5.The economist needs the three great intellectual faculties, perception, imaginAtion and reason: and most of all he needs imagination, to put him on the track of those causes of visible events which are remote or lie below the surface, and of those effects of visible causes which are remote or lie below the surface.
The natural sciences and especially the physical group of them have this great advantage as a discipline over all studies of man's action, that in them the investigator is called on for exact conclusions which can be verified by subsequent observation or experiment.His fault is soon detected if he contents himself with such causes and such effects as lie on the surface; or again if he ignores the mutual interaction of the forces of nature, wherein every movement modifies and is modified by all that surround it.Nor does the thorough student of physics rest satisfied with a mere general analysis; he is ever striving to make it quantitative; and to assign its proper proportion to each element in his problem.
In sciences that relate to man exactness is less attainable.
The path of least resistance is sometimes the only one open: it is always alluring; and though it is also always treacherous, the temptation is great to follow it even when a more through way can be fought out by resolute work.The scientific student of history is hampered by his inability to experiment and even more by the absence of any objective standard to which his estimates of relative proportion can be referred.Such estimates are latent in almost every stage of his argument: he cannot conclude that one cause or group of causes has been overridden by another without making some implicit estimate of their relative weights.And yet it is only by a great effort that he perceives how dependent he is on his own subjective impressions.The economist also is hampered by this difficulty, but in a less degree than other students of man's action; for indeed he has some share in those advantages which give precision and objectivity to the work of the physicist.So long, at all events, as he is concerned with current and recent events, many of his facts group themselves under classes as to which statements can be made that are definite, and often were approximately accurate numerically: and thus he is at some advantage in seeking for causes and for results which lie below the surface, and are not easily seen; and in analyzing complex conditions into their elements and in reconstructing a whole out of many elements.
In smaller matters, indeed, simple experience will suggest the unseen.It will, for instance, put people in the way of looking for the harm to strength of character and to family life that comes from ill-considered aid to the thriftless; even though what is seen on the surface is almost sheer gain.But greater effort, a larger range of view, a more powerful exercise of the imagination are needed in tracking the true results of, for instance, many plausible schemes for increasing steadiness of employment.For that purpose it is necessary to have learnt how closely connected are changes in credit, in domestic trade, in foreign trade competition, in harvests, in prices; and how all of these affect steadiness of employment for good and for evil.It is necessary to watch how almost every considerable economic event in any part of the Western world affects employment in some trades at least in almost every other part.If we deal only with those causes of unemployment which are near at hand, we are likely to make no good cure of the evils we see; and we are likely to cause evils, that we do not see.And if we are to look for those which are far off and weigh them in the balance, then the work before us is a high discipline for the mind.
Again, when by a "standard rule" or any other device wages are kept specially high in any trade, imagination set a-going will try to track the lives of those who are prevented by the standard rule from doing work, of which they are capable, at a price that people are willing to pay for it.Are they pushed up, or are they pushed down? If some are pushed up and some pushed down, as commonly happens, is it the many that are pushed up and the few that are pushed down, or the other way about? If we look at surface results, we may suppose that it is the many who are pushed up.But if, by the scientific use of the imagination, we think out all the ways in which prohibitions, whether on Trade Union authority or any other, prevent people from doing their best and earning their best, we shall often conclude that it is the many who have been pushed down, and the few who have been pushed up.Partly under English influence, some Australasian colonies are making bold ventures, which hold out specious promise of greater immediate comfort and ease to the workers.
Australasia has indeed a great reserve of borrowing power in her vast landed property: and should the proposed short cuts issue in some industrial decadence, the fall may be slight and temporary.
But it is already being urged that England should move on similar lines: and a fall for her would be more serious.What is needed, and what we may hope is coming in the near future, is a larger study of such schemes of the same kind and by the same order of minds as are applied to judging a new design for a battleship with reference to her stability in bad weather.
In such problems as this it is the purely intellectual, and sometimes even the critical faculties, which are most in demand.
