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political economy embraces human nature, the law of its productive energy, and that the human spirit is a unity. If a right ethical relation between men be the condition of greatest wealth-production, then the two questions become joined. We may separate the science of health from that of wealth, for health is treated as a question of the bodily organism; but labour for wealth is a phenomenon of the human spirit, and its springs of life are spiritual -are in the affections and conscience. plain industrial phenomena, to state the laws of the most effective wealth-production, we must go beyond natural agents, beyond human labour exchanged under the "commercial maxim." For example, Mr. Ruskin states that "it [the largest quantity of work] will be done only when the motive force, that is to say, the will or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest strength by its own proper fuel, namely, the affections.” * Again, still more precisely, "The universal law of the matter is that, assuming any given quantity of energy and sense, in master and *Unto this Last," p. 10.

servant, the greatest material result obtainable by them will be, not through antagonism to each other, but through affection for each other; and that if the master, instead of endeavouring to get as much work as possible from the servant, seeks rather to render his appointed and necessary work beneficial to him, and to forward his interests in all just and wholesome ways, the real amount of work ultimately done, or of good rendered, by the person so cared for, will indeed be the greatest possible." This doctrine, that the relation must be one of friendliness, in order to carry labour to its highest productiveness, Mr. Ruskin places against the teaching that it must be one of antagonism, determined solely by opposing self-interests, and this latter he assumed to be the doctrine taught by the political economist. Firstly, concerning the economist, the individual who investigates in this field, does he hold this doctrine? It would have been extremely interesting if Mr. Ruskin had given references. To make a universal proposition is rash—to say that never one has; but the present writer con"Unto this Last," p. II.

fesses that he has never met with such a statement by any economist of high repute—the statement being made, not as his ipse dixit, but as based on a scientific foundation. We have already seen that he assumes the "commercial maxim," that is to say, competition, as dominant, and he reasons upon the assumption, strengthened in his belief of the utility of the inquiry by the observed fact that economic relations tend more and more to assume this form. But, as we have also seen, such assumption carries with it no judgment concerning its moral soundness, nor does it imply that the economist believes that employer and labourer should be related only by self-interest in order to produce the best result. The economist is entitled to treat of this question when he discusses the causes of the productiveness of labour; but while while education, temperance, industry, honesty, and so forth are adduced, the comparative results, antithetic relations of friendliness and antagonism, are rarely referred to. Entire scepticism must, therefore, be felt towards the charge that economists teach the

exclusion of friendliness between workman and master.

But if the charge were made good, what would be shown? Not that the science cannot be studied apart from ethical considerations, but that, when the economist analyzes human nature engaged in production, he must do his work correctly. Assuming that friendly relations are essential to the highest efficiency of labour, then he who thinks he has discovered the contrary has blundered in his studies. What is needed is not the introduction of ethical questions, for we have to bear steadily in mind that we are concerned with a non-ethical science. We need the investigation that will show certain relations. of friendship to be conducive to production. We do not need to add a dictum that such relations ought to be instituted. Science issues no commands; that is for the moralist.

It has not, then, been shown that economists have fallen into the error of denying the aid given to wealth-production by friendliness. If it had, the error would be a charge against political economy itself only in the same sense

that the errors of the pre-Daltonian theories of chemical combination were chargeable to chemistry, as faults, namely, those of adolescence. A new science is created when a point is newly conceived as an end towards which laws converge, or as a centre round which they cluster. Wealth-production, distribution, and, in some respects, consumption also, are the point towards which many laws of physical and human nature converge. That the inaccurate statement, inevitable at least in the early stages, is proof of the impossibility of the science, is a conclusion which is unreasonable. Again, to say, with Mr. Ruskin,* that because the "affectionate element" is different in kind from self-interest, therefore the current political economy is to be laid aside as an absurdity, is equally unreasonable, because, firstly, only part of that science is affected by the exclusion of the "affectionate element;" and, secondly, the portion which is affected is perfectly competent to include it, while still maintaining its isolation from ethical science.

"Unto this Last," p. 2, et seq.