THE SOCIALISTS OF THE CHAIR. 
267 
With this theory, the problems relating to the government 
of societies are wonderfully simplified. The statesman has 
only to fold his arms. The world will go on of itself to its 
appointed end. It is the optimism of Leibnitz and of the 
eighteenth century transported into Political Economy. Rely 
ing on this philosophical doctrine, Economists declare certain 
general principles applicable in all times and to all peoples, 
because they are absolute truths. 
Political Economy was essentially cosmopolitan. It took 
no account of the division of men into separate nations, nor of 
the diversity of interests that may arise therefrom, any more 
than it busied itself with the particular wants and conditions 
resulting from the history of the different States. It saw only 
the good of humanity considered as one large family, just as 
every abstract science and every universal religion, particularly 
Christianity, had done. 
Having thus expounded the old doctrine, the new Econo 
mists proceed to criticise it. They accuse it of taking a one 
sided view of things. Without doubt, they say, man pursues 
his own interest, but more than one motive acts on his mind 
and regulates his actions. By the side of egoism there is the 
sentiment of collectivity, the gemeinsinn, the social instinct, 
which is manifested in the formation of the family, the Com- 
mune, and the State. Man is not like the brute, that knows 
only the satisfaction of its wants ; he is a moral being, who 
understands obedience to duty, and who, from his religious or 
philosophical training, is often induced to sacrifice his satisfac 
tions, his welfare, and even his life, for his country, for humanity, 
for truth, and for God. It is, therefore, a mistake to base a 
series of deductions on the aphorism that man acts solely under 
the sway of a single motive, self-interest These “ general and 
constant facts of human nature,” from which Rossi would 
deduce economic laws, are imaginary. In different countries, 
at different epochs, men obey motives which are not always the 
same, seeing that they spring from different ideas of well-being, 
right, morality, and justice. The savage procures the where 
withal to live by hunting and devouring, at need, even his 
fellows ; the citizen of antiquity, by reducing them to slavery.