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his difficulty would never have arisen. It seems simple;
but at the root of all apple-trees and apple-growing,
it is really as simple as that.
Of course I do not mean that the practice is at present simple;
for no practical problem is simple, least of all at the present time,
when everything is confused by the corrupt and evasive muddlers
who are called practical politicians. But the principle is simple;
and the only way to proceed through a complex situation is to start
with the right first principle. How far we can do without,
or control, or merely modify the disadvantages of buying
and selling is quite another matter. But the disadvantages
do arise from buying and selling, and not from producing:
not even from over-producing. And it is some satisfaction to realise
that we are not living in a nightmare in which No is the same as Yes;
that even the modern world has not actually gone mad, with all its
ingenious attempts to do so; that two and two do in fact make four;
and that the man who has four apples really has more than
the man who has three. For some modern metaphysicians and moral
philosophers seem disposed to leave us in doubt on these points.
It is not the fundamental reason in things that is at fault;
it is a particular hitch or falsification, arising from a very
recent trick of regarding everything only in relation to trade.
Trade is all very well in its way, but Trade has been put in the place
of Truth. Trade, which is in its nature a secondary or dependent thing,
has been treated as a primary and independent thing; as an absolute.
The moderns, mad upon mere multiplication, have even made a plural
out of what is eternally singular, in the sense of single.
They have taken what all ancient philosophers called the Good,
and translated it as the Goods.
I believe that certain mystics, in the American business world,
protested against the slump by pinning labels to their coats inscribed,
"Trade Is Good," along with other similar proclamations, such as,
"Capone Is Dead," or "Cancer Is Pleasant," or "Death Is Abolished,"
or any other hard realistic truths for which they might find space upon
their persons. But what interests me about these magicians is that,
having decided to call up ideal conditions by means of spells
and incantations to control the elements, they did not (so to speak)
understand the elements of the elements. They did not go to the root
of the matter, and imagine that their troubles had really come
to an end. Rather they worshipped the means instead of the end.
While they were about it, they ought to have said, not "Trade is Good,"
but "Living Is Good," or "Life Is Good." I suppose it would be too much
to expect such thoroughly respectable people to say, "God Is Good";
but it is really true that their conception of what is good lacks
the philosophical finality that belonged to the goodness of God.
When God looked on created things and saw that they were good,
it meant that they were good in themselves and as they stood;
but by the modern mercantile idea, God would only have looked at them
and seen that they were The Goods. In other words, there would be
a label tied to the tree or the hill, as to the hat of the Mad Hatter,
with "This Style, 10/6." All the flowers and birds would be ticketed
with their reduced prices; all the creation would be for sale
or all the creatures seeking employment; with all the morning stars
making sky-signs together and all the Sons of God shouting for jobs.
In other words, these people are incapable of imagining any good
except that which comes from bartering something for something else.
The idea of a man enjoying a thing in itself, for himself,
is inconceivable to them. The notion of a man eating his own
apples off his own apple-tree seems like a fairy-tale. Yet the fall
from that first creation that was called good has very largely
come from the restless impotence for valuing things in themselves;
the madness of the trader who cannot see any good in a good,
except as something to get rid of. It was once admitted that with sin
and death there entered the world something that we call change.
It is none the less true and tragic, because what we called change,
we called afterwards exchange. Anyhow, the result of that extravagance
of exchange has been that when there are too many apples there
are too few apple-eaters. I do not insist on the symbol of Eden,
or the parable of the apple-tree, but it is odd to notice that even
that accidental image pursues us at every stage of this strange story.
The last result of treating a tree as a shop or a store instead
of as a store-room, the last ettect ot treating apples as goods
rather than as good, has been in a desperate drive of public charity
and in poor men selling apples in the street.
In all normal civilisations the trader existed and must exist.
But in all normal civilisations the trader was the exception;
certainly he was never the rule; and most certainly he was
never the ruler. The predominance which he has gained
in the modern world is the cause of all the disasters
of the modern world. The universal habit of humanity has
been to produce and consume as part of the same process;
largely conducted by the same people in the same place.
Sometimes goods were produced and consumed on the same great
feudal manor; sometimes even on the same small peasant farm.
Sometimes there was a tribute from serfs as yet hardly
distinguishable from slaves; sometimes there was a cooperation
between free-men which the superficial can hardly distinguish
from communism. But none of these many historical methods,
whatever their vices or limitations, was strangled in the
particular tangle of our own time; because most of the people,
for most of the time, were thinking about growing food and then
eating it; not entirely about growing food and selling it
at the stiffest price to somebody who had nothing to eat.
And I for one do not believe that there is any way out
of the modern tangle, except to increase the proportion of
the people who are living according to the ancient simplicity.
Nobody in his five wits proposes that there should be no trade
and no traders. Nevertheless, it is important to remember,
as a matter of mere logic, that there might conceivably be
great wealth, even if there were no trade and no traders.
It is important for the sort of man whose only hope is that
Trade Is Good or whose only secret terror is that Trade Is Bad.
In principle, prosperity might be very great, even if trade
were very bad. If a village were so fortunately situated that,
for some reason, it was easy for every family to keep its
own chickens, to grow its own vegetables, to milk its own cow and
(I will add) to brew its own beer, the standard of life
and property might be very high indeed, even though the long
memory of the Oldest Inhabitant only recorded two or three pure
transactions of trade; if he could only recall the one far-off
event of his neighbour buying a new hat from a gipsy's barrow;
or the singular incident of Farmer Billings purchasing an umbrella.
As I have said, I do not imagine, or desire, that things would ever
be quite so simple as that. But we must understand things in their
simplicity before we can explain or correct their complexity.
The complexity of commercial society has become intolerable,
because that society is commercial and nothing else.
The whole mind of the community is occupied, not with the idea
of possessing things, but with the idea of passing them on.
When the simple enthusiasts already mentioned say that Trade
is Good, they mean that all the people who possess goods are
perpetually parting with them. These Optimists presumably invoke
the poet, with some slight emendation of the poet's meaning,
when he cries aloud, 'Our souls are love and a perpetual farewell.'
In that sense, our individualistic and commercial modern society is
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