32 ECONOMICS 



self-interest, and even there self-interest was but a wheel in the 

 mechanism through which nature sought her ends. With the 

 school of Bentham, however, " there is no true interest but individ- 

 ual interest," not only in the region of business, but throughout 

 the whole of life. Self-interest is, therefore, not a method of nature; 

 it is nature. 



To Adam Smith's followers, the Wealth of Nations was a sacred 

 text. But like other sacred books, it was not above interpretation. 

 At the opening of the century the succession to Smith was in ques- 

 tion. Malthus and Ricardo were aspirants for the leadership. Of 

 the two, Malthus stands much nearer Smith in his philosophical 

 preconceptions. Like Smith, he imputes a purpose and constraining 

 guidance to- nature. But the victory went to Ricardo. He is a 

 layman in philosophy, coming by his preconceptions tacitly, like 

 many a later economist, through a simple process of absorption. 

 That is, perhaps, what makes him so significant an exponent of 

 the change in the point of approach that was taking place in the 

 science. Ricardianism is Benthamite utilitarianism turned eco- 

 nomic. It was given to Bentham to formulate the new articles of 

 faith; to Ricardo to use them. 



In the hands of Ricardo and the disciples of Bentham, economics 

 ceases to be a theory of the natural order and becomes, what was 

 already foreshadowed in Adam Smith, a theory of the workings of 

 human nature, but of human nature construed in hedonistic 

 terms. Human nature is regarded as a competent mechanism for 

 transforming the effects wrought upon it by the forces of the en- 

 vironment into an equivalent amount of conduct. Human action 

 is viewed as inert, mechanical reaction, the effect in conduct being 

 always quantitatively proportionate to the cause. This being the 

 general position of Hedonism, the particular office of each of the 

 sciences living under its dispensation was to show in detail, in its 

 appropriate department of activity, how this reaction takes place. 

 And since the process through which the human agent translates 

 the adequate cause into its appropriate effects is obviously a valua- 

 tion process, economics ceases to be primarily a theory of production 

 and becomes a theory of valuation. Its principal problem is not to 

 discover the causes of the productiveness of industry, but, as Ricardo 

 puts it, to "determine the laws which regulate distribution." Value 

 ceases to be regarded from the side of production and production 

 becomes a category of value, and political economy takes a long 

 step towards attaining, in appearance at least, what Professor Mar- 

 shall three quarters of a century later describes as its proper goal, 

 a theory of the equilibration of economic forces. In keeping with 

 this change of base, value is no longer conceived as that which avails 

 towards production, but as that which avails towards exchange. 



