These mental qualities fit him in a peculiar degree for service in the field of Political Economy as now commonly defined,—­a branch of literature which, more, perhaps, than any other, represents at once the genius and the limitation of our time.

Political Economy is a half-science, not total or integral; and if it pretend to spherical completeness, as it often does, it becomes open to grave accusation.  The charges against it, considered as a strict and complete science, are two.

Of these the first has been cogently urged by Mr. Ruskin, while virtual admissions to a like effect were made by Mr. Buckle in his spirited account of Adam Smith.  It is this:  as a science, Political Economy must assume the perfect selfishness of every human being.  Every science requires necessary, and therefore invariable, conditions, which, when expounded, are named laws.  Such in Astronomy is gravitation, with the law of its diminution by distance; such in Chemistry is chemical attraction, with the law of definite proportions.  The natural and perpetual condition assumed by Political Economy is the absolute supremacy in man of pecuniary interest.  Absolute:  it can admit no modification of this; it can make no room within its province for generosity, or for any action of man’s soul, without forfeiting, so far, its claim to the character of a science.  Put a dollar, with all honor, liberal justice, and humane attraction, on the one hand; put a dollar and one cent, with mere legal right and consequent safety, on the other hand; and Political Economy must assume that every man will gravitate to the latter by the same necessity which makes the balance incline toward the heavier weight.  Or, conceding the contrary, it yields also its claim to the character of a perfect science, and takes rank among those half-sciences which partly expound necessary laws and partly contingent effects.

Now this assumed sovereignty of pecuniary interest seems to us not a final account of human beings.  There is honor among thieves; is there none among merchants?  Does not every man put some generous consideration for others into his business-transactions?  Has an honorable publisher no aim but to print that which will sell best?  Has he no regard to the character of his house?  Has he no desire to furnish a nourishing pabulum and a healthful inspiration to the mind of his country?  In the employment of labor and the giving of wages do men generally quite forget the work_man_, and think only of the work and its profit?  This does not happen to accord with our observation of human nature.  We think there is a large element of honorable human feeling incessantly playing into the economies of the world; and we think it might be yet larger without any injurious perturbation of these economies.

Again, as a science, Political Economy considers wealth only as related to wealth, to itself, not to man.  It assumes wealth, as absolute, and regards man as an instrument for its production and distribution.  But this attitude must be reversed.  Wealth cannot be treated of in a wholly healthful way until it is considered simply as instrumental toward the higher riches which are contained in man himself.