The Significance of Hume’s “Indissoluble Chain”
On the significance of Hume’s claim that “industry, knowledge and humanity are linked together by an indissoluble chain”
Hume’s Of Refinement in the Arts, from which the title-quote is taken, aims to correct two “extremes”: those “men of severe morals” who declaim even “the most innocent luxury, and represent it as the source of all the corruptions, disorders, and factions, incident to civil government”, and those of “libertine principles” who “bestow praises even on vicious luxury.” Accordingly, Hume seeks to prove firstly that “ages of refinement are both the happiest and most virtuous”, and secondly that “wherever luxury ceases to be innocent, it also ceases to be beneficial.”[1]
The claim of an “indissoluble chain” figures specifically in Hume’s rejection of the “severe moralist” and his “proof” that ages of refinement are happiest and most virtuous. Hume’s contention that industry, knowledge and humanity are chained together is supported by three inter-connected claims, each constituting a “link” in the chain.
First, Hume notes that human happiness “seems to consist in three ingredients; action, pleasure, and indolence.”[2] All three ingredients are important and ought to be mixed in “different proportions.” Hume observes that “In times when industry and the arts flourish, men are kept in perpetual occupation, and enjoy, as their reward, the occupation itself, as well as those pleasures which are the fruit of their labour.”[3] By contrast, “Banish those arts from society, you deprive men both of action and of pleasure; and leaving nothing but indolence in their place, you even destroy the relish of indolence, which never is agreeable, but when it succeeds labour.”[4] Thus Hume’s first link: industry brings happiness to men by ensuring correct proportion of the “ingredients” of happiness.
Hume’s second link centres on another “advantage” of industry and refinement in the arts: “that they commonly produce some refinements in the liberal; nor can one be carried to perfection without being accompanied, in some degree, with the other.”[5] Ages producing great philosophers and poets also abound with skilful weavers and ship-carpenters. “The spirit of the age affects all the arts”, as men are roused from lethargy and put into fermentation: “Profound ignorance is totally banished, and men enjoy the privilege of rational creatures.”[6]
The third link follows from the previous two, and contends that men become more “sociable” as they “flock into cities” where knowledge is diffused and increased “[s]o that, beside the improvements which they receive from knowledge and the liberal arts, it is impossible but they must feel an encrease of humanity, from the very habit of conversing together, and contributing to each other’s pleasure and entertainment.”[7] Thus an indissoluble chain joins industry, knowledge and humanity.
Hume does not however let matters rest there. He also purports to show that no significant disadvantages arise that would offset the advantages described above, and provides a series of arguments to this effect.
Firstly, ages of refinement and “luxury” see men indulging less in “excess of any kind” (and although infidelity may increase, drunkenness is rarer).[8] Secondly, Hume redeploys an argument from Of Commerce[9] in which he took himself to have proved that nations engaging in commerce and industry were the most powerful because they could readily recruit large armies from the manufacturer classes which “in the exigencies of state, may be turned to the public service.”[10]
Thirdly, human reason must “refine itself by exercise, and by an application to the vulgar arts, at least, of commerce and manufacture” before it can develop good laws, order, police and discipline: after all “can we expect that a government will be well-modelled by a people, who know not how to make a spinning-wheel, or to employ a loom to advantage?”[11] Fourthly, “knowledge in the arts of government begets mildness and moderation” with the important benefit of making factions less inveterate, revolutions less “tragical” and seditions less frequent. Even foreign wars “abate of their cruelty.”[12]
Nonetheless – a fifth point – we need not fear that men will “lose their martial spirit” or become less “vigorous in defence of their country or their liberty”: “the arts have no such effect in enervating either the mind or body” but rather add new force to both, as the examples of France and England “whose bravery is as uncontestable, as their assiduity in commerce” prove.[13] Sixthly, we can ignore those who believe that ancient Rome became a disordered state because of “luxury and the arts”; in truth it suffered from “ill-modelled government and the unlimited extent of conquests.” [14] Likewise we may dismiss the claim that Roman luxury caused its people to lose their honour and virtue, for these “abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.”[15] Finally, those who claim that luxury and refinement lead to the loss of liberty are mistaken: “If we consider the matter in a proper light, we shall find, that a progress in the arts is rather favourable to liberty, and has a natural tendency to preserve, if not produce, a free government.”[16]
We are now in a position to consider some significances of Hume’s “indissoluble chain”. Here it is fruitful to draw upon Berry’s recent work.[17] Hume has mounted a sustained attack – as he promised to – upon the “severe moralists” who, in Berry’s words, adhere to a “distinctive but well-established and still well-entrenched moral stance.”[18] That stance is to view poverty and frugality as virtuous, luxury and refinement as vicious. It should be clear from the above that Hume rejects this dichotomy, and contends instead that luxury and refinement may lead to individual happiness and “public and private” benefits for nations abounding with virtue, honour and freedom.
Berry has made the invaluable contribution, however, of demonstrating that Hume does not simply oppose the “severe moralists” by deploying the series of counter-examples enumerated above. Rather, he undermines his opponents by reconceptualising the very terms of debate. It is difficult to do justice to Berry’s impressive account, but it can nonetheless be sketched as follows.
The “severe moralists” valorised poverty as virtuous: it had a moral connotation, in opposition to the vice of luxury and refinement. “Within this discourse, poverty and luxury exist as categorical opposites.”[19] However, if poverty is displaced in this dichotomy, then it follows that luxury is likewise conceptually reconfigured. “If…poverty is understood not as virtuous austerity, but as necessitousness, then luxury can lose its moralized (categorical) meaning.”[20] Berry establishes this as Hume’s “radical agenda”: a reconfiguration of the concept of poverty, in turn decontaminating luxury and refinement.
Hume’s “indissoluble chain” is crucial to this project. As we saw above, industry – a link in the chain – makes mankind cheerful and happy and both “reduces destitution and augments the resources available for amelioration.”[21] Knowledge and humanity follow industry in complementary fashion, benefiting both the greatness of the state and the lot of the people. The result is that poverty comes to be viewed not as a valorised virtue, but as an amoral condition of unfortunate necessity to be overcome. By expounding the myriad ways in which luxury and refinement have both “public and private” benefits, Hume simultaneously builds upon his conceptual reconfiguration of the poverty-luxury dichotomy, putting paid to the severe moralist world-view.
Hence a first significance of Hume’s “indissoluble chain” is revealed: its centrality to Hume’s deeply philosophical refutation of what might be termed the 18thCentury “conventional wisdom” (albeit one already heavily under revision).
By undercutting arguments for the vicious and harmful effects of luxury and refinement, and by instead highlighting their numerous “public and private” benefits, Hume invites those in positions of state power to open the door to industry and commerce by (for example) repealing laws that inhibit manufactures and trade. There is much more to be said about the role of these arguments in Hume’s wider economic system, to which we shall turn shortly. But for now we may merely note that a further significance of Hume’s “indissoluble chain” is that it has what we might term, in modern parlance, “direct policy applicability.”
Less immediately clear – until we return to Berry – is the extent to which the “policy applicability” of Hume’s argument also constitutes a critique of the hierarchical status quo of his society, and yields his “chain” a further significance:
“Politically, Hume is no egalitarian, but his recognition of superfluous value does betoken implicitly a rejection of the precommercial world in which, for example, sumptuary laws operated. This legislation sought to preserve the pecking order, to attempt to maintain “distance” through an ostentatious display of wealth, and thus to confine the incidence of a good and prevent its diffusion.”[22]
So far we have avoided discussion of the second component of Refinement in the Arts, Hume’s refutation of the man of libertine principles where “Mandeville is his unnamed exemplar.”[23] Hume demonstrates that Mandeville’s conception of luxury as a “private vice” but “public virtue” is incoherent, and argues that when luxuries become vicious they simultaneously become non-beneficial.[24] Hume is sufficiently erudite to observe that in some circumstances a vicious luxury ought nonetheless to be tolerated, insofar as it off-sets the worse effects of another vice such as indolence. However, whilst luxury here “provides a remedy; as one poison may be antidote to another…virtue…is better than poisons, however concocted.”[25] Although this is a separate strand of argument from the “indissoluble chain” contention, by bringing the two together we see a further significance of the latter: that Hume’s refutation of the “severe moralists”, when coupled with his dismissal of the other “extreme” of Mandeville, constitutes a sophisticated contribution to the wider debate on luxury which raged throughout the 18th Century.[26]
The significance of Hume’s “indissoluble chain” as outlined above may be deemed sufficient exploration of the subject. However to curtail the discussion here would be a mistake, depriving us of further vital insights.
Skinner notes that “if Hume’s essays do not constitute a single coherent treatise, they do…disclose evidence of systematic treatment,”[27] and it is worth recalling that Of Refinement in the Arts was originally published in 1752 as part of the Political Discourses, where it featured alongside eleven other essays, most of them economic in nature.[28] Turning to those other economic essays we see that whilst offering a wealth of insights in its own right, Of Refinement in the Arts contributes to a wider intellectual project. This is best realised by considering Hume’s so-called “rich-country, poor-country” argument, employing a skeletal reconstruction of his position and taking Hont as our guide.[29]
First let us consider Of Commerce. Hume tells us that rich countries, enjoying the benefits of domestic trade and industry, have nothing to fear from international trade despite contrary initial appearances. Seeing domestic prices rise, rich countries cannot produce coarse goods as cheaply as poor countries, who correspondingly undersell their wealthy competitors. Furthermore, seeing the opulence of rich nations the poorer will imitate their techniques and manufactures, aiming to replace imports with domestically-produced goods.[30] However, although new competitors damage her export markets, a rich nation may still continue to be great and powerful. If there is no foreign market for a commodity, then skilled labourers must turn their attention to producing alternatives:
“The virtù of the rich country manifested itself in her ability to review her commercial structure, to switch her skilled artisans to supplying for the home market. Given this flexibility, the welfare of the rich country could be maintained because the home demand of a rich country was potentially open-ended.”[31]
In Of Money Hume also advocates international trade as beneficial to poor countries. Thanks to a “happy concurrence of causes” international trade is self-checking, preventing world-monopoly by rich nations.[32] Whilst it remained true that “where one nation has got the start of another in trade, it is very difficult for the latter to regain lost ground”, rich countries’ domestic price-rises allow poor nations to undersell them in less refined goods, with “manufactures…gradually shift[ing] their places, leaving those countries and provinces which they have already enriched”, moving to those places “whither they are allured by the cheapness of provisions and labour.”[33] Rich countries with advanced and refined manufactures will not be overtaken by poor countries, but nonetheless the latter can benefit enormously by trading internationally. Furthermore poor countries will emulate the techniques of rich countries, likewise reaping the benefits of refinements in the arts.
An important aspect of Hume’s argument in the “rich-country, poor-country” debate thus becomes apparent: his belief that international trade was to the mutual benefit of all partaking countries. This position was reinforced and restated in Of the Jealousy of Trade, which Hume added to the Political Discourses in 1758.[34] There he stated that “The encrease of riches and commerce in any one nation instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours.”[35] Forcefully finalising his position, Hume declared: “I shall therefore venture to acknowledge, that, not only as a man, but as a BRITISH subject, I pray for the flourishing commerce of GERMANY, SPAIN, ITALY and even FRANCE itself.”[36]
Yet as Hont has demonstrated, Hume’s “rich-country, poor-country” argument is more than simply a description of the economic mechanisms of international commerce. It is a bold repudiation of a then-prevailing conception of the necessary constraints upon all states.
That conception can be summarised as the “Aristotelian-Machiavellian tradition of political understanding”, which held nations to be locked into inevitable patterns of growth and decay.[37] As all states must have a beginning, all must have an end: the statesman’s virtù may delay the inevitable, but eventually fortuna will ensure that the pendulum swings away from one state to its detriment and to the benefit of its rivals.[38]
This contention – a core component of the “civic humanist” or “republican” tradition – was directly repudiated by Hume’s insistence that international trade lead to the mutual benefit of all nations. Rich nations could trade with poor, without fear that this would cause them to fall from prominence: if they did fall, “they ought to blame their own idleness, or bad government, not the industry of their neighbours.”[39] Poor nations could likewise benefit, though they had to accept they would likely never catch-up with their already-rich competitors. Crucially, even if the development of rich countries was eventually “checked”, it was not reversed. International commerce was not a zero-sum game. Everyone could win and eventual decline was not the inevitable lot of all (great) nations.
As Hont notes, Hume’s account is strangely paradoxical as he frequently employs the language of civic humanist discourse. [40] Yet the repudiation of the civic-humanist outlook is a major significance of Hume’s “rich-country, poor-country” argument: it seeks to remove a major pillar of conceptual support for the protectionist and mercantilist orthodoxies Hume’s commercialism was designed to supplant.[41]
Having outlined Hume’s wider project, we can now appreciate two further significances of the “indissoluble chain” contention. Firstly, Of Refinement in the Arts is revealed as part of Hume’s wider argument in favour of free trade and commerce. Having argued in Of Commerce that both domestic and international trade were to the material benefit of rich nations, Hume also had to show that these material benefits were not offset by other significant disadvantages, particularly of the sort the “severe moralists” proclaimed. The “indissoluble chain” fulfilled this task, complementing the argument in Of Commerce perfectly. That task complete, Hume could then turn in Of Money to expound his “rich-country, poor-country” argument from the perspective of poor nations, drawing on insights laid-out in the previous two essays. Of Refinement in the Arts, and specifically the “indissoluble chain”, are indispensable components in the mechanism of Hume’s “rich-country, poor-country” account.
Secondly, several of Hume’s arguments in support of the “indissoluble chain” are revealed as possessing especial significance when considered in light of his rejection of civic humanist conceptions of the state.
Hume’s argument that men do not lose their “marshal spirit” in commercial societies stands out. A central tenet of classical republican – and particularly Machiavellian – thinking held that luxury and refinement would lead to the effeminacy of the population, reliance upon untrustworthy mercenaries, and the eventual downfall of the state.[42] In claiming that “discipline and martial skill” are unique to commercial ages, as proved by the power of France and England, Hume was critiquing a core tenet of civic humanism whilst simultaneously lending support to his rejection of the republican “growth-decay” model.[43]
Connectedly, Hume’s claim that “honour and virtue…will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement” is a clear repudiation of republican thinking.[44] Hume is re-appropriating the conceptual discourse, rejecting the republican equation of honour and virtue with civic duty and (military) state-service, substituting commerce and refinement in their place.
Finally, Hume’s declaration that refined commercial ages both promote and preserve liberty – that in England, for example, commerce strengthened the House of Commons providing a check to arbitrary monarchical power – is a clear repudiation of republican conceptions of the content of, and conditions for, freedom.[45] “Hume is…subverting the ‘republican’ or civic case for free government, in which public liberty is conceived of as embodying, and sustained by, active civic virtues.”[46]
We may now conclude. Hume’s “indissoluble chain” has considerable significance within the framework of Refinement in the Arts alone: as a philosophical refutation of “severe moralists”, a constituent part of a sophisticated contribution to the wider debate on luxury, and providing “directly applicable policy advice” to the government of his day. But it is also of significance within Hume’s wider project. The “indissoluble chain” conception is a necessary component in the mechanics of Hume’s “rich-country, poor-country” argument. Furthermore, the anti-republican arguments deployed in support of the “indissoluble chain” contribute to Hume’s wider rejection of civic humanist conceptions of the state, complementing, and contributing to, the rejection of the “growth-decay” model underpinning the mercantile-protectionist orthodoxy Hume opposed.
By way of closing remark it is worth reflecting upon a final significance of Hume’s indissoluble chain, which sadly cannot be pursued here: its influence upon subsequent thought. To this end it may suffice simply to restate Forbes’ pertinent observation:
“As in Hume, so in Smith, the progress of commerce and manufactures and ‘order and good government, and with them the liberty and security of individuals’, is the great theme of European history, embracing the absolute as well as the free government, and in the Wealth of Nations, Hume is said to have been ‘the only writer’ so far to have noticed the vital connection.”[47]
[1] David Hume, “Of Refinement in the Arts” in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, E.F Miller (ed) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), p.269.
[2] Ibid., p.269.
[3] Ibid., p.270.
[4] Ibid., p.270.
[5] Ibid., p.270.
[6] Ibid., p.271.
[7] Ibid., p.271.
[8] Ibid., p.272.
[9] See “Of Commerce” in Miller (ed), pp.260-3.
[10] Hume, Refinement p.272
[11] Ibid., p.273.
[12] Ibid., p.274.
[13] Ibid., pp.274-5.
[14] Ibid., p.276.
[15] Ibid., p.276.
[16] Ibid., p.277.
[17] Christopher J. Berry, “Hume and Superfluous Value (or the Problem with Epictetus’ Slippers)” in Wennerlind and Schabas (eds), David Hume’s Political Economy, (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008).
[18] Ibid., p.49.
[19] Ibid., p.51.
[20] Ibid., p.51.
[21] Ibid., p.52.
[22] Ibid., p.61.
[23] Ibid., p.49.
[24] Hume, “Refinement” pp.278-80.
[25] Ibid., p.279.
[26] See for example Jean- François Melon, “A Political Discourse Upon Luxury”; Voltaire, “On Commerce and Luxury”; Jean-François Saint-Lambert, “Luxury”; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Luxury, Commerce and the Arts” in Commerce, Culture and Liberty, Henry C. Clark (ed), (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003).
[27] Andrew S. Skinner, “Hume’s Principles of Political Economy”, in Norton and Taylor (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Hume, second edition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) p.411.
[28] Istvan Hont, “The Rich-Country, Poor-Country Debate in the Scottish Enlightenment” in Jealousy of Trade (Belknap Harvard, 2005) p.267.
[29] Ibid., pp.267-301.
[30] Ibid., p.269.
[31] Ibid., p.270.
[32] Hume, “Of Money”, in Miller (ed), p.283.
[33] Ibid., p.283.
[34] Skinner, (2009), p.392.
[35] Hume, “Of the Jealousy of Trade”, in Miller (ed), p.328.
[36] Ibid., p.331.
[37] Hont, (2005) p.268.
[38] Ibid., p.268.
[39] Hume, “Jealousy” p.329.
[40] Hont (2005), p.268.
[41] See Skinner (2008), pp.381-6 for a useful introductory discussion regarding the orthodoxies Hume challenged.
[42] Machiavelli’s Discorsi is, of course, the classic statement.
[43] Hume, “Refinement”, pp.274-5.
[44] Ibid., p.276.
[45] Ibid., pp.277-8.
[46] Berry, (2008), p.57.
[47] Duncan Forbes, “Sceptical Whiggism, Commerce, and Liberty”, in Skinner and Wilson (eds), Essays on Adam Smith, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) p.193.
Bibliography
- Berry, Christopher J. – “Hume and Superfluous Value (or the Problem with Epictetus’ Slippers)” in Wennerlind and Schabas (eds), David Hume’s Political Economy, (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008) pp.49-61.
- Clark, Henry C (ed) – Commerce, Culture and Liberty: Readings on Capitalism Before Adam Smith, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003).
- Emerson, Roger L. , “The Scottish Contexts for David Hume’s Political-Economic Thinking”, in Wennerlind and Schabas (eds), David Hume’s Political Economy, (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008) pp.10-30.
- Forbes, Duncan – “Sceptical Whiggism, Commerce, and Liberty”, in Skinner and Wilson (eds), Essays on Adam Smith, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) pp.179-201.
- Hont, Istvan – “The Rich-Country, Poor-Country Debate in the Scottish Enlightenment”, in Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective, (Belknap Harvard: 2005), pp.267-322.
- Hume, David – Essays Moral, Political and Literary, edited by Eugene F. Miller, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).
- Pocock, J.G.A. – “Hume and the American Revolution: The Dying Thoughts of a North Briton” in Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp.125-141.
- Skinner, Andrew S. , “Hume’s Principles of Political Economy” in Norton and Taylor (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Hume, second edition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) pp.381-413.
The Pre-18th Century Economics Foundation « Bad Conscience said,
February 12, 2010 at 8:01 am
[...] on how David Hume’s economic essays aimed to achieve some of what I’ve described above. Over here, in the Nerd Posts [...]