13. Private enterprise taxes the people more heavily than government does.

14. The social effects of taxation are more important than its fiscal effects.

15. The producer cannot always shift the burden of taxation upon the consumer, e.g., under monopoly and aggressive competition.

16. Protection may reduce the price of the commodity protected, not only in the protecting but even in the importing country.

17. Capital, as embodied in machinery, contributes more than labor to the production of wealth.

18. Wages are drawn from products and not from capital, and the "wage-fund" is a myth.

19. Increase of wages is attended with increase of profits. 20. Prices fall as wages rise.

21. Diminished hours of labor bring increased production. 22. Reduction of the time worked enhances the wages received.

23. A man working alone earns the same as when his wife and children also work.

24. Lowering the rate of interest may lead to increased savings.

This enumeration falls far short of exhausting the list, but must suffice for the present purpose. One may imagine a modern economist trained in the Ricardian, Malthusian, and Manchesterian schools which still prevail even in American universities, looking with an unbiased mind into such an array of facts and convincing himself of their substantial correctness. His situation would be naturally bewildering, and he might at first cast vaguely about for an explanation. If he should prosecute this search thoughtfully and fearlessly, intent only upon the truth, he must at length find the full and only explanation to be that the whole farrago which has so long passed for political economy is true only

of irrational animals and is altogether inapplicable to rational

man.

Darwin modestly confesses that he derived his original conception of natural selection from the reading of Malthus on Population.1 But he did not perhaps himself perceive that in applying the law of Malthus to the animal world he was introducing it into the only field in which it holds true. Yet such is the case, and for the same reason that has been already given, viz., that the advent with man of the thinking, knowing, foreseeing, calculating, designing, inventing, and constructing faculty, which is wanting in lower creatures, repealed to this extent the biologic law, or law of nature, and enacted in its stead the psychologic law, or law of mind.

1 Autobiography. Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 68.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

MELIORISM.

From mere impulse to true sentiment, and from sentiment to reason, are the psychic steps corresponding to the series of benevolent acts which lead from promiscuous alms-giving, through the expanding systems of charity, to the broadest forms of philanthropy and deep-laid schemes of humanitarianism. But from humanitarianism it is but one more step in the same direction to meliorism, which may be defined as humanitarianism minus all sentiment. Now, meliorism, instead of an ethical, is a dynamic principle. It implies the improvement of the social condition through cold calculation, through the adoption of indirect means. It is not content merely to alleviate present suffering, it aims to create conditions under which no suffering can exist. Dynamic Sociology, II, 468.

I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word "meliorist" except myself. But I begin to think that there is no good invention or discovery that has not been made by more than one person.

The only good reason for referring to the "source "would be, that you found it useful for the doctrine of meliorism to cite one unfashionable confessor of it in the face of the fashionable extremes. GEORGE ELIOT.

In her general attitude towards life, George Eliot was neither optimist nor pessimist. She held to the middle term, which she invented for herself, of "meliorist." She was cheered by the hope and by the belief in gradual improvement of the mass; for in her view each individual must find the better part of happiness in helping another. — J. W. CROSS: George Eliot's Life, III, 377.

Our line of reasoning provides us, then, with a practical conception which lies midway between the extremes of optimism and pessimism, and which, to use a term for which I am indebted to our first living womanwriter and thinker, George Eliot, may be appropriately styled meliorism. By this I would understand the faith which affirms not merely our power of lessening evil - this nobody questions but also our ability to increase the amount of positive good. It is, indeed, only this latter idea which can really stimulate and sustain human endeavor. — JAMES SULLY: Pessimism. A History and a Criticism, London, 1877, p. 399.

Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth: That the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. - JEREMY BENTHAM: Works, Vol. X, p. 142.

In equal degrees of happiness, expected to proceed from the action, the virtue is in proportion to the number of persons to whom the happiness shall extend . . . so that That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. FRANCIS HUTCHESON: An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, II, pp. 184, 185.

La massima felicità divisa nel maggior numero. - CESARE BECCARIA: Opere, I, p. 10.

He never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.— MACAULAY (said of Richard Rumbold when about to be executed): History of England, Works, I, 441.

In Parts I and II, I have attempted to set forth the leading psychic factors of civilization. Although when viewed in detail they may seem to be somewhat numerous, still, a general glance over the field will show that they may all be reduced to two distinct classes, the subjective and the objective factors. It is also possible to reduce the psychic faculties that contribute to human progress to two generalized ones and call them respectively the conative and intuitive faculties. Using the term will in Schopenhauer's sense it may be said that will and intellect constitute the progressive mind-elements of man. The subjective, conative faculty, or will, furnishes the propelling agent, while the objective, intuitive faculty, or intellect, furnishes the directing agent. (Will is the force, intellect is the guide, and it is through the coöperation of these prime factors that civilization has advanced.

As compared to mere biologic progress that of man has indeed been rapid and brilliant, and it might be supposed that any one who is competent to make this comparison, and a fortiori one who has been to the pains of working out the steps by

which the transition has taken place, would be not only content to contemplate so remarkable a result, but even exultant over it. As a matter of fact this is the attitude of most writers on the general subject. They see that nature has proved capable of doing all this, and they really do not consider it altogether sane to talk about any other way. For them it is simply a step in the great scheme of evolution. It was to be and it is, like the condensation of nebulæ into worlds, the development of oaks from sea-tang or of mammals from worms. Although none of them have shown, as has been attempted here, how the intellect of man came into existence under the laws of evolution, it is assumed that it did so, and although no one has pointed out, as has been done in this work, how the human intellect has proceeded to make civilization possible, it is also assumed that it has done this according to the normal laws of evolution. The acts of man and the laws of society are regarded as natural in the same sense that the movements of the solar system and the instincts of animals are natural.

The dissatisfaction that is manifested in certain quarters at the state of things that nature has thus brought about is looked upon as growing chieffy out of ignorance of these wide truths, as the result of narrow views of the world, unscientific habits of thought, and foolish exaggeration of human power to influence such stupendous movements. It is not denied that attempts of this kind are sometimes made, but it is asserted that they have all been failures, usually that they have made matters worse. If any one examines the cases that are adduced in support of this assertion he will find that they are confined to a single class, viz., attempts at governmental reform. It is not perceived that there exists any other class. If a laissez faire philosopher were asked whether government itself, such as it has been and now is, should be considered a failure the reply would probably be in the negative, at least he would not admit that the particular government under which he happens to live was worse than no government at all