Political Economy and the Discovery of Society [ 117 ]
the secular spokesmen of the divine providence which governed the
economic world as a separate entity. The economic sphere, with him,
is not yet subject to laws of its own that provide us with a standard of
good and evil.
Smith wished to regard the wealth of the nations as a function of
their national life, physical and moral; that is why his naval policy fit-
ted in so well with Cromwell's Navigation Laws and his notions of hu-
man society harmonized with John Locke's system of natural rights. In
his view nothing indicates the presence of an economic sphere in soci-
ety that might become the source of moral law and political obliga-
tion. Self-interest merely prompts us to do what, intrinsically, will also
benefit others, as the butcher's self-interest will ultimately supply us
with a dinner. A broad optimism pervades Smith's thinking since the
laws governing the economic part of the universe are consonant with
man's destiny as are those that govern the rest. No hidden hand tries to
impose upon us the rites of cannibalism in the name of self-interest.
The dignity of man is that of a moral being, who is, as such, a member
of the civic order of family, state, and "the great Society of mankind."
Reason and humanity set a limit to piecework; emulation and gain
must give way to them. Natural is that which is in accordance with the
principles embodied in the mind of man; and the natural order is that
which is in accordance with those principles. Nature in the physical
sense was consciously excluded by Smith from the problem of wealth.
"Whatever be the soil, climate or extent of territory of any particular
nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply, must, in that
particular situation, depend upon two circumstances," namely, the
skill of labor and the proportion between the useful and the idle mem-
bers in society. Not the natural, but only the human factors enter. This
exclusion of the biological and geographical factor in the very begin-
ning of his book was deliberate. The fallacies of the Physiocrats served
him as a warning; their predilection for agriculture tempted them to
confuse physical nature with man's nature, and induced them to argue
that the soil alone was truly creative. Nothing was further from the
mind of Smith than such a glorification of Physis. Political economy
should be a human science; it should deal with that which was natural
to man, not to Nature.
Townsend's Dissertation, ten years afterward, centered on the the-
orem of the goats and the dogs. The scene is Robinson Crusoe's island
in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Chile. On this island Juan Fernan-
[118] The Great Transformation
dez landed a few goats to provide meat in case of future visits. The
goats had multiplied at a biblical rate and became a convenient store
of food for the privateers, mostly English, who were molesting Spanish
trade. In order to destroy them, the Spanish authorities landed a dog
and a bitch, which also, in the course of time, greatly multiplied, and
diminished the number of goats on which they fed. "Then a new kind
of balance was restored," wrote Townsend. "The weakest of both spe-
cies were among the first to pay the debt of nature; the most active and
vigorous preserved their lives." To which he added: "It is the quantity
of food which regulates the number of the human species."
We note that a search* in the sources failed to authenticate the
story. Juan Fernandez duly landed the goats; but the legendary dogs
were described by William Funnell as beautiful cats, and neither dogs
nor cats are known to have multiplied; also the goats were inhabiting
inaccessible rocks, while the beaches—on this all reports agree—were
teeming with fat seals which would have been a much more engaging
prey for the wild dogs. However, the paradigm is not dependent upon
empirical support. Lack of antiquarian authenticity can detract noth-
ing from the fact that Malthus and Darwin owed their inspiration to
this source—Malthus learned of it from Condorcet, Darwin from
Malthus. Yet neither Darwin's theory of natural selection, nor Mal-
thus's population laws might have exerted any appreciable influence
on modern society but for the following maxims which Townsend de-
duced from his goats and dogs and wished to have applied to the re-
form of the Poor Law: "Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will
teach decency and civility, obedience and subjection, to the most per-
verse. In general it is only hunger which can spur and goad them [the
poor] on to labour; yet our laws have said they shall never hunger. The
laws, it must be confessed, have likewise said, they shall be compelled
to work. But then legal constraint is attended with much trouble, vio-
lence and noise; creates ill will, and never can be productive of good
and acceptable service: whereas hunger is not only peaceable, silent,
unremitting pressure, but, as the most natural motive to industry and
labour, it calls forth the most powerful exertions; and, when satisfied
by the free bounty of another, lays lasting and sure foundations for
goodwill and gratitude. The slave must be compelled to work but the
* Cf. Antonio de Ulloa, Wafer, William Funnell, as well as Isaac James (which also
contains Captain Wood Rogers's account on Alexander Selkirk) and the observations
of Edward Cooke.
Political Economy and the Discovery of Society [ 119 ]
free man should be left to his own judgment, and discretion; should be
protected in the full enjoyment of his own, be it much or little; and
punished when he invades his neighbour's property."
Here was a new starting point for political science. By approaching
human community from the animal side, Townsend bypassed the
supposedly unavoidable question as to the foundations of govern-
ment; and in doing so introduced a new concept of law into human
affairs, that of the laws of Nature. Hobbes's geometrical bias, as well as
Hume's and Hartley's, Quesnay's and Helvetius's hankering after
Newtonian laws in society had been merely metaphorical: they were
burning to discover a law as universal in society as gravitation was in
Nature, but they thought of it as a human law—for instance, a mental
force such as fear with Hobbes, association in Hartley's psychology,
self-interest with Quesnay, or the quest for utility with Helvetius.
There was no squeamishness about it: Quesnay like Plato occasionally
took the breeder's view of man and Adam Smith did certainly not ig-
nore the connection between real wages and long-run supply of labor.
However, Aristotle had taught that only gods or beasts could live out-
side society, and man was neither. To Christian thought also the chasm
between man and beast was constitutive; no excursions into the realm
of physiological facts could confuse theology about the spiritual roots
of the human commonwealth. If, to Hobbes, man was as wolf to man,
it was because outside of society men behaved like wolves, not because
there was any biological factor which men and wolves had in common.
Ultimately, this was so because no human community had yet been
conceived of which was not identical with law and government. But on
the island of Juan Fernandez there was neither government nor law;
and yet there was balance between goats and dogs. That balance was
maintained by the difficulty the dogs found in devouring the goats
which fled into the rocky part of the island, and the inconveniences the
goats had to face when moving to safety from the dogs. No govern-
ment was needed to maintain this balance; it was restored by the pangs
of hunger on the one hand, the scarcity of food on the other. Hobbes
had argued the need for a despot because men were like beasts; Town-
send insisted that they were actually beasts and that, precisely for that
reason, only a minimum of government was required. From this novel
point of view, a free society could be regarded as consisting of two
races: property-owners and laborers. The number of the latter was
limited by the amount of food; and as long as property was safe, hun-
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