I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, this journal published a stimulating article that convincingly traces the genealogy of the concept of homo œconomicus in the history of economic thought from John Stuart Mill to Vilfredo Pareto (Bee and Desmarais-Tremblay Reference Bee and Desmarais-Tremblay2023). Yet however persuasive their overview may be, as a Mill scholar I was particularly drawn to a single sentence: “Whereas Senior took the desire for wealth as universal and evident from scrutinizing one’s consciousness, for the young Mill it was only a simplifying assumption in an attempt to build a science” (2023, p. 5). In fact, the question of whether J. S. Mill considered the desire for wealth to be a universal motivation remains open in the literature. In the 1980s, an enduring debate opened in the history of economic thought between specialists on Mill’s work, when Abraham Hirsch (Reference Hirsch1986) disputed some of Samuel Hollander’s interpretations of Mill’s methodology (Hollander Reference Hollander1985). Four years later, Hirsch, along with Neil de Marchi, followed up the criticism (Hirsch and De Marchi Reference Hirsch and de Marchi1990); and in 1992, Hirsch published an additional and enhanced critique (Hirsch Reference Hirsch1992). The last stage of the debate took place in 1999 when Hollander and Sandra Peart published a rejoinder to Hirsch’s and De Marchi’s analysis, followed by an answer from Hirsch (Reference Hollander2000), and ending with a last counter-reply (Hollander and Peart Reference Hollander and Peart2000). At the core of the debate was the role imputed by Mill to verification in testing and modifying economic theory.Footnote 1 Given that Mill famously defined economic theory as an inquiry based upon one central assumption he calls “desire for wealth”―specifically, that man is “a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging of the comparative efficacy of means for obtaining that end” (Mill [1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 321)Footnote 2―the debate also fundamentally involved the issue of the universality of this hypothesis in Mill’s writings. It is this element of the debate that I discuss in this paper. I argue that both sets of commentators overlook the fact that Mill’s thought on this issue varied over time, and that this explains the disagreements between them.
Let us briefly recall the respective arguments of each camp. Hollander, reiterating his thesis defended in 1985 in The Economics of J. S. Mill (Hollander Reference Hollander1985, vol. 1, pp. 135–136), contends with Peart that “the central behavioral axiom [that man wants to possess wealth and knows the best means of getting it] is not of universal relevance but is pertinent only to the local circumstances of contemporary Great Britain and America,” so that, consequently, “the axiom itself is empirically based” (Hollander and Peart Reference Hollander and Peart1999, p. 372).Footnote 3 According to Hollander and Peart, this assumption should be regarded as what Mill calls an “empirical law of human nature,” that is, a generalization that holds true only in specific instances. Hirsch and De Marchi assert on the contrary that the desire for wealth is, according to Mill himself, a “natural” or “causal law of human nature,” or, in other words, a universally valid assumption (Hirsch and De Marchi Reference Hirsch and de Marchi1990, p. 128). It is noteworthy that all four commentators―rightly―agree that Mill denied any pretension to establish universal economic results: Mill was quite clear from the beginning that the deductions based upon the desire for wealth (such as the laws of the distribution of the produce) elaborated by economists are mere “tendencies” (Mill [1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 337), which hold only in the abstract.Footnote 4 This being said, Hirsch contends against Hollander and Peart that Mill’s vision of abstract science “involves absolute truth,” a conception that is precisely “found in the causal law (or laws) embodied in the premises of the theory. This, of course, is the central behavioral axiom in economics, as everyone knows” (Hirsch Reference Hirsch2000, p. 356). Hirsch puts particular emphasis on the fact that, when it comes to applied science, however, Mill provides an explanation of why theoretical conclusions grounded on the central assumption may not coincide with facts: because “there are different causal laws to be considered in [actual] cases” (Hirsch Reference Hirsch2000, p. 356). Hirsch refers here to Mill’s idea of “disturbing causes” that must be heeded in applied economics. While abstract science considers only the necessary or universal effects of one causal hypothesis, applied science has to take into account other causes that may act in the empirical case under consideration, which renders the conclusions reached in abstract science always provisional. Therefore, Hirsch blames the other two scholars for having “conflated assumptions and implications” (Hirsch Reference Hirsch2000, p. 356). Here stands the core of Hirsch and De Marchi’s argument, formulated in their 1990 book: Hollander and Peart are said to run together “empirical and causal laws, on the one hand, and assumptions and implications on the other” (Hirsch and De Marchi Reference Hirsch and de Marchi1990, p. 128n3; see also Hirsch Reference Hirsch2000, p. 356).
The readings appear irreconcilable. Yet this article attempts to solve the Hirsch–De Marchi versus Hollander–Peart debate by providing a rationale for their mutual misunderstanding. Our claim is that Mill’s viewpoint on the issue of the central hypothesis of political economy was not immutable. In particular, our thesis is that the protagonists mentioned above support their argument using different texts, while neglecting the fact that Mill, in his writings subsequent to the 1836 essay entitled “On the Definition of Political Economy …,” progressively circumscribed the validity of the behavioral assumption. He did so first in the System of Logic through his ethological approach to human nature, then through the emphasis he put on two institutions directly aiming at underlining the relativity of the desire for wealth: competition (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974) and custom (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965). Once these elements are heeded, one can, on the one hand, explain why our four commentators could not reconcile and, on the other, draw attention to Mill’s growing relativist stance concerning economic science.
Section II deals with some specific problems raised by Hirsch’s and De Marchi’s interpretation. Section III highlights Mill’s unnoticed shift towards a more relativist conception of the desire for wealth. Section IV tackles the role of introspection in the overall issue. The concluding section tries to explain Mill’s move. There I suggest that it can be understood both as an answer to the growing epistemological critique of political economy Mill had to face and as a corollary of Mill’s own increasing political aspiration towards human improvement and social progress.
II. WHY HIRSCH AND DE MARCHI’S INTERPRETATION APPEARS LESS CONVINCING ON THE WHOLE
Hirsch and De Marchi put particular stress, as mentioned above, on the idea that, for Mill, science deals with “absolute truth.” However, neither of them brings compelling textual evidence to buttress their view. In fact, the phrase is rarely used in Mill’s writings. I have been able to find four instances in his methodological magnum opus A System of Logic, all of which contradict Hirsch and De Marchi’s interpretation, inasmuch as Mill employs the phrase in a negative way, to reject the very idea of absolute truth in the sciences. Let us look into these four instances in detail.
Mill and the Issue of “Absolute Truths”
The first occurrence appears in Book II of Mill’s Logic, when Mill discusses the validity of geometry. Since there exist no points without magnitude, no lines without breadth, etc., Mill claims that these hypotheses from which the conclusions of geometry are deduced “are so far from being necessary, that they are not even true” (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 227). Contrary to William Whewell’s claim that the premises of geometry are necessary assumptions,Footnote 5 Mill contends that they are mere hypotheses, that is to say, “real facts with some of their circumstances exaggerated or omitted” (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 227). Mill concludes: “[Whewell], if he denies that geometry is founded on hypotheses, must show [these assumptions] to be absolute truths” (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 228; emphasis mine). Mill thus clearly means that this is impossible, and clearly repudiates the idea of absolute truths in favor of hypotheses, i.e., facts that, for the purposes of scientific research, always deviate to a greater or lesser extent from the truth.
Later in Book II the phrase appears when Mill deals with logical statements. It is used there, again in a critical way, while rejecting William Hamilton’s opinion that the principle of contradiction (that one of two contradictories must be false) is an axiom equivalent to an absolute truth: “[A]s this is always assumed to be the case in treatises on logic, the axiom is always laid down there as of absolute truth” (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 278; emphasis mine). Mill objects that “between the true and the false there is a third possibility, the Unmeaning”; therefore, “a proposition must be either true or false, provided that the predicate be one which can in any intelligible sense be attributed to the subject” (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 278; emphasis original).
The third case is in Book III, when Mill qualifies (in a rather Popperian way) the so-called universality of the law of causation (that every event must have some cause). First, such a law should be regarded, says Mill, as “universal provisionally, until an undoubted exception appears” (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 574; emphasis mine). Then, in passages added in the last edition of the System of Logic (1872), the expression appears in order to strengthen the impossibility of finding absolute truths: “[W]hen physical science is said to depend on the assumption that the course of nature is invariable, all that is meant is that the conclusions of physical science are not known as absolute truths: the truth of them is conditional on the uniformity of the course of nature” (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 576; emphasis mine).
Interestingly, until the last edition of the book, Mill tended to be convinced that the law of causation had reached such a degree of universality, thanks to “the progress of experience” of mankind (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 574), that this law could be regarded “as not merely comparative, but for all practical purposes, absolute” (Mill Reference Mill and Robson1843a, p. 573; emphasis mine). But in the 1872 edition the term absolute was replaced in this sentence by the less strong term—complete—used in the first two editions (1843 and 1846). Mill, being always cautious about the validity of the law outside the solar system, felt it necessary to add in the 1872 edition that “in matters of evidence, as in all other human things, we neither require, nor can attain, the absolute. We must hold even our strongest convictions with an opening left in our minds for the reception of facts which contradict them” (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 574; emphasis mine).
As a matter of fact, this occurrence refers to the debate Mill had had with Hippolyte Taine on the evidence of axioms, which the latter did not hold to be grounded on experience. In his review of Taine’s De l’intelligence (1870), Mill criticizes the French thinker for his conception of the origin and evidence of the first principles of all sciences, the strength of which leads Taine to “attribut[e] to them an absolute truth, valid for the entire universe, and independent of the limits of experience” (Mill [1870] Reference Mill and Robson1978, p. 447; emphasis mine).
The fourth and last instance seems to support Hirsch and De Marchi’s understanding. This appears in Book VI of his Logic, when Mill discusses the nature of familiar and common maxims concerning human nature, such as “old people are wiser.” Mill names this kind of generalization “empirical laws,” that is, a “uniformity, whether of succession or of coexistence, which holds true in all instances within our limits of observation, but is not of a nature to afford any assurance that it would hold beyond those limits. … Its truth is not absolute, but dependent on some more general conditions” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 861; emphasis mine).
Mill adds: “The really scientific truths, then, are not these empirical laws, but the causal laws which explain them” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 862; emphasis mine). In other words, Mill states here unambiguously that (moral) sciences, as opposed to common wisdom, are concerned with “causal laws,” or, as Mill puts it, “it cannot be the ultimate aim of science to discover an empirical law” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 915). Now, are these “really scientific truths” absolute? The text merely states that a “uniformity” is relying on the truth of underlying causes. Besides, Mill’s whole methodology aims on the contrary at showing how the very idea of absolute truth is an illusion, as seen before in the case of geometry and as most commentators have underlined. Nicholas Capaldi, for example, holds that Mill “defended an inductivism that denied any possibility of permanent or a priori truths” and that “the System of Logic was written in part to dispose of deduction by arguing that all inference is ultimately inductive” (Capaldi Reference Capaldi, Macleod and Miller2017, p. 228).Footnote 6
This being said, is the desire for wealth itself a causal law?
Is the Desire for Wealth a “Natural Law of Human Nature” or an “Empirical” One?
I find no textual support to bolster the idea that the desire for wealth is a “natural law of human nature.” Instead, as rightly noted by Hollander and Peart (Reference Hollander and Peart1999, p. 382), Mill avers that “there exist universal laws of the Formation of Character” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 864) but no universal laws of character itself. The issue has to be related to Mill’s reflections on “ethology” (“the science of the formation of character”) developed in Book VI, chapter V, of the Logic, and even more generally to his philosophical considerations about the diversity of human character.Footnote 7 His point is that men are the products of their social conditions of existence. Individual modes of conduct and of feeling depend necessarily on social causes.Footnote 8 Here lies the “natural law.” But, from the very fact that in reality “every individual is surrounded by circumstances different from those of every other individual,” it follows that “mankind have not one universal character” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 864).Footnote 9 Consequently, “the generalizations which assert that any given variety of conduct or feeling will be found universally, … will be considered as scientific propositions by no one” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 864). Statements such as “all men are liars” are, as Mill formulates it, mere “empirical laws of human nature,” that is, “generalizations which can be made respecting the feelings or actions of mankind without reference to the causes that determine them” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 864). These empirical laws are mere “approximate generalizations,” the causes or explanations of which remain unknown due to the complexity of circumstances acting simultaneously. The causal laws, studied by the science of ethology, would be the social and individual circumstances that lead individuals to lie.Footnote 10 Now, when Mill says that only laws of the formation of character are natural laws of human nature, he clearly means that it is not a certain desire (or character) as such that is universal because it is invariably enshrined in us (e.g., the proclivity to lie) but stresses that it is the link between this desire (or character) and certain social conditions (“circumstances”) entailing such a desire (or character) that is universal. As a result, the desire for wealth is not, for him, a “natural law” of human nature but only the product in certain circumstances of a natural law. To claim that Mill regards such a human motivation as a “natural law of human nature” would thus be inconsistent with his reflections on ethology. And, as noted by Hollander and Peart (Reference Hollander and Peart1999, p. 381), in the Logic Mill does explicitly designate the desire for wealth as an “empirical law of human nature.”
Yet there is one aspect of Mill’s discussion here that contradicts Hollander and Peart. They suggest that Mill explicitly mentions the desire for wealth as an example of “approximate generalization.” But Mill does no such thing. First, when Hollander and Peart contend that “‘approximate generalization’ happens to be Mill’s term for the behavioral axioms” (Hollander and Peart Reference Hollander and Peart1999, p, 381; emphasis original), they quote a passageFootnote 11 that does not explicitly refer to the desire for wealth. In fact, Mill there is not dealing with economic science but with what he calls “the science of human nature” (which is a broader science comprising economics). Besides, more decisive against Hollander and Peart’s case is the fact that Mill, immediately after the passage in question, makes clear he is dealing with the application of the science, not with abstract science: “But in order to give a genuinely scientific character to the study, it is indispensable that these approximate generalizations, which in themselves would amount only to the lowest kind of empirical laws, should be connected deductively with the laws of nature from which they result” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 848).
The passage quoted by Hollander and Peart seems irrelevant in the discussion about the universality of economic hypotheses, because it concerns conclusions, not assumptions, of political economy―a distinction cogently emphasized by Hirsch and De Marchi (and recalled in our Introduction).
Besides, there is undeniably one argument in favor of Hirsch and De Marchi’s reading, which is found in the 1836 essay. At the very end of the text, Mill dispels the common mistake consisting in regarding scientific laws as “generalizations” that could admit “exceptions”: “[I]n any tolerably advanced science there is properly no such thing as an exception” (Mill [1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 337). In economic science as in physics, phenomena are, according to Mill, the result of a “concurrence of causes” ([1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 337), each “acting in the whole hundred cases” ([1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 338). Explicitly comparing economics to mechanics, Mill regards human motives as analogous to forces following universal laws of nature. It clearly follows, then, that the 1836 Mill regards the desire for wealth as a universally valid hypothesis. “Universally valid hypothesis” means, according to Mill, that this desire moves any human being constantly like a natural force—but not that it is the sole force moving them. Because Mill sees social phenomena as the result of a composition of causes (i.e., of a variety of human desires or behaviors), he always repudiated this second kind of universality in moral sciences, especially in relation to the self-interest assumption—see his charge against the Benthamite theory of government, whereby the actions of the ruler are determined solely by self-interest ([1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, pp. viii, 3). As stressed by Hollander, “in all eight editions of the System of Logic … Mill objected to the universality Bentham ascribed to his assumption” (Reference Hollander2015, p. 61; see also pp. 7, 45, 438).
It is striking that the passage from the 1836 essay about the incompatibility of exceptions and scientific laws is quoted by Mill in the Logic as well, and indeed until the eighth and last edition (Mill [1843a] Reference Mill and Robson1974, pp. 445–446). In other words, Mill never abandoned the idea that the desire for wealth should be regarded as a universal force. It is also noteworthy that this self-quoted passage appears in Book III of his Logic, a book dedicated not to moral sciences (which are the object of Book VI) but to induction in science in general. This illustrates that the concept of economic behavior as a natural force is the epitome of how Mill conceptualizes forces and natural laws in physics. In light of the above, a clear tension emerges within Mill’s thought: Mill envisages the desire for wealth simultaneously as a universal valid cause (a force explaining economic phenomena) and as an effect (of the operation of ethological laws), which cannot be said to be universally true.
I contend that the tension between the claims Mill makes about the universality of economic behavior can be better apprehended when one attends to the evolution of his thought on this topic―a point overlooked by all four commentators.
III. THE GROWING RELATIVIST CONCEPTION OF ECONOMICS’ CENTRAL ASSUMPTION(S) IN MILL’S WORKS
Strkingly, the two groups of commentators do not ground their respective interpretations on the same Millian texts. Hirsch and De Marchi base their entire argument on the 1836b [Reference Mill and Robson1967] essay, while Hollander and Peart refer mostly to ulterior texts. The protagonists of the debate seem unaware of this, and discuss Mill as if his thinking about the central behavioral assumption of political economy remained unchanged over time. Instead, I claim that Mill’s thinking underwent substantial changes. First, in accordance with the development of his ethology, he deprived the maximizing behavior of its universal validity; then, Mill focused more and more on “competition” as economics’ basic assumption in order to stress its historical relevance; and finally he strengthened the relativity of this central assumption with the introduction of the concept of “custom.”
How the Desire for Wealth Became Gradually Less Regarded as the Predominant Cause of Economic Action
In the 1836b essay, the assumption of the desire for wealth obviously has a special pre-eminence. But why did Mill choose this particular central hypothesis? As noted by Stefan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow (Reference Collini, Winch and Burrow1983, p. 136), “after all, hypothetical reasoning could proceed from any premise.” If Mill selects the desire for wealth, it is because in “certain departments of human affairs”―namely, production and exchange―it turns out that “the acquisition of wealth is the main and acknowledged end” (Mill [1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 323).Footnote 12 In this text, the desire for wealth is not only a universal cause driving human beings but also the principal or “general” cause behind all economic activities (326). Whereas Mill excludes unequivocally that the actual, empirical, man may be reduced to an exclusively greedy being, the desire for wealth yet constitutes a hypothesis that “of all hypotheses equally simple, is the nearest to the truth” (p. 323) when dealing with commercial situations. Contrastingly, “with respect to those parts of human conduct of which wealth is not even the principal object, to these Political Economy does not pretend that its conclusions are applicable” (pp. 322–323). In other words, apart from economic affairs, the desire for wealth is no longer central and belongs to the “less conspicuous” forces, which Mill names “disturbing causes” (p. 338). This conception could rightly be interpreted―as De Marchi and Hirsch suggest―as if the 1836b essay implies that all phenomena within the sphere of trade and production would at all times and in all places be mainly governed by the pursuit of wealth. Again, De Marchi and Hirsch are right in their reading of Mill’s 1836b essay.
However, they overlook what Mill says in 1843 in the System of Logic and afterwards, where such a conception is strongly qualified. First, as I have shown in the previous section, Mill’s developments on ethology definitely strip away the universality of such behavior. Second, Mill begins to question its centrality even in economic matters themselves―unlike the much more confident statements of the 1836 essay. Mill became increasingly aware that this motivation was not universally the predominant cause of economic action. Indeed, he explicitly states that this behavior prevails in economic situations only in Anglo-Saxon countries:
In political economy for instance, empirical laws of human nature are tacitly assumed by English thinkers, which are calculated only for Great Britain and the United States…. An English political economist, like his countrymen in general, has seldom learned that it is possible that men, in conducting the business of selling their goods over a counter, should care more about their ease or their vanity than about their pecuniary gain. Yet those who know the habits of the Continent of Europe are aware how apparently small a motive often outweighs the desire of money-getting, even in the operations which have money-getting as their direct object. (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 906) (1)
The desire for wealth is thus depicted in the greater part of the world as a minor cause in economic affairs. Though Mill certainly still thought it was, overall, the predominant motivation in the economic sphere among his compatriots at the time, in the rest of the world he regards it no longer as a “general” cause but as secondary compared to other motives.Footnote 13
Bearing this fundamental shift in mind, it is interesting to trace in Mill’s writings the decreasing relevance given to the desire for wealth in favor of institutions of limited validity, as far as the premises of economics are concerned.
How “Competition” Superseded the “Desire for Wealth” as Economics’ Central Hypothesis after “On the Definition of Political Economy”
In the “On the Definition of Political Economy” 1836 essay, the central premise was definitely the desire for wealth, whereas competition was mentioned just once and only in passing:
Under the influence of this desire, it shows mankind … sanctioning by mutual agreement the institution of property; establishing laws to prevent individuals from encroaching upon the property of others by force or fraud; adopting various contrivances for increasing the productiveness of their labour; settling the division of the produce by agreement, under the influence of competition. (Mill [1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 322; emphasis mine) (2)
In this early paper, then, competition seems to be secondary. Mill did not feel it necessary to specify the differences or links between the desire for wealth and competition.
In the System of Logic, he once more takes up his idea that economists study the distribution of the produce under the assumption of competition. However, he delves deeper into the content and function of this hypothesis:
English political economists … discuss the laws of the distribution of the produce of industry, on a supposition which is scarcely realized anywhere out of England and Scotland, namely, that the produce is ‘shared among three classes, altogether distinct from one another, labourers, capitalists, and landlords; and that all these are free agents, permitted in law and in fact to set upon their labour, their capital, and their land, whatever price they are able to get for it’. (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 903; emphasis mine)
Mill strikingly contends that the desire for wealth, indicated in this excerpt through the idea that agents look for “whatever price they are able to get,” is not enough to characterize the core premise of political economy. Agents must also be “free” to pursue their desire for wealth. Agents need a set of both legal institutions guaranteeing freedom of the individual (“permitted in law”) and individualistic social norms and values (“permitted in fact”) in order to pursue such a desire. Mill here underlines the dualistic nature of competition, theorizing it as both a legal and social framework, which makes possible the very pursuit by individuals of their desire for wealth. Agents may be driven by pecuniary interests―corresponding to the universal force Mill advocates in the 1836b essay, as seen above―but if the two characteristics of competition (legal and social freedom) are not fulfilled, then these interests are not pursued. The desire for wealth would remain “unactualized,” remaining in a state of “potentiality” (if we were to express Mill’s idea in Aristotelian terminology), hence no deductive political economy would be possible. In other words, the desire for wealth is regarded, in the Logic, as a hypothesis, which is, though necessary, not sufficient for economics. This change in the key assumption of Mill’s political economy appears as soon as 1834—the quotation within the above excerpt (2) originates from a review of Harriet Martineau’s Summary of Political Economy, which Mill published in a periodical ten years before publishing his Logic.
In the Principles, published five years after the Logic, things are made even clearer. The competition assumption seems to have become paramount over that of the “desire for wealth.” First, the latter expression appears, except in other rare formulations,Footnote 14 only once within the thousand pages of the book (Mill 1848a, p. 105). Second, within the entire book, the only significant epistemological remark in connection with the fundamental assumptions of political economy involves competition and not self-interested behavior:
Only through the principle of competition has political economy any pretension to the character of a science. So far as rents, profits, wages, prices, are determined by competition, laws may be assigned for them. … As an abstract or hypothetical science, political economy cannot be required to do, and indeed cannot do, anything more. (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 239; emphasis mine) (3)
Third, this passage opens the fourth chapter of Book II, significantly entitled “Of Competition, and Custom.” Custom refers to social norms and values prevailing within a given society (Mill speaks also of “usage”)Footnote 15 as opposed to the individual maximization of wealth, and thus Mill should have contrasted it to the desire for wealth, not to competition. The very fact that Mill contrasts custom not to the desire for wealth but to competition reveals that he considered that his earlier definition of the central assumption of economics, focused on the desire for wealth, was insufficient.
Yet these were not merely refinements on Mill’s part. Our thesis is that Mill puts the emphasis on competition precisely in order to give a further account of the relative and historical character of economics’ basic hypotheses. As evidence of that, consider the new limitations introduced in the Principles to the validity of the basic hypothesis. As seen in excerpt (1) above, Mill made clear in the Logic that the desire for wealth is characteristic of Anglo-Saxon societies solely. Now, in the Principles the focus on that (new) central assumption of political economy―competition―allows Mill to claim that this very hypothesis is, furthermore, exclusively proper to modern Anglo-Saxon economies: “Competition, in fact, has only become in any considerable degree the governing principle of contracts, at a comparatively modern period. The farther we look back into history, the more we see all transactions and engagements under the influence of fixed customs” (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 240).
Mill stresses in the Principles the recent origin of competition, providing an overview of the historical evolution of legal relations in economic matters. He asserts that “the law of the strongest” reigns first; then “every relaxation of it has a tendency to become a custom, and every custom to become a right. Rights thus originating, and not competition in any shape, determine, in a rude state of society, the share of the produce” (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 240).
This double (spatial and temporal) limitation to the relevance of the competition hypothesis is finally completed, in the Principles, by a third more radical constraint: “custom” can act as a predominating cause even in economic affairs.
The Introduction of “Custom” as a Predominating Cause
Even in the case of countries like modern Britain or the United States, where the legal characteristic of competition exists, that is to say where agents are legally free to pursue their desire for wealth, Mill states that this desire can nevertheless be thwarted by customary behaviors.Footnote 16 Mill declares that the influence of competition on prices “is by no means, even in the present activity of mercantile competition, so absolute as is sometimes assumed” (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 242; emphasis mine). Mill speaks of cases “in which there is nothing to restrain competition; no hindrance to it either in the nature of the case [natural monopoly] or in artificial obstacles [state regulation]; yet in which the result is not determined by competition” (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 239); and “[w]here competition, though free to exist, does not exist” (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 244).
In accordance with the Logic, the dual nature of competition is being expanded upon. Mill here establishes an important distinction―to my knowledge not discussed in the literature―between formal competition, that is, a legal framework that allows free economic decisions as opposed to regulated monopoly or regulations (what I called above “legal freedom”), on the one hand, and actual competition, on the other, that is, formal competition plus the desire for wealth being effective―i.e., not counteracted by custom. In other words, actual competition exists only when “legal freedom” and “social freedom” coexist.Footnote 17 By his distinction, Mill focuses attention on the peculiarity of the effectiveness of the maximizing behavior. This double conditionality also appears when Mill deals with the exchange value of commodities susceptible to indefinite multiplication. He claims that the law of cost of production applies under the proviso that competition is “free and active” ([1848b] Reference Mill and Robson1965, pp. 472, 475). The term free seems to refer to the formal feature of competition, and active to the actual one. Interestingly, the words and active were added only from the third edition of the Principles (1852) on, as if Mill gradually became aware of the distinction he had himself introduced.
By the same token, Mill describes at least four situations where competition formally exists despite being ineffective, on account of a lack of desire for wealth. First is the case of booksellers until the mid-1850s and of professional remuneration, where Mill affirms that prices are set according to custom, and transgression is sanctioned by social pressures (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 243). The second situation is in continental Europe, where competition is legally permitted in many areas, but prices remain high due to the lack of what Mill calls “the general energy in the pursuit of gain” ([1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 244), that is to say the lack of an actual desire for wealth counteracting social norms and values in these countries. Third is the regulation of wages in Britain, concerning which Mill comments: “In this country there are few kinds of labour of which the remuneration would not be lower than it is, if the employer took the full advantage of competition” ([1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 337; emphasis mine). It is noteworthy that this passage was neither in the manuscript nor in the first edition of the Principles; Mill argued instead, in the early versions of the text, that custom can hardly be maintained except in a stationary economy ([1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 337, footnote a–a). The removal of this last passage therefore shows, once more, the increasing weight Mill assigned over time to the role of custom in economics in place of the desire for wealth. In the fourth situation, Mill argues that, while British wholesale buyers certainly scrutinize all prices and their desire for wealth is thus unhampered, this is not true in the retail sector where prices vary from one client to another, according to personal relations. Similarly, he contends that competition in the retail trade is effective mainly in large cities, whereas “elsewhere it [competition] rather acts, when it acts at all, as an occasional disturbing influence; the habitual regulator is custom, modified from time to time by notions existing in the minds of purchasers and sellers, of some kind of equity or justice” (Mill [1848a] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 243).
It is noteworthy that here the central hypothesis―competition―is described as a “disturbing influence.” Reciprocally, custom is said to be the main cause determining the actions of individuals in the British retail sector. Studying retail prices in the Principles, Hollander and Peart (Reference Hollander and Peart1999, pp. 384–386) demonstrate how Mill provides an analysis of price discrimination and of monopolistic competition that is based on “non-maximizing consumer behaviors.” Even more interesting for our thesis, they mention―though without paying special attention to it―the increasing amendments Mill made in the successive editions of the Principles: Mill strengthened the predominance of non-pecuniary interests at least in 1852, 1862, and 1865 (Hollander and Peart Reference Hollander and Peart1999, p. 385).
Consequently, the shift in Mill’s writings is significant. In the Principles, maximizing behavior can no longer be described as “of all hypotheses equally simple, … the nearest to the truth,” as was the case both in the 1836 essay and in the Logic (Mill [1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 323; [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 902).
Notwithstanding, it might fairly be objected that the wealth-maximization hypothesis remains implicit in the Principles; but this is true only for some parts of the book, mainly when Mill deals with the Ricardian laws of the distribution of produce (in Book II) and with the question of value (in Book III). However, the first book on “Production”Footnote 18 strikingly provides abstract economic theorems that are not based on the maximizing assumption. For instance, Mill’s analyses of growth or his “fundamental propositions respecting capital” (in Book I, chapter V) are grounded neither on any behavioral premise nor on competition. And this is precisely why the previous excerpt (3) affirming the necessity to suppose competition in economics does not appear until the beginning of the second book.
In fact, the idea of a discrepancy between Mill’s method in principle (stated in the 1836b essay) and in practice (employed in the Principles) is not new. The case for a gap within Mill’s writings is at the very core of Hollander and Peart’s 1999 paper, as mentioned before. They consider, legitimately, that Mill not only regards it possible to depart from the homo œconomicus assumption but even “does attempt to provide a theoretical account of observed retail-pricing practice in the presence of non-maximizing consumer behavior” (Reference Hollander and Peart1999, p. 384). Neville Keynes contends that economic man “occupies a position of central and all-pervading importance” in the 1836b essay, whereas it “plays a much humbler part” in the Principles (Keynes Reference Keynes1890, p. 19). John Whitaker notes, similarly, that the Principles constitutes “the most unself-conscious of economic treatises” (Reference Whitaker1975, p. 1045), in particular because it is “obviously far from a narrow deductive development from the axiom of self-interest” (Reference Whitaker1975, p. 1046).Footnote 19
IV. THE INTROSPECTION ISSUE AND THE MALLEABILITY OF HUMAN NATURE
Another point of disagreement between our four commentators concerns the role of introspection in order to establish the universality of the homo œconomicus. De Marchi (Reference De Marchi1986, p. 92) remarks that for Mill “the wealth motive was very real, as everyone could affirm by looking inside themselves or at those around them.” Conversely, Hollander and Peart, quoting excerpt (1) above, argue that according to Mill, “[g]iven this sharp contrast [between entrepreneurial motivation in Britain and the Continent], it is inconceivable that introspection would yield the identical outcome in a British or American and (say) a French domain” (Hollander and Peart Reference Hollander and Peart1999, pp. 380–381). Again, our four commentators do not base their cases on the same texts. The argument in the 1836b essay—that the central behavioral premise is universally true because it is based on introspection—no longer appears in the later works. Here is what Mill says in 1836: “The desires of man, and the nature of the conduct to which they prompt him, are within the reach of our observation. We can also observe what are the objects which excite those desires. The materials of this knowledge every one can principally collect within himself” (Mill [1836b] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 329).
Contrastingly, in the Logic, after the aforementioned excerpt (1) related to the “habits of the Continent of Europe” where some “motive often outweighs the desire of money-getting,” Mill contends instead: “The more highly the science of ethology is cultivated, and the better the diversities of individual and national character are understood, the smaller, probably, will the number of propositions become, which it will be considered safe to build on as universal principles of human nature” (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 906; emphasis mine).
None of the four commentators cites this passage. In the secondary literature I have looked into, only Collini, Winch, and Burrow note the rupture in Mill’s thought introduced by this passage, observing that “disturbingly, Mill … even raised doubts about the operation of the ‘familiar psychological law’” of the desire for wealth (Collini, Winch, and Burrow Reference Collini, Winch and Burrow1983, p. 137). More precisely, Mill abandoned the idea that the behavioral premise is universally true because it is based on introspectionFootnote 20 while developing his argument concerning human nature, namely, its malleability according to circumstances. In fact, since the first edition of the System of Logic, Mill had suggested we abandon our conviction that human nature is immutable:
The majority of those who speculate on human nature, prefer dogmatically to assume that the mental differences which they perceive, or think they perceive, among human beings, are ultimate facts, incapable of being either explained or altered, rather than take the trouble of fitting themselves, by the requisite processes of thought, for referring those mental differences to the outward causes by which they are for the most part produced. (Mill [1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 859)
Mill certainly considers that, as a human passion, the desire for wealth is an inclination shared naturally by everyone. In an essay entitled “Nature,” written in the early 1850s, Mill says that “so completely is it the verdict of all experience that selfishness is natural” ([1874] Reference Mill and Robson1985, p. 394). Admittedly, this remark must be taken cautiously. “Selfishness” is not an equivalent, strictly speaking, of the “desire for wealth,” the latter being more specific, defined as this “[familiar] psychological law … that a greater gain is preferred to a smaller” ([1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 901). But even if we accept selfishness as a synonym, Mill immediately adds in the 1874 essay: “By this I do not in any wise mean to deny that sympathy is natural also; I believe on the contrary that on that important fact rests the possibility of any cultivation of goodness and nobleness and the hope of their ultimate entire ascendancy” (Mill [1874] Reference Mill and Robson1985, p. 394).
In essence, his argument is that human character is a product of social circumstances (or, in sociological terms, socialization), and as such is liable to be regulated by noble desires through education. This subtle viewpoint is also underlined in Utilitarianism where he distinguishes between “innate” and “natural” feelings:
[I]f … the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason the less natural. … The moral feelings are not indeed a part of our nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in all of us; but … is a natural outgrowth from [the moral faculty,] susceptible of being brought by cultivation to a high degree of development. (Mill [1861b] Reference Mill and Robson1985, p. 230)
The question of the possibility of cultivating nobler motivations than the economic motive must be connected with Mill’s growing concern for the question of human betterment and social progress.
V. WHY DID MILL CHANGE HIS VIEWS?
How did Mill come to accept that the sole content of the laws of behavior that matters, for a political economist, is mutable social customs? We have good reason to consider that Mill changed his mind over time, because he himself recounts the deep transformation of his thoughts in his detailed Autobiography. There he suggests a tripartite intellectual development,Footnote 21 consisting of, first, his childhood education under the influence of his father; second, a period from 1821 until 1840 (when the Logic was virtually completed) of new ideas and questioning of his previous thoughts; and a third stage, marked by the maturity and constancy (but not rigidity) of his views. Two pivotal events, occurring between 1825 and 1848, elucidate his transformation: first, his psychological crisis in 1826, which prompted a shift in his understanding of human nature; and, second, his encounter with the French socialists and with Harriet Taylor in 1829–30. Furthermore, to fully understand the evolution of Mill’s position, it is essential to consider the epistemological context.
Mill’s Mature Conception of Human Nature
As is well known, Mill commenced his studies in political economy in 1819 under the guidance of his father, who delivered to him lectures on David Ricardo’s Principles. Every day Mill was required to submit a written summary, “which he made me write over and over again” until his father was satisfied. Mill subsequently proceeded to read the book independently ([1873] Reference Mill and Robson1981, p. 31). Although the assumption of self-interest is (at least implicitly) pervasive in Ricardo’s economics,Footnote 22 it is perhaps more his own father, James, who initially inspired Mill to perceive the desire for wealth as a universally motivating force. Hollander has demonstrated that Ricardo explicitly rejected this very notion in a series of letters to James Mill, whom he reproached with “the overwhelming quest for money and power in the analysis of legislation” (Hollander Reference Hollander1987, p. 328). In the 1830s, Mill began to change these views received from his father, especially as far as human nature is concerned. One has to keep in mind that between 1831 and 1843, Mill wrote his System of Logic in opposition to the strictly deterministic associationism of his father (Ball Reference Ball, Varouxakis and Kelly2010, p. 36; Reference Ball, Macleod and Miller2017, pp. 148–150),Footnote 23 as a consequence of the psychological crisis he experienced between 1826 and 1827. This crisis was, according to him, due to his education, which failed to instil in him “the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others” (Mill [1873] Reference Mill and Robson1981, p. 143). Mill concluded that he lacked the capacity to experience this pleasure and feelings “in sufficient strength,” particularly given that his entire education had focused on developing his analytical abilities, which he perceived as being “precocious and premature” (Mill [1873] Reference Mill and Robson1981, p. 143). This personal experience led Mill to prioritize “the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures,” which constitutes “the strength of the utilitarian morality” (Mill [1861b] Reference Mill and Robson1985, p. 231).
Mill also declares in his Autobiography that his encounter with Auguste Comte and especially with the Saint-Simonians, from 1829 on, marked a turning point in the progress of his thought. Philippe Légé has shown that “from his readings of Saint-Simon and Comte in the late 1820s, as well as his discovery of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his analysis of the controversy between Thomas B. Macaulay and James Mill, John Stuart Mill came to the idea that ‘any general theory, or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory of human progress’” (Légé Reference Légé2018, p. 438). The idea of “human progress” refers, according to Mill, to the fact that “properties [of human nature] are changeable … from age to age” ([1843b] Reference Mill and Robson1974, p. 913). The French thinkers further drew his attention to the mutability of human nature:
[T]he chief benefit which I derived at this time from the trains of thought suggested by the St. Simonians and by Comte, was, that I obtained a clearer conception than ever before of the peculiarities of an era of transition in opinion, and ceased to mistake the moral and intellectual characteristics of such an era, for the normal attributes of humanity. (Mill [1873] Reference Mill and Robson1981, p. 173; emphasis mine)
Admittedly, it was not through his interactions with them that Mill came to the conclusion that human beings are susceptible to moral and intellectual shaping by social circumstances, as evidenced by his contention that he obtained a “clearer conception than ever before.” As heir to his father’s associationism, he had long been aware that a person’s character is shaped by circumstances (education but also contingent experiences) and trains of associations, and thus that one can modify one’s character in changing circumstances. Mill coined the term ethology in his Logic, but before him his father had dealt extensively with ethological concerns through his “science of education,” as underlined by Terence Ball (Reference Ball, Macleod and Miller2017, p. 148). For Mill’s thought, the specific value-added of Comte and the Saint-Simonians concerning the desire for wealth consists in extending this relativizing conception of human character to the economic sphere, as many readers have noted.Footnote 24 The Saint-Simonians made him aware of the possibility of improving economic institutions in a sense compatible with socialistic goals, that is to say as opposed to the individualistic desire for accumulation: “[I]t was partly by their [Saint-Simonians’] writings that my eyes were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance as indefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as the dernier mot of social improvement” (Mill [1873] Reference Mill and Robson1981, p. 175).
Indeed, the Saint-Simonians were concerned about the diffusion of political economy because it promoted a society based solely on material interest. Therefore, from the 1820s onwards they advocated the idea of “a moral link balancing egoism, which they view as rampant” (Steiner Reference Steiner2015, p. 5).
Mill’s Political and Moral Aspirations
Harriet Taylor, whom Mill met in 1830, influenced him in the same direction, especially after 1844 and the publication of the Essays in political economy. Mill contends that the Principles, published in 1848 and the first work in which she played a “conspicuous part” ([1873] Reference Mill and Robson1981, p. 255), opened the “third and different stage of [his] mental progress ([1873] Reference Mill and Robson1981, p. 234, footnote d).Footnote 25 In his account of Taylor’s influence on him at the time, he states that prior to their meeting he “had seen little further than the old school of political economists. … In short, [he] was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist” ([1873] Reference Mill and Robson1981, p. 239). In 1825, Mill did not support cooperative ownership and strongly opposed it during debates with the Owenite Co-operative Society. This opposition was not least because the young Mill still overlooked the fact that cooperative experiments could be seen as a praxis through which workers also transformed themselves.Footnote 26 As Joseph Persky rightly notes, “over time he developed a broader and far more radical agenda” (Persky Reference Persky2016, p. 21), which led him to construct a “political economy of progress.”
Under the influence of Taylor,Footnote 27 in the 1840s Mill began to yearn to overturn the negative effects of the desire for gain.Footnote 28 As Mill puts it in 1848, when one is defending the positive aspect of the purportedly forthcoming stationary state, the competition for money should be replaced by social relations of greater morality: “[T]he best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward" (Mill [1848b] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 754; emphasis mine).
Therefore, Mill not only came to regard economic man as temporary but appealed more and more forcefully for its replacement, especially through the development of cooperative societies,Footnote 29 “which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good” ([1873] 1981, p. 241; emphasis mine). This has to be connected with Mill’s idea, expressed in Utilitarianism, that “so long as [human beings] are co-operating, their ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are their own interests” ([1861b] Reference Mill and Robson1985, p. 231).Footnote 30 In fact, insofar as the standard of the principle of utility is “not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether” (Mill [1861b] Reference Mill and Robson1985, p. 213), Mill’s utilitarianism must be seen as a philosophical criticism of the desire for wealth. Helen McCabe (Reference McCabe2021, pp. 185–186) calls this key feature of Mill’s thought the “principle of fraternity” and shows its growing importance in Mill’s writings from the 1840s onwards, underlining that “we see Mill’s commitment to fraternity very plainly in Utilitarianism.”Footnote 31 In another article, McCabe demonstrates that even Mill’s “ideal” changed over time towards the eradication of any compromise with selfishness. She claims that “[t]hough in 1845 Mill called reforms which involved [profit-sharing] his ‘Utopia’, in Principles and the Autobiography profit-sharing is no longer Mill’s ‘Utopia’” (McCabe Reference McCabe2019, p. 307), insofar as, according to Mill, “what was better was that people worked for ‘generous’ reasons, and that their actions (including their labour) were directed towards the common good” (McCabe Reference McCabe2019, p. 302). This objective could be attained “through cooperatives adopting Blancian distributive principles” (McCabe Reference McCabe2019, p. 303). Moreover, Mill did not merely espouse the view that overcoming the homo œconomicus was desirable; he also asserted in Considerations on Representative Government that it was feasible: “For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the élite of mankind, and may become so among the rest” ([1861a] Reference Mill, Robson and Stillinger1977, p. 405). Mill also made positive statements in the chapter on the “probable futurity of the labouring classes” ([1848b] Reference Mill and Robson1965, bk IV, ch. 7) that the move would happen. Cooperatives “would tend more and more to absorb all work-people, except those who have too little understanding, or too little virtue, to be capable of learning to act on any other system than that of narrow selfishness” ([1848b] Reference Mill and Robson1965, p. 793).
The Context of a Growing Critique of Political Economy
As said before, Mill himself became a critic of political economy; but in a wider context in the 1830s and 1840s marked by growing criticism of political economy (De Marchi Reference De Marchi1974), to relativize the conclusions of political economy was perhaps not enough, and Mill had to question the universality of the very assumption of economics―namely, economic man. Therefore, he became increasingly critical of the premises used by economists.
In his 1834 review of Harriet Martineau’s Summary of Political Economy, Mill condemns the “almost irresistible tendency of the human mind to become the slave of its own hypotheses” to which almost all economists succumb, inducing them to mistake “arbitrary conditions … for laws of nature” (Mill [1834] Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 226). It might seem disturbing that Mill stresses the relativity of the desire for wealth two years before the publication of his universalizing essay “On the Method …”; but the essay published in 1836 was in fact written earlier, in 1831 (see Robson in Mill [1836b], Reference Mill and Robson1967, p. 309),Footnote 32 at a time when Mill was just discovering Comte and the Saint-Simonians―crucial influences, as seen above.
Another instance may be found in a passage from his later work Auguste Comte and Positivism:
The principal error of narrowness with which [economists] are frequently chargeable, is that of regarding, not any economical doctrine, but their present experience of mankind, as of universal validity; mistaking temporary or local phases of human character for human nature itself; having no faith in the wonderful pliability of the human mind; deeming it impossible, in spite of the strongest evidence, that the earth can produce human beings of a different type from that which is familiar to them in their own age, or even, perhaps, in their own country. (Mill [1865] Reference Mill and Robson1985, p. 306)
All these elements underscore how Mill increasingly came to question the universality of the desire for wealth.
VI. CONCLUSION
Regarding the debate that prompted this paper, our study has tried to make clear that both camps marshal strong arguments in favor of their respective theses, despite some misinterpretations. The disputation itself is profoundly revealing for all scholars interested in Mill. Nonetheless, the debate is just as telling for what we learn about Mill as for what it overshadows. All protagonists pretend to capture Mill’s definitive stance on the issue of the universality of the desire for wealth, without noticing the gap between the 1836b paper and his more mature works. They all overlook that Mill’s thought was mutable. And even if, on the whole, Mill’s writings provide more arguments in favor of Hollander and Peart,Footnote 33 these two scholars fail to pay attention both to Mill’s more universalist approach in the 1836b article and to his later concern to stress the relativity of economic assumptions. They leave unnoticed the fact that Mill, after 1836, gradually reduced the empirical relevance of the maximizing behavior, and put more and more stress on the historicity of the legal and social apparatus—i.e., competition—that renders such behavior operative.Footnote 34
The question of whether in Mill’s mind the desire for wealth is universal is not just interesting for academics specialized in the study of Mill’s works; it is also of particular importance in the history of economic thought, insofar as many epistemological and theoretical criticisms leveled at the classical mainstream in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries consist precisely in denouncing the alleged pretension to build universal laws upon homo œconomicus. In the wake of Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi and Richard Jones, influential authors like Comte, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Thorstein Veblen, and the German historicists launched attacks of this kind on classical political economy and on Mill specifically. The perplexing thing is that among classicals, Mill made outstanding efforts to stress the non-universality of economic laws. As said in the Introduction to this article, the idea that economic laws are mere “tendencies” was steadfastly defended by Mill from the 1836b essay on.Footnote 35 Therefore, the oft-repeated attacks against Mill’s pretension to establish natural or universal laws appear illegitimate.Footnote 36 This idea that political economy, as conceived by Mill, has a very limited empirical scope is unanimously recognized by all four commentators. This is obvious in Peart and Hollander’s texts; and De Marchi holds that “Mill’s science was of very limited scope and potential” (De Marchi Reference De Marchi1986, p. 91). Only Hirsch seems embarrassed by this issue. He considers that the desire for wealth cannot reasonably be regarded as relative; otherwise “what pretensions can economics have to be called a science if its central causal law is so limited?” (Reference Hirsch2000, p. 356). Here Hirsch stresses precisely the problematic way Mill defines economic science, a narrow definition that Mill himself did not respect in practice, as rightly pointed out by Hollander and Peart (Reference Hollander and Peart1999, pt. IV). What seems hard for Hirsch to recognize is that Mill was not necessarily the best epistemologist of his own economics. Mill should have explicitly amended his 1836b essay, or, let us say, should have criticized it in an ulterior text, all the more so since up until his death he provided eight editions of his Logic and seven of his Principles. But this of course is the kind of task that is typically our responsibility as historians of ideas.
COMPETING INTERESTS
The author declares no competing interests exist.
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