B 
INTRODUCTORY 
17 
was needed, capable of viewing things in the 
mass, and at the same time of grasping details 
and bringing them into harmonious relations 
with one another. 
In the works of John Stuart Mill the old 
political economy draws very near its end, 
and much of the new political economy is 
foreshadowed and inspired if not actually 
begun. For the crystallisations of the old 
school Bentham was in no small degree 
responsible ; a man of whom Hazlitt wrote : 
—“ Mr. Bentham turns wooden utensils in a 
lathe for exercise, and fancies he can turn men 
in the same manner. He has no great fond 
ness for poetry and can hardly extract a 
moral out of Shakespeare. His house is 
warmed and lighted by steam. He is one of 
those who prefer the artificial to the natural 
in most things, and think the mind of man 
omnipotent. He has a great contempt for 
out-of-door prospects, for green fields and 
trees, and is for referring everything to 
utility. . . . It is indeed the great fault 
of this able and extraordinary man, that he 
has concentrated his faculties and feelings 
too entirely on one subject and pursuit, 
and has not ‘ looked enough abroad into 
universality.’ ” Making “ the mind of man 
omnipotent,” while conceiving of the reason-