GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

J4&
- ETHICS
from being adequate, does seek to make provision
for those facts of moral experience which, if these
criticisms are justified, both Intuitionism and Utilitarian*
ism overlook.
One comment of an historical character will serve to
relate the discussions of this chapter to those of Part III.
The thought of the utilitarians dominated the early*
middle years of the nineteenth century. These years saw
the climax of the Industrial Revolution. Vast profits were
made by the entrepreneurs of industry, yet the condition of
the mass of the people remained almost as bad as it had
been before the great increase in wealth which resulted
from the application of scientific invention to productive
processes. Bentham and James and John Stuart Mill were
men ofhumane and enlightened views ; they had the welfare
of the people at bean, and sought to liberate them from
every authority that could hamper their freedom, from every
dogma and prejudice that could oppress their spirit. 1 It
is, indeed, impossible for one who reflects upon proposals,
which are summarized in Chapter XIV, not to
carry away a conviction of the immense concern which
their authors felt for the wellbeing of individual men and
women. Yet during the period when they were writing,
the economic condition of most men and women was in
fact very bad. Is it not curious, to say the least of it, that
amid so much that is advanced &nd enlightened on the'
subject of politics, there, is in the writings ofthe utilitarians
so little recognition of the fact that economics is the* con*
cern of politics. Why, one wonders, are not the proposals
for ameliorating the political status of the people sup*
plemented by proposals for condition?
improving their economic
The answer is, because of the economic theory ofUnsstz
fan which taught that any artificial interference with the
iron laws of supply and demand could not be other than
harmful. This theory, which was maintained by James
Mill and Bentham, no less than by Adam Smith, Ricardo
'See Chapter XIV, pp.