TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 959 



We cannot be definite in a forecast of the distant future. But it is surely uot 

 irrational to look for a larger diffusion of independence, in the sense of really 

 mutual dependence, with a wider distribution of wealth. "When dependence ia 

 mutual its sting is gone. In the future the really dependent men will probably 

 be the incapable men, or else the men that have high capacities that are not at the 

 moment wanted, while they have no secondary or second-rate powers on which to 

 fall back. These two classes will give the future two problems to solve in place of 

 some that now trouble us, but are ready to vanish away. The solution may be the 

 public support of both classes of dependents — of the first because they are too bad, 

 and of the second because they are too good, to work on exactly the same footing 

 as their neighbours. 



But if some such changes may be anticipated, they are to be anticipated on the 

 terms of our present experience and of our past history ; and we do not find in either 

 that the ' economic factor ' has been independent of the other factors, or has always 

 overruled the rest. We do not find this true in our own lives as individual men. 

 Men, as we know them, are not made by their economic coiiditions alone. No 

 man is independent of these, it may be freely granted. If we do not earn our 

 bread by the sweat of our brow we depend on the labour of another man, the 

 wealthier, including Government itself, being, as Burke said, the pensioners of the 

 poorer. But this material basis of all reform is not the sole constituent of the re- 

 form itself, any more than material interest is the only motive to human conduct. 

 Both in the nation and in the man self-preservation comes first in order of time, 

 the preservation of the material means of living. Till a man has enough to eat, 

 he cannot work for much else ; tiU the nation is strong for defence, it cannot think 

 of much else. But material means of self-preservation are only the clay out of 

 which the statue is modelled, or the stone out of which it is hewn ; and the statue 

 cannot be rightly described as a mere hypocritical disguise of the rude mineral. We 

 cannot measure the value of a highly developed living being or group of living beings 

 by levelling down to the component cells or atoms, on the ground that they contain 

 the 'promise and potency ' of all that followed after. Even speculative biology 

 makes allowance for the originality and initiative of living creatures, were it only 

 for some little peculiarity that enables each fortunate survivor to conquer a rival ; 

 it starts with two facts, the living creature and its surroundings, not with one 

 only. So in considering the effects of economic causes we have before us not only 

 the land but the people, not only the production but the producer. Economic 

 causes are relative not only to outward Nature, but to the men who are confronted 

 with it. Certain philosophers have refused because of this relativity to consider 

 economic matters as subjects of a separate study at all, and the position has 

 been upheld from the chair of this Section. ^ It was even common at one time to 

 trace economic institutions to law, politics, and religion ; there was no thought of 

 counting every institution economic. Readers of Cobden will remember a passage " 

 where that statesman explains the economic condition of some European countries 

 by their religion, though Cobden can hardly be said to have any prejudice against 

 economics. Economists have probably been right in considering that it is, on the 

 whole, more easy to discover uniformity in human action proceeding from econo- 

 mic motives, whether to make a living or a fortune, than to trace it elsewhere ; but 

 this is a long way from the assertion that it does not exist elsewhere, or that the 

 economic motives are over all persons and in aU causes supreme. We may hold 

 with Adam Smith that desire of wealth is more likely to be victorious over the 

 whole field than any other motive taken singly or, if it be conceivable, all the rest 

 taken together. Passion, sentiment, lust of power, and aspii-ations of better kinds 

 are, however, there ; and they often precede, supersede, and control economic 

 motives, sometimes for good, sometimes for iU. Even economic selfishness is not 

 the only selfishness, and there is a stronger motive than any selfishness, which may 

 bind the strong one and spoil his goods. We can allow the potency of economic 

 motives, but not their omnipotence. 



We may be told that the complexity of the conditions of modern life acts as a veil 

 to the real facts, and that what seems independent is really economical in disguise, 



' By Professor Ingram at Dublin, 1878, 

 '^ England, Ireland, and America, Part II. 



