The Substance of Economics1.Economics is a study of men as they live and move and think in the ordinary business of life.But it concerns itself chiefly with those motives which affect, most powerfully and most steadily, man's conduct in the business part of his life.
Everyone who is worth anything carries his higher nature with him into business; and, there as elsewhere, he is influenced by his personal affections, by his conceptions of duty and his reverence for high ideals.And it is true that the best energies of the ablest inventors and organizers of improved methods and appliances are stimulated by a noble emulation more than by any love of wealth for its own sake.But, for all that, the steadiest motive to ordinary business work is the desire for the pay which is the material reward of work.The pay may be on its way to be spent selfishly or unselfishly, for noble or base ends; and here the variety of human nature comes into play.But the motive is supplied by a definite amount of money: and it is this definite and exact money measurement of the steadiest motives in business life, which has enabled economics far to outrun every other branch of the study of man.Just as the chemist's fine balance has made chemistry more exact than most other physical sciences;so this economist's balance, rough and imperfect as it is, has made economics more exact than any other branch of social science.But of course economics cannot be compared with the exact physical sciences: for it deals with the ever changing and subtle forces of human nature.(1*)The advantage which economics has over other branches of social science appears then to arise from the fact that its special field of work gives rather larger opportunities for exact methods than any other branch.It concerns itself chiefly with those desires, aspirations and other affections of human nature, the outward manifestations of which appear as incentives to action in such a form that the force or quantity of the incentives can be estimated and measured with some approach to accuracy., and which therefore are in some degree amenable to treatment by scientific machinery.An opening is made for the methods and the tests of science as soon as the force of a person's motives - not the motives themselves - can be approximately measured by the sum of money, which he will just give up in order to secure a desired satisfaction; or again by the sum which is just required to induce him to undergo a certain fatigue.
It is essential to note that the economist does not claim to measure any affection of the mind in itself, or directly; but only indirectly through its effect.No one can compare and measure accurately against one another even his own mental states at different times: and no one can measure the mental states of another at all except indirectly and conjecturally by their effects.Of course various affections belong to man's higher nature and others to his lower, and are thus different in kind.
But, even if we confine our attention to mere physical pleasures and pains of the same kind, we find that they can only be compared indirectly by their effects.In fact, even this comparison is necessarily to some extent conjectural, unless they occur to the same person at the same time.
For instance the pleasures which two persons derive from smoking cannot be directly compared: nor can even those which the same person derives from it at different times.But if we find a man in doubt whether to spend a few pence on a cigar, or a cup of tea, or on riding home instead of walking home, then we may follow ordinary usage, and say that he expects from them equal pleasures.
If then we wish to compare even physical gratifications, we must do it not directly, but indirectly by the incentives which they afford to action.If the desires to secure either of two pleasures will induce people in similar circumstances each to do just an hour's extra work, or will induce men in the same rank of life and with the same means each to pay a shilling for it; we then may say that those pleasures are equal for our purposes, because the desires for them are equally strong incentives to action for persons under similar conditions.
Thus measuring a mental state, as men do in ordinary life, by its motor-force or the incentive which it affords to action, no new difficulty is introduced by the fact that some of the motives of which we have to take account belong to man's higher nature, and others to his lower.
For suppose that the person, whom we saw doubting between several little gratifications for himself, had thought after a while of a poor invalid whom he would pass on his way home; and had spent some time in making up his mind whether he would choose a physical gratification for himself, or would do a kindly act and rejoice in another's joy.As his desires turned now towards the one, now the other, there would be change in the quality of his mental states; and the philosopher is bound to study the nature of the change.
