to run up against problems of criticism—in the logical, not in the political sense: criticism
of political concepts and of political reasoning—and of mechanisms. The book of a man
who was himself an eminent politician, Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1802–63) illustrates
that awakening to critical consciousness.
18
The later book of another man who also was
something of a politician, though primarily an academic leader, Franz von Holtzendorff

(1829–89), illustrates a growing sense of the necessity of analyzing the mechanism of
public opinion.
19

(c) Environmentalism.
A Zeitgeist that contains a component of mechanist—or what amounts almost to the same
thing, sensationalist—materialism will, in exact proportion to the relative strength of this
component, favor sociological theories that emphasize the explanatory value of
environmental factors. Accordingly, we find a streak of environmentalist thought that
may be described as a vulgarized form of Montesquieu’s.
20
Two examples will suffice.
Feuerbach, the philosopher (not the lawyer), made man a product of his physical
environment. If we add those qualifications that are necessary in order to raise this
proposition to the level at which it becomes possible to discuss it at all, we have here a
theory that has, explicitly and implicitly, come to the fore again in our own time. His
18
Treatise on the Method of Observation and Reasoning in Politics (1852)—a forgotten book by a
half-forgotten man. Yet both deserve to survive. The former is strongly recommended to the reader
because economists greatly need instruction of the kind it imparts. The latter we have had occasion
to mention in passing (above, ch. 2).
19
Wesen und Wert der öffentlichen Meinung (1879). Von Holtzendorff also wrote Principien der
Politik (1869), which does not seem to me to amount to much. None of the other works of this
prolific writer (though some of the fruits of his editorial activities) are known to me.
20
Montesquieu does not seem to me to have overrated the explanatory value of environmental
factors. How far environmentalist arguments that occur fairly frequently in the sociological
literature of the second half of the eighteenth century—e.g. in Herder’s writings—should be traced
to his influence, I do not feel able to say. The Esprit des lois was one of the most famous and most

extensively read books of that century. On the other hand, there were so many other sources from
which a man might have drawn environmentalist inspirations that it is difficult to make positive
assertions even in cases where Montesquieu was quoted.
The Intellectual scenery 409
emphasis, within environmental factors, upon food
21
is also in evidence in our second
example, Buckle.
22
If space allowed us to do so, we should have to consider his work
under three aspects which, as it is, can only be indicated. First, there is an idea: to reduce
history to a science by arriving, through ‘induction’ from observed facts, at ‘laws’ of the
same kind as what Buckle conceived the ‘laws’ of physics to be. In intention, Buckle’s
interpretation of history, and not Marx’s, is the truly ‘materialistic’ one—which is, of
course, all to the credit of Marx. Nothing is more obvious, however, as soon as one
delves into Buckle’s work, than the fact that this idea is purely ideological in nature: it is
what he wished to carry into effect, whereas he was actually swayed by pure speculation
that from first to last forced facts into a preconceived schema. Second, there is the
conceptual implementation of the idea, consisting of three types of ‘laws’ that determine
social states and their changes—physical, moral (i.e., propositions on human behavior),
and intellectual. The latter (mainly growth of technological control over physical
environments) supply the motive power of ‘progress,’ a principle that links up with what
we shall presently describe as Condorcet-Comte evolutionism. As far as these aspects are
concerned, namely, the analytic ones, even the little we have said about the book is too
much: its importance consists wholly in providing a case study in analytic miscarriage,
which may teach us to look out for speculative propensities behind a nonspeculative
program and for dilettantism behind an apparently large scientific apparatus. But there is,
third, the almost unbelievable success this book has had with all types of people, rich and
poor, educated and uneducated, English and foreign. It is this success only that raises the
book to significance: it was one of the items of the layman’s reading, one of the educators

of that period’s public mind. As such its teaching is an important element in the
intellectual scenery we are trying to visualize.
Like other ‘theories,’ environmentalism can easily be carried to a point where it
becomes obvious nonsense. But within its sphere, it is an indispensable helper of the
analyst of social phenomena—as it proved to be, for example, for Michelet. The case
may be illustrated by the (in this respect) similar case of ‘racialism.’ It is a melancholy
but very important observation to make that in the social sciences factors are always at
work that will drive such theories to the point of nonsense and—what is very much the
same thing—turn them into bones of contention for ideological and political parties. Both
environmentalism and racialism suit so many books that neither is allowed to make its

21
L.A.Feuerbach (Sämmtliche Werke, 1903–11, vol. X, p. 22) coined the phrase: ‘Der Mensch ist
was er isst.’ The pun loses in translation: ‘Man is what he eats’—one of those phrases that express
a whole mental world. Feuerbach’s writings were part of a literary current that popularized what
Marx and Engels so well described as ‘vulgar materialism.’ Let us notice in passing this very
significant fact: many if not all ideas of Feuerbach should have appealed to Marx for they agreed
well with one aspect of Marx’s work. Nevertheless, Marx fought them in season and out of season
(see e.g. Marx-Engels Archiv, I, 1926, and Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach…, 1888; English trans. by
A.A.Lewis, 1903), often with arguments that, coming from him, were not very convincing. The
explanation is simple, however: whatever else he was, Marx was a highly civilized man; it was
beyond him to swallow that sort of thing.
22
H.T.Buckle, History of Civilization in England (2 vols., 1857–61). The work is a torso; in fact it
is not more than an introduction to what was conceived as a huge enterprise. There is a
considerable Buckle literature.
History of economic analysis 410
contribution to our understanding of social processes—their friends and their foes alike
join forces to prevent this consummation. Let us notice again a work of the period which,
with remarkable freedom from bias, succeeded in balancing the environmentalist and

racial element in a way that was quite satisfactory as far as it went: F.T. (not Georg)
Waitz’s Anthropologie der Naturvölker (1859–64)—especially the first volume.
4. EVOLUTIONISM
Social phenomena constitute a unique process in historic time, and incessant and
irreversible change is their most obvious characteristic. If by Evolutionism we mean not
more than recognition of this fact, then all reasoning about social phenomena must be
either evolutionary in itself or else bear upon evolution. Here, however, evolutionism is
to mean more than this. One may recognize the fact without making it the pivot of one’s
thought and the guiding principle of one’s method. The utilitarian system may serve to
illustrate this. James Mill would have smiled at a questioner who asked him whether he
was aware of the occurrence of social changes, and he would have, in addition, conceived
a poor opinion of the questioner’s intelligence. Yet his various systems—in economic,
political, and psychological theory—were not evolutionary in the sense that his thought
in any of those fields turned upon evolution. And it is this that shall be the criterion of
evolutionism for us, both as regards philosophy—comprising also purely metaphysical
speculation—and as regards any ‘scientific’ field. Evolutionism in this sense asserted
itself in the course of the eighteenth century but reached and passed its high-water mark
in the nineteenth.
Attention is drawn to the presence of a disturbing factor, the influence of which will
be felt in many ways and not only in this section. In itself, the concept of evolution is
perfectly free from any valuation except within well-defined standards.
1
As far as this
goes, we merely recognize that people will describe a change as progress if they like it,
and as retrogression or degeneration if they dislike it. But in the eighteenth century
evolution was naïvely identified with progress—toward the rule of la raison—that is to
say, it carried a value judgment by definition. And this naïve association of ideas
persisted throughout the nineteenth century, though signs of its gradual dissolution
appeared in serious research work as time went on. The bourgeois whose business and
class position prospered had any amount of confidence in ‘progress’ of certain types, and

he and the literary exponent of the bourgeois mind displayed a lamentable tendency to
link this confidence in a certain set of desired changes with some ineluctible forces that
move civilizations or even the universe. But we must try to keep clear of such
infantilisms, however important they are as features of the Zeitgeist.

1
Thus, within the range of the accepted standards of the dental profession, it is a meaningful
proposition to aver that at the present time teeth are being extracted ‘more efficiently’ than a
century ago and even that dentist A extracts teeth ‘more efficiently’ than does dentist B. An
analogous statement applies to technical economic theory. But obviously this is no longer so when
it comes to comparisons of social structures or civilizations and outside of the range of specified
standards in general.

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