THE PHYSICAL METHOD. 



.under the exclusive influence of each 

 one in particular. There is, perhaps, 

 no action of a man's life in which he 

 is neither under the immediate nor 

 under the remote influence of any im- 

 pulse but the mere desire of wealth. 

 With respect to those parts of human 

 conduct of which wealth is not even 

 the principal object, to these political 

 economy does not pretend that its 

 conclusions are applicable. But there 

 are also certain departments of human 

 affairs in which the acquisition of 

 wealth is the main and acknowledged 

 end. It is only of these that political 

 economy takes notice. The manner 

 in which it necessarilj' proceeds is 

 that of treating the main and ac- 

 knowledged end as if it were the sole 

 end ; which, of all hypotheses equally 

 simple, is the nearest to the truth. 

 The political economist inquires, what 

 are the actions which would be pro- 

 duced by this desire, if within the 

 departments in question it were un- 

 impeded by any other. In this way 

 a nearer approximation is obtained 

 than would otherwise be practicable 

 to the real order of human affairs in 

 those departments. This approxima- 

 tion has then to be corrected by mak- 

 ing proper allowance for the effects of 

 any impulses of a different descrip- 

 tion which can be shown to interfere 

 with the result in any particular case. 

 Only in a few of the most striking 

 cases (such as the important one of 

 the principle of population) are these 

 corrections interpolated into the ex- 

 positions of political economy itself ; 

 the strictness of purely scientific ar- 

 rangement being thereby somewhat 

 departed from, for the sake of prac- 

 tical utility. So far as it is known, 

 or may be presumed, that the conduct 

 of mankind in the pursuit of wealth 

 is under the collateral influence of 

 any other of the properties of our 

 nature than the desire of obtaining 

 the greatest quantity of wealth with 

 the least labour and self-denial, the 

 conclusions of political economy will 

 so far fail of being applicable to the ex- 

 planation or prediction of real events, 



589 



until they are modified by a correct 

 allowance for the degree of influence 

 exercised by the other cause." * 



Extensive and important practical 

 guidance may be derived, in any given 

 state of society, from general proposi- 

 tions such as those above indicated ; 

 even though the modifying influence 

 of the miscellaneous causes which the 

 theory does not take into account, as 

 well as the effect of the general social 

 changes in progress, be provisionally 

 overlooked. And though it has been 

 a very common error of political eco- 

 nomists to draw conclusions from the 

 elements of one state of society, and 

 apply them to other states in which 

 many of the elements are not the 

 same, it is even then not difficult, 

 by tracing back the demonstrations, 

 and introducing the new premises in 

 their proper places, to make the same 

 general course of argument which 

 served for the one case serve for the 

 others too. 



For example, it has been greatly 

 the custom of English political econo- 

 mists to discuss the laws of the distri- 

 bution of the produce of industry, on 

 a supposition which is scarcely realised 

 anywhere out of England and Scot- 

 land, namely, that the produce is 

 "shared among three classes, alto- 

 gether distinct from one another, 

 labourers, capitalists, and landlords ; 

 and that all these are free agents, 

 permitted in law and in fact to set 

 upon their labour, their capital, and 

 their land, whatever price they are 

 able to get for it. The conclusions 

 of the science, being all adapted to 

 a society thus constituted, require to 

 be revised whenever they are applied 

 to any other. They are inapplicable 

 where the only capitalists are the 

 landlords, and the labourers are their 

 property, as in slave countries. They 

 are inapplicable where the almost uni- 

 versal landlord is the state, as in 

 India. They are inapplicable where 

 the agricultural labourer is generally 

 the owner both of the land itself and 



* Essays on tomt Unsettled Qu€ftions of 

 Political Economy, p. 137-140. 



