ABSTRACT
Locke's language implies that he adopts an objective standard of what is really good as opposed to what seems so to the particular individual ; but he takes no pains to be consistent. Elsewhere in the same chapter of the Essay (§ 58) he says that a man's judgment of his present good is always right, and then proceeds to impress on his readers that the government of our passions is within our power, and "the eternal law and nature of things must not be altered to comply with a man's ill-ordered choice." Men must school their palates and change disagreeable into agreeable things, that the true good which is remote may not escape them, " The remoter absent good" can compete with immediate good if the uneasiness of hunger and thirst and of the many other daily and vulgar wants has been allayed, and the mind has given itself fixedly to the contemplation of the greater object.1 The obstacle to this contemplation is the perpetual recurrence of the lower wants. Locke speaks of human desires as, in a bad sense, irrepressible and innumerable in temporal matters (§ 46), but he does not seem to regard the desire of wealth as indefinitely expansive. The desire of " riches " is set down as a "fantastical uneasiness" alongside of the desire for honour and power, and " a thousand other irregular desires which custom has made natural to us."2 The desire to have more than we need alters the intrinsic value of things. 3 WheiJ. man has " all that this world can afford, he is still unsatisfied, uneasy, and far from happiness."~
A passage 5 of Locke's journal printed by Lord King in his Life of Locke, p. 84 seq. (sub dato Feb. 8th, 1677) gives us an idea of the way in which his thoughts worked on economical subjects, especially those afterwards handled in the early chapters of the Wealth of Nations. Amongst other things he describes " our stock of riches " as meaning "things useful for the conveniences of our life " ; and his economical pamphlets show that he kept hold of the distinction between money and wealth. Even when he rather awkwardly speaks of wealth as
conststmg in plenty "of gold and silver," it is for the reason that these "command all the conveniences of life," 1 and "commodities" are described as "moveables" that can be valued in money. 2 On the other hand, " it is with a kingdom as with a family " ; spending less than your wares have fetched for you is the only way to be rich, 3 and "a kingdom becomes rich or poor just as a farmer doth and no otherwise," namely, by wise husbandry. His economic writings treat of the wealth of nations in the light of these analogies, and give us general principles of production and distribution more or less closely corresponding therewith,
Mandeville, Fable of the Bees (ed. 1723), i. r8r seq. (Remark P). It is: worked out in Locke's Journal, Feb., 1677 (Lift, by Lord King, p. 85).
