26 ECONOMICS 



productivity of any activity is its bearing upon the fund of human 

 sustenance food. Only such activities as enlarged the supply of 

 the material basis of life are accounted productive all else is beside 

 the mark. Nature is not solicitous for the spiritual welfare of man; 

 hence no alleged spiritual gains coming from diversion of industry 

 from its true channel can compensate for the losses of nutritive 

 material. From this principle follow by logical necessity the Physio- 

 cratic theory of the "produit net," the "impot unique," their classi- 

 fication of industries and their predilection for agriculture. The 

 system is one of singular symmetry and nice adjustment of parts. 



Their theory of value presents itself as an integral part of this 

 closely compacted system. If value be generically conceived to 

 mean that which avails towards some admittedly adequate end, then, 

 for the Physiocrats, value must mean that which avails towards 

 nature's work. Exchange values, those which result from the con- 

 ventional rating of things in the market, manifestly could not satisfy 

 the physiocrat's sense of reality. Natural values are the only real 

 values, to be arrived at through an appraisement of things from the 

 point of view of nature's purposes. Only that is accounted of value 

 which contributes to the increase of nutritive material. Nothing 

 could be farther from the Physiocrat's notion of wealth or economy 

 than to make vendibility the attribute of wealth. That would have 

 been a degradation of the science to the position of a mere "market 

 philosophy." 



Other features and details of the physiocratic theory lend them- 

 selves readily to a similar construction, but enough has been said to 

 indicate how the metaphysics of natural propensity shaped the 

 theory and to justify the view that economics made its debut as a 

 systematic science under the patronage of the eighteenth century 

 metaphysics of nature. And it is a mistake to represent this ex- 

 pedient of thought as an invention of the Physiocrats. Their meth- 

 ods and procedure were such as commended themselves to the 

 scientific judgment of the eighteenth century, for the order-of-nature 

 conception played an important part in the philosophical speculations 

 of its moralists and political writers. What was original and striking 

 was the use the Physiocrats made of this conception in constructing 

 a philosophy of wealth, and the new method by which they arrived 

 at it, and the new authority with which they invested it. The postu- 

 lates of their system were a curious blending of physics and meta- 

 physics, but it is the metaphysics that is of chief significance for the 

 subsequent history of the science. 



It gives, however, a very faulty idea of the significance of the 

 physiocrats to represent them as mere system-builders. For them 

 the distinction of a later day between art and science has no exist- 

 ence. Theirs is in truth a utilitarian science, a sort of economic 



