WELFARE AND THE NEW ECONOMICS 5°5 



demanding fact as well as faith, was replacing theological dogma by 

 scientific deduction. 



Although it was freed from theological dogma, the progressive 

 thought of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries was still dominated 

 by the idea that laws of some kind were a human necessity. The social 

 atmosphere still tingled with the spirit of past despotism. Hence, 

 without a protest, men passed from the dominion of theological to the 

 dominion of natural law. Even the ablest thinkers sought for prin- 

 ciples which, like Newton's law of gravitation, would underlie and con- 

 trol all phenomena. The protest, " back to nature " was merely a 

 demand that the world leap from the frying pan of theological absolu- 

 tion into the fire of nature-tyranny. Yet the thought of the eighteenth 

 century teems with this demand. The Physiocrats voiced it; the nat- 

 ural theologians preached it; Eousseau popularized it. Its logical 

 flower was the French Revolution, which was a blind effort to pour the 

 new wine of emancipated thought into the old bottles of political 

 pedantry. In the process much wine was lost. " Natural law " dogma 

 bound the thought of eighteenth-century thinkers in exactly the same 

 way that the " divine right " dogma had bound the thought of their 

 ancestors. 



Economics was born in the eighteenth century — born of natural 

 theology and physiocratic philosophy. Hereditarily, economics suffered 

 from inbreeding. Environmentally, it was hedged in by the narrowest 

 of narrow concepts — that of subjection to " higher powers." 



Was economics to become a science? Adam Smith and his con- 

 temporaries hoped that it was. How well marked, then, was the path ! 

 All sciences were founded on natural laws. If economics was to be 

 raised into the hierarchy of sciences, a greater natural law must be 

 found which would explain economic phenomena. The economists, 

 therefore, applied the tests of science to their doctrines in order to 

 establish their scientific nature. To the question, " What is it ? " they 

 replied, " A science of wealth." To the question, " Why is it ? " they 

 answered, " because of intelligent self-interst," " the law of supply and 

 demand," " competition," and the like. The third question they did 

 not ask because the eighteenth century accepted and obeyed nature's 

 laws instead of trying to utilize them for human advantage. 



Nevertheless, the third question must be answered. Of all things 

 men will ultimately ask, " How can we employ these for our advan- 

 tage ? " The basis of the answer was laid in the sixteenth and seven- 

 teenth centuries, when free thought had largely escaped from theolog- 

 ical dogma ; when knowledge had ceased to be the right of the few and 

 had become the privilege of all. In the eighteenth century the question 

 was asked of the government. Men challenged the divine right of 

 kings, and on both sides of the Atlantic democracy replaced monarchy. 



