TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 961 



Mancliester School, we have discovered the importance of commercial motives as 

 rivals to motives of political ambition. We should allow that the interests of nations 

 in trade are a far stronger political force now than the interests of any dynasty. 

 We should even grant that in some new colonies, like South Africa, commercial 

 advantage may be the ruling consideration of politics. But nations have not 

 meaner motives than their citizens, not meaner, for example, than the motives of 

 ordinary professional men. The ordinary doctor depends on his profession for his 

 livelihood, and yet is anxious to help his fellow-men by relieving their suffering, 

 and he is also concerned to serve the cause of science. If he is the best of his kind 

 he is still influenced by all three motives. The ' economic element ' is not the only 

 or the most important in his case ; in the first connection it is an end or aim, in the 

 two others it is a mere instrument. This union of high and low interests, sublime 

 and commonplace motives, will be found also in nations and in the history of nations. 

 Their best achievements are not accomplished very easily without wealth, but the 

 wealth is a mere instrument, and it may be lavishly sacrificed to accomplish their 

 great ends. To all the better minds the charm of wealth is the power it gives to 

 carry out a great and good work, even if it be simply the work of governing well 

 an estate or a province. To such a man and to such a nation wealth is the material 

 out of which the political, educational, scientific, artistic, and religious ends of life 

 are shaped. Wealth has not created and does not control them ; they and not it 

 are the sovereign element in civilisation. 



The contentions of the theorists will have had a bracing effect if they bring 

 these old truths home to us ; and we may lay to heart another lesson, that is none of 

 their teaching. It is a well-worn saying that to straighten a bow we must bend it 

 the other waj'. There is perhaps a better simile at hand. When you have heard 

 counsel on one side you should hear counsel on the other ; but you must yourself try 

 to be judge rather than counsel in the affairs of economic study. In the time of 

 the older economists coun.sel was heard for the most part on the side of the- 

 wealthier classes. The strongest economic writing at the beginning of this century 

 was on their side — as if economists in their economics should have taken a side at 

 all. Since then,, perhaps, the opposite is true. But economists seem to have 

 nearly learned the lesson which their intercourse here with the students of other 

 sciences ought to teach them, that they are not to take a side in their economics ; 

 they are not to be advocates, even of the oppressed. The pleader's attitude of 

 mind is of necessity ex parte and not judicial. 



To preserve our judicial attitude we must have perfect freedom of criticism. 

 We must not allow our ' institutions,' whether in art, science, or religion, to fall 

 into the hands of one class of society, lowest or highest. We must not study our 

 subject with a constant fear of what this rich man or even that poor man will say 

 to what we find there. If deference to the opinions of the rich is subserviency, 

 the more generous deference may easily slide into a love of popularity, and it is- 

 hard to say which of the two temptations is the more likely to bias the views of 

 an economist at the present moment. Both temptations are dangerously strong, 

 and examples will readily occur to the memory. There is danger, for instance, in 

 endowments, unless they are made, as they happily often are, Idv founders who 

 have a genuine scientific interest. Whether the wealthy founders make it the 

 temporal interest of our professors to hold by the old views, or to adopt certain 

 new views, the process of corruption is the same. A kind of restraint and 

 constraint is introduced which may of course create only martyrs, but may 

 unobservedly and insidiously have created apostates. In science, honesty is not 

 the best policy merely; it is the only policy; without honesty there is no science. 

 We should have no right or title to be a Section of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science if we were not prepared to accept any conclusion to 

 which the facts might lead us, in scorn of consequence ; and we cannot be grateful 

 to those who tempt us to do otherwise. Only, like our brethren in the senior 

 branches of this Association, we must make sure of our conclusions before we 

 proclaim them proved, and we must not cling to a theory simply because it is our 

 own. 



1898. 3 Q 



