Part 6

This is what we are taught by all metaphysic doctrine whatever, and not only by that of Kant, Plato, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Fénelon: all alike teach us that the senses are but a confused and relative knowledge, that space and time are modes of finite existence, that God can only be conceived of by analogy, and not in His essence. Are such conceptions as these very different from those of Kant? And if he has taken them up again under another form, if by isolating he has exaggerated them, his is the merit of having brought them into prominence, of reminding us of them, and forcing us to assign them a more important place in our doctrines. Despite the warnings of the greatest minds, and of all great minds, are we not ceaselessly tempted to yield to the automatic instinct which makes us believe things to be as we see them, makes us suppose the existence of a matter, solid, coloured, sonorous, cold, or hot, such as the senses acquaint us with; makes us believe in an absolute space and time, with which we no longer know how to deal when we think of the true Absolute; makes us conceive of this true Absolute or Goodness as of a species of great man, that we strip of a body, without even reflecting whether we have really the power of representing to ourselves anything absolutely incorporeal? It is against this vulgar current dogmatism, which philosophy has so much trouble in getting rid of, that not only Kant, but every metaphysician, protests. Kant only expounded, under a rigorous and systematic form, all the critical portion of previous metaphysics. To us it seems impossible--with more or less reservation, and without insisting at present too rigidly on the share of the relative and subjective in human knowledge--impossible, we say, not to allow this share, and consequently, in a certain measure, not to give in our adherence to transcendental criticism and idealism. There is, however, as we have seen above, something which escapes from this relativity of all human knowledge: it is the very fact of knowing. This fact has in itself something absolute. I know not whence it comes, I cannot explain it; I marvel that a being should be met with in whom at one time or other what we call knowledge has appeared; but this fact cannot exist without being known by the knower. All knowledge supposes, then, a subject that knows itself--that is to say, who is internally present to himself. Here knowledge comes from within, not from without. Whatever is objective can only _appear_ to me, and is consequently a _phenomenon_. I only see its outside, and it is only in relation to myself that I can grasp even that outside. But the conscious _ego_ sees itself from within. Shall we say that it appears to itself? I am willing to say so, but as it appears to itself that appearance is a reality, for the form that I give it is my own form. In order that it should become _me_, _I_ must be _me_. Every other object has to be given in the first instance before it is perceived; in order that I should see a house, a house must be there. It is not so with the _ego_. For if at the moment it is given me it is not already me, how is it to become so? How shall I know it as such? And if it be already me, it is already perceived as such. Hence it follows that the external thing may be represented without being, as happens in sleep, while I cannot think without thinking myself, or think myself without existing. All subjectivism, all relativism, all criticism, therefore, are baffled in presence of the _ego_.

It is from this solid and immovable foundation laid by Descartes at the entrance of science that we may set out to extend the sphere of our knowledge. Everything, it is said, is relative. What matter if that relative be connected by precise and fixed relations with the unknown, if that which is given be a strictly faithful projection of that which is thought? For instance, we do not know the souls of other men in themselves, we have never seen a soul such as it is in itself; those even which are dearest to us are unknown like the rest. But if we suppose all the signs by which they manifest themselves to be sincere, is it not to know them truly and in the only way intelligible to us, to hear their voices, and understand their words, and interpret their actions? No doubt nothing external to ourselves can be known internally by us; but if the exterior be the expression of the interior, is not the one the equivalent of the other? And to ask more would amount to asking to be more than man. Science teaches us that all appearances have a fixed and precise relation to reality. The visible apparent sky is strictly what it ought to be to express the real sky. The deeper our knowledge of things goes, the more we see the perfect conformity of the apparent to the real, the more faithfully do phenomena translate noumena. Are we not, therefore, justified in supposing that these relative noumena, which are still no more than appearances, could be translated in their turn, if only we had the key to them, into other noumena of which they are the form and image? I may say the same about the anthropomorphic representations of Deity. I admit that the Absolute is in its essence above all human representations. But these representations, when we disengage them as much as possible from all sensible elements, are none the less the true expression of that incomprehensible essence in so far as it appears to a human consciousness. If not God in Himself, it is God in relation to me; and it is with only this last that we have to do so long as we are but men.

We do not, therefore, consider it impossible to assign to the critical element its part in metaphysic without denying the objective reality of knowledge. We think that the famous old distinction between being and phenomena, the intelligible and the sensible, still endures, despite the "Kritik" of Kant; or rather, this very "Kritik" itself is, in our eyes, only a hyperbolical but striking manner of expressing this great truth.

PAUL JANET.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] We already endeavoured to make this philosophy known at its earliest appearance, by an article that appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of the 19th October, 1873, under the title, "A New Phase of Spiritualism." We are now dealing with the most recent form of this new school.

[2] Hamilton's "Discussions: Cousin, Schelling."

[3] Herbert Spencer's "First Principles," First Part p. 18.

ON THE MORAL LIMITS OF BENEFICIAL COMMERCE.

When a Professor of _Political Economy_ was first established in the University of Oxford, a controversy presently arose in the academical common rooms concerning the just meaning of the phrase. Among elder and conservative men, the most active-minded insisted that it ought to receive the full width of meaning attached to it by Aristotle in his Treatise on Economy, which, with him, was essentially the economy of the State--that is, in pure Greek, _political_ economy, although this epithet is not annexed to his title. By this interpretation, the science naturally and necessarily became implicated with moral considerations, which never can be excluded from the statesman's view. But the actual students and professors of the new science--eminently Mr. Nassau Senior and Dr. Whately, shortly afterwards Archbishop of Dublin--naturally feared that by such an interpretation political economy would become confounded with politics; would, indeed, cease to be a science; and by so great an enlargement of its area, would fail to receive that special and definite cultivation which Adam Smith had bestowed on it, as the theory of national wealth. Whately indeed, to avoid this inconvenient extension of the sense, proposed to call the topic, not political economy, but _Catallactics_--that is, the science of exchanges. Excellent in many respects as the last title was, it might have seemed to exclude the whole doctrine of taxation, and still more decisively all discussion of Malthus's theory of population, which belongs to politics or to morals, not at all to the doctrine of exchange. In the end, the economists ruled that their science does not at all teach what _ought_ to be, but simply what _is_, what _goes on_, and _will go on_, as an inevitable result of individuals holding exchangeable right in definite articles. Thus they seemed to have driven moral considerations out of their science, as much as out of gardening or medicine. To call their political economy, on that account, _heartless_ (as so many have done) may seem ridiculous; but this form of attack on it arose from a perception or belief that its professors were claiming for it an _imperative_ force, while disclaiming morality, and were assuming that it was a sufficient and supreme rule for political action.

Of late it has been maintained on a special ground that moral considerations cannot wholly be excluded from political economy. Dr. W. B. Hodgson, first holder of a new chair in Edinburgh as Professor of _Mercantile_ Economy, has urged that, in so far as morality or immorality in individuals affects wealth and the markets, we do not exhaust the discussion on exchanges while we neglect this consideration. Perhaps indeed no one, in discussing taxation, has omitted to consider what taxes lead to fraudulent evasion or to smuggling; but economists hitherto, with great unanimity, have resolved that, in their character of economists, they will not notice moral evils from an opium trade, or from sale of deadly weapons and ammunition, or from traffic in intoxicants; nor can one in general discover from their writings that they know vice to be wasteful, or national expenditure on needless and foolish objects undesirable. They have a right to select what topics they will treat, and what they will not treat. They have a right to say: "Such and such considerations belong to morals, not to _our_ political economy." But, on the one hand, if they are resolved that their science shall be as unmoral as engineering or navigation, they must not claim for it any decisive weight in State-politics; on the other hand, the topics which they neglect need, so much the more urgently, to be treated by others, especially since we have no professors of practical morals, and (for more reasons than one) questions of the market are not thought suitable to the pulpit.

That an exchange of one thing for another does, on the whole, _please_ both parties to the exchange, is evidently testified by the fact that each acts voluntarily; hence, the inference is too lightly made that each is _benefited_ by the transaction. Not only so, but from an increasing magnitude of exchanges increase of wealth is inferred, without any reference to the nature of the things exchanged. In a rough estimate, this reasoning has, no doubt, a _primâ facie_ weight, for we may not dictate to the tastes of others, nor assume that tastes which are not ours are therefore silly. Yet, evidently things which perish in the using quickly cease to be wealth, and things which are not likely to be approved continuously cannot long command the same high price. No article could fetch a price at all if it were not intended to be enjoyed, used, or consumed; the final purchase is called expenditure, and all expenditure is liable to moral judgment, approving or censuring. When we censure expenditure, not merely because it is excessive, but because it is essentially foolish or evil, we necessarily deplore and deprecate the traffic which feeds it--the traffic which it encourages; hence, some vicious trades are even forbidden by law. Short of this, there is necessarily a large margin of trades which law does not, and perhaps cannot successfully, forbid, which nevertheless may be justly regretted, censured, and, as far as may be, discountenanced. Economists are not here blamed if they (disowning moral considerations) do nothing of the kind; but they must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that some trades, not forbidden by law, are so far from promoting wealth and weal as to be gravely pernicious. To rejoice in their magnitude, to announce it triumphantly as a proof of national prosperity, is something worse than a mistake.

No reader, it is believed, will complain that the last sentence is mysterious or obscure. Our manufacturers of cotton and woollen have of late loudly deplored the falling off of their home trade, while the consumption of intoxicating drink continues to increase. They believe that if the labouring classes spent less on the brewer and distiller, they would spend more on the clothier. The most fanatical devotee of alcohol cannot deny that too much of it is drunk, in face of the long-continued avowal of the judges that drink is by far the greatest cause of crime--drink, short of evident and provable drunkenness. Indeed, it is not from those who are outright drunk, but from those who have been drinking, that the worst and most numerous outrages come, while the foot and the eye are steady, though the brain and the passions are perverted. To boast and rejoice in the magnitude of the drink traffic, legal as it undoubtedly is, has no moral defence. The topic is here adduced, not in order to push that argument further, but in order to insist that the mere increase of a trade does not _in itself_ denote an increase of wealth; is not _in itself_ necessarily a thing to be applauded either by the economist or by the moralist. In each case we must look into detail, and consider whether this or that prosperous trade, like a huge weed in a garden, dwarfs or kills other growths, which, but for it, might thrive.

An avowed ardent disciple of Mr. Cobden--a gentleman in some eminence of place and rank--has recently dissuaded taxes on wine and tobacco for the sake of revenue, _not_ on the ground which one might expect--viz., that a Government ought not to base a revenue on what may chance to be public vice, _but_ on the ground that "the grower of wine in France and of tobacco in America" can reasonably refuse to trade with us, if "we will not accept payment in _the only coin_ which he has to offer--namely, in his wine or his tobacco."[4] As if we were not competent to reply: "Of wine and tobacco we quickly get more than enough. Preserve your grapes in sawdust, or make them into raisins, and you will not find our people averse to enjoy them, nor will you encounter any unreasonable duty from our Custom-houses. As to tobacco, surely the rich land which alone can raise it, can raise no end of other products which we are certain to value." This well-informed writer, in his whole argument, seems to account wine the only food-product which we receive from France (to silks and elegant articles he once slightly alludes); but he cannot be ignorant that the solid food which France sends us in eggs, cheese, butter, vegetables, chickens, and dry fruit is enormous; she would in ordinary years send us wheat, did not America, Russia, and Australia make it needless. To speak of wine as _the only coin_ of France is a wonderful straining of argument. But the reason for quoting it here is to illustrate how completely the School of Cobden wishes the State to ignore moral considerations in trade. Yet the State deserves no reverence, if it be not moral. Laws and enactments, framed by minds reckless of morality, are apt to be, on the one side unjust and oppressive, on the other eminently corrupting. A State which gains revenue from a vicious trade, such as gambling and debauchery, demoralizes its people so effectually as to deserve reprobation rather than reverence. According to the ancients, the lawgiver begins to civilize society and to earn veneration by establishing marriage and sanctifying the family. Are we to say, "We have changed all that now; let the Church care for morality: it is no concern of the State?" Who first taught such sentiment as wise policy, it is not easy to say; but it certainly has, in practice, if not in theory, attained a deadly currency. It never was the doctrine of Adam Smith. It is obviously a sure road to ruin, if its development be unopposed.

A legislator, of course, ought not to guide his enactments by the morality of any one school. If, in Greek fashion, we were to set up an Epimenides, a Solon, a Lycurgus, as plenipotentiary to start us in a new course, there might be some little danger of one-sided and conceited morals; yet not much, even so; for a very one-sided or very stupid man would hardly be elected: every lawgiver wishes his new institutions to be permanent, and is sure to have some regard to the friction which they would encounter in working. But where the legislation must have sanction, not from one man, but from a thousand men, of whom six hundred are elected from different circles of mixed ranks, from diverse localities, where forms and schools of religion, based on variety of thought, prevail, it is evidently impossible that in the laws collectively approved any moral ideas should dominate, except those which are common to all who are morally cultivated. To dread moral considerations in the debates of an English Parliament, lest the morality prevailing in its laws become one-sided and arbitrary, pedantic and ascetic, is so baseless, so wanting in good sense, as scarcely to seem sincere. When people tell us, "We shall be liable to have laws against dancing and cardplaying, or laws compelling us to go to church, if we insist that legislation ought to study for the public virtue," they not only make themselves ridiculous, they even force us to suspect that they fear lest vice be repressed in ways inconvenient to the vicious. So much is premised, lest it be imagined or pretended that in pointing at moral limits to beneficial commerce any morality is desired less broad than that which all noble and well-reputed schools accept--the morals of mankind. At the same time, what is here advanced is intended to bear less immediately on law than on the general tenor of public opinion and practical writing.

Many economists write, as assuming that it is a step forward in civilization when a barbarous people learns artificial wants. If a New Zealander, instead of being satisfied with a mat for his back, which, made by himself, will last him for years, betakes himself to an English coat, which he must buy with a price,--which indeed less effectually shields him from wet, and sooner wears out,--he does that which is convenient to the English trader, but to him is a very doubtful gain: perhaps rather he brings on himself colds, cough, and consumption. If a thousand Maoris did the same, the commerce might figure in a Maori budget, and a Maori economist might point to the new trade as a step forward in national prosperity. The Zulus, as described by Englishmen who have travelled in Zululand or lived in the midst of them in Natal, are an upright, generous, faithful, honest race; and strange to say, Englishmen, who have such experience of them, are found to corroborate the utterance of Cetewayo, "A Zulu trained by a missionary is a Zulu spoiled"--that is, when trained in our habits they lose their national virtues. How can this be? why should it be? Apparently, because from us they learn artificial wants. While an apron suffices a Zulu for clothing, and a very simple hut for shelter, he can in many ways afford to be hospitable and generous. A man with very few wants has all the feelings of superfluity and wealth while surrounded by possessions so slender that we count him very poor: and when with an amount of toil which to his hardihood is not at all severe, he can always calculate on providing for himself and family all that their simple habits need, he is not deterred from present generosity by studying for his own future. But if he learn to covet and count necessary a number of articles which require from him threefold labour, he feels himself no longer rich, but poor; then, instead of giving small favours gratuitously, he claims to be paid for everything; instead of being princely, he becomes mercenary and stingy. If he imitate the dress, he is liable to envy the wealth of the Englishman, and in schemes of laying up for the future he easily becomes avaricious, perhaps fraudulent. Such are the steps by which one may justly calculate that some or many barbarians degenerate from the normal goodness of their fellows. The artificial wants which they learn when housed with our missionaries, or imbibe from the crafty allurements of traders, are not (_primâ facie_) a benefit at all, do not conduce to independence, to the sense of wealth, nor to the practice of virtue. They are simply a convenience to the European trader. If a Maori or Zulu chief frown upon such trade, which judgment does he deserve--to be scolded as barbarous, or to be praised as sagacious? With them, perhaps also with us, to account but few things necessary is a foundation for many virtues. Our economists often reverse the picture.

No stress is here laid on the fact that the historical saints of Christendom thought it an excellence to be satisfied with a minimum of external appliances for the comfort of the body. So much of arbitrary opinion may be imputed reasonably to them, and so much of fancy and credulity to their biographers, that it does not occur to the present writer to account their practices or principles any support to his argument. But the case of Socrates, and many other Greek philosophers, is different, and much to the point. With them, high thought, cheap feeding, and mean circumstantials frequently went together; and perhaps even those philosophers, who were somewhat mercenary and rich, would vehemently have renounced the idea that it is a good thing to acquire habits and tastes which make necessary to us things previously needless. But there is danger of drawing the reader's thoughts into a new channel by this allusion to Greek philosophers when an argument of national economy is chiefly intended, not of personal virtues. As it is better for an individual to be satisfied with supplies that are sufficient, close at hand, and easy of attainment, than to have fastidious tastes which cannot be supplied without considerable effort and labour, so it is better for a nation to have a taste for its native products, so far as our lower wants are concerned. If we can get all that the health and strength of the body needs from our own soil, and with small expenditure, this is better for us than to be enslaved to artificial tastes, which multiply labours for mere bodily supply. To fix ideas, let me illustrate the principle here contained by discussing those popular beverages, tea and coffee.

Tea undoubtedly, as superseding beer, cider, and wine, has wrought much benefit to England, even if it have been (when heavily taxed) dearer than our native intoxicants. When taken with little food, in strong and frequent cups, it may often have weakened the nerves; but it does not, like alcohol, pervert the brain and inflame the mind, thus leading to folly, vice, and crime. The present writer is, and always has been, a tea drinker; nor have the many assaults on this beverage which have been sent to him shaken his belief that, taken in moderation, it has no evil comparable to its good. The present argument does not aim to prove that tea is in itself bad, only that the too-exclusive addiction to it has hurtfully excluded the trial of native beverages, which are perhaps better, certainly cheaper, and far more accessible.