Thorstein Veblen
Review author of: 'The Development of English Thought: A Study in the Economic 
Interpretation of History'. By SIMON N. PATTEN.
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899. 8vo. pp. xxvii, 415).
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, (Jul., 1899), 
pp. 125-131.
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If the term be taken in a general sense, Mr. Patten's "Development of English 
Thought" is a working out of a materialistic conception of history, although his 
"materialistic conception" is not nearly the same as that to which Marx and 
Engels gave a vogue in socialistic circles. It is needless to say that it is a 
marked advance over the somewhat crude form in which the great socialists left 
their fundamental concept. While they were content with an appeal to class 
interest and antagonism as a sufficient explanation of the control of cultural 
development through the economic situation, Mr. Patten's modern scientific 
animus leads him to look more closely into the causal relation between the 
economic situation and the resulting culture. The resulting theory is not a 
doctrine of a class struggle. In Mr. Patten's view the economic situation shapes 
culture by shaping human character and habits of thought. It does this somewhat 
directly, through a process of habituation as well as through a concomitant 
process of selection between habits and between different styles of temperament. 
The causal relation between the situation ("environment") and the cultural 
outcome, therefore, lies through the psychological development of the 
individuals who are exposed to this environment.
Some part of the theoretical ground on which this materialistic doctrine 
proceeds has already been set forth, in greater detail, in an earlier monograph 
on "The Theory of Social Forces." The elements of that theory are (1) a frankly 
and uncritically accepted, though modified, associational. psychology, such as 
had general vogue until a generation ago, with its accompanying hedonism, and 
(2) a rationalistic doctrine of evolution, stated in terms of the consummation 
to which the development should tend in order to meet the author's ideal. It is 
part of the tacit premises of this doctrine that evolution means improvement, 
amelioration, progress; hence there is occasional reference to the "normal line" 
of development, and some phases of the development are spoken of as departures 
and detours from the normal. This resort to normality and a more or less 
constraining meliorative trend is scarcely a modem feature.
The normal line of development is conceived to run from an earlier "pain 
economy" to a subsequent "pleasure economy." This distinction, it may be 
remarked, seems to have no ground in fact and to serve no useful purpose. Under 
the regime of the archaic "pain economy," fear and the avoidance of pain are the 
prominent motives for action. The sensory ideas are so grouped that they give 
early intimation of the presence of every possible foe or evil.... Man must have 
an instinctive fear of evil. The sensory and motor powers must unite in 
emphasizing any quality or person that may be the forerunner of suffering, or 
the means of avoiding it. Such activities and such a type of mind appear in 
primitive men, and wherever they are dominant a pain economy results. (p. 8).
Even a hasty and fragmentary comparison of this theory of primitive habits of 
life and thought with what is known of existing primitive communities will show 
its irrelevancy. It appears, for instance, that in such communities as those of 
the Australians, Bushmen or Eskimo, where life is precarious and the environment 
local, all this does not seem to hold. "Motor ideas" (to accept, without 
criticising, Mr. Patten's terminology) do not here crowd out "sensory ideas" to 
the extent which the theory would seem to demand; nor do these bearers of the 
lower culture bend their thoughts with utter consistency to the avoidance of 
pain. To some extent -in the case of many Australian tribes to a very great 
extent -they seem to court pain. Of these latter it is quite safe to say that 
there is more blood shed by them peacefully and deliberately, in self-torture 
and ceremonial scarification, than all that is lost in hostile encounter with 
men and beasts. Their times of peace are times of blood and wounds. 
Illustrations to the same effect abound in the accounts of other peoples at or 
near the same cultural level. And far from the "motor ideas" shutting out all 
other thought process than a strenuous application to the struggle against a 
refractory environment, there is on this cultural level a very large and free 
development of legends and ceremonial myths that have no obvious relation to 
"fear and the avoidance of pain." And the body of what passes for knowledge 
among these people is comprehensive and intricate, and shows no peculiarly close 
correlation with an effective avoidance of evils. "The sensory ideas are" not in 
any especial degree "so grouped that they give early intimation of the presence 
of every foe or evil." On the contrary, they are in great part so grouped as to 
be ineffective for that purpose. In point of fact, most of the known primitive 
communities are saddled with a stupendous fabric of magical conceits and 
ceremonials that frequently hinder their avoidance of patent evils. They are 
also, if the consensus of observers is to be accepted, notably indolent, light-
hearted and careless of any evil that is not already upon them. Dolce far niente 
and merrymaking, often hideously exuberant, claim a very large portion of their 
time and attention. It is behind the man on horseback that black care sits; the 
savage of the earlier, more unmitigated "pain economy" knows little of worry. 
And the evils which he seriously seeks to avoid are for the most part figments - 
high-wrought complications of "sensory ideas" that are not controlled by 
relevant "motor ideas." The evidence from ethnology seems to say that care and 
deliberation for the avoidance of evils find no place in the early culture until 
the necessity of taking thought is forced home upon the luckless by a successful 
incursion from without; and such an incursion commonly comes from men who seek 
an increase of pleasures through booty, - the "sensualists" of Mr. Patten's 
nomenclature, that are bred in a "pleasure economy."
The predilection for sharp antitheses and striking transitions that shows itself 
in the overdrawn contrast between a "pain economy" and a "pleasure economy" 
appears again in the repeated insistence on the epochal character of historical 
development. Mr. Patten finds that history proceeds by epochs, each of which 
begins with a transition to a new and novel environment and affords an entirely 
new and unprejudiced point of departure. The impression conveyed is that of an 
extreme segmentation of the sequence.

"Each succeeding environment will ... create a new series of economic, 
aesthetic, moral, and religious ideas which will have their basis in the 
economic conditions of the epoch. The history of each epoch is thus practically 
independent, starting from its own conditions and developing in its own way. In 
studying an epoch, the economic conditions must be studied first, then the 
economic doctrines that flow from them, and last the aesthetic, moral, and 
religious ideas which the epoch produces.
"The different groups of ideas cannot be traced independently, because the ideas 
of each epoch do not grow out of the similar ideas of the preceding epoch, but 
are formed anew from the new conditions." (p. 44).
"History, to be valuable, must be studied in epochs, and each group of ideas 
[economic, aesthetic, moral, religious]' be connected with its roots in the 
underlying conditions, and not with its antecedents in the same group. The 
blending of the old and the new groups of ideas happens after the new conditions 
have exerted their force, or at least have brought out what is most peculiar to 
them." (p. 45).

The notion of a sheer transition and a fresh start is mitigated rather than 
superseded by the subsequent statement that each succeeding temporary 
environment "has given to the race certain characteristics that become a part of 
the national character. And thus character is the one enduring growing element 
in a civilization; all else when compared with it is temporary and fleeting" for 
it remains true that "in each new environment a new nation grows up almost as 
distinct from its predecessors as were the new nations of ancient times from the 
nations that preceded them." (pp. 46-47). That continuity of traditions and 
usages that has so impressed students of institutions and folklore, as well as 
that persistence of physical type and temperamental bent that makes the burden 
of the teachings of the modem anthropologists, seem to have passed harmless over 
Mr. Patten.
The antecedents of English thought (ch. ii) are proximately racial, more 
remotely climatic; but the analysis is pushed back of the racial to the climatic 
with a freedom which indicates that in Mr. Patten's view the sequence covered by 
these terms is by no means a long one. The character of the race is created by 
an economic (climatic) situation which imposes certain traits upon men. These 
traits may be imposed by a relatively brief discipline, but after they have once 
been imposed they persist with an extreme tenacity. Further changes in the 
"character" of the race take place by the imposition of added traits, rather 
than by an organic change or selective variation of hereditary temperament or by 
an alteration in the individual's habits of thought. One gets the impression 
that traits are conceived to make up a mechanical aggregate, which is the race 
character, and to which new items may be added without essentially disturbing 
the previously existing aggregation (see pp. 4-21, 50-52, 57-66).
Mr. Patten's theoretical handling of the antecedents of English thought will be 
found at many points to traverse received notions of the primitive growth of 
culture, and his statements of fact in this connection also do not easily fit 
into the framework of the published accounts of existing primitive communities. 
Under the former head there is a characteristically bold departure from current 
notions as to the origin, nature, and functional relations of the clan (p. 109). 
Again, Mr. Patten says that "the northern man conquers nature, while the 
southern man yields to it." (pp. 5-8). An American reader will instinctively 
call to mind the Aleutian and Alaskan tribes on the one hand, and the Yucatanese 
and Mexican civilizations on the other, and the juxtaposition of the author's 
generalization with the specific facts leaves the effect of a drawn game.
"In wet, cold countries, natural forces act regularly, and the social surplus is 
small. Here men unite into strongly knit social groups, with a well-developed 
feeling of the solidarity of responsibility. Vigorous and aggressive, they react 
promptly against sources of pain." (p. 64).
This again calls up the Eskimo, the Fuegians, the Ainu, whose social groups are 
not seriously to be weighed in the balance of solidarity. And to make the 
bewilderment complete one might add the Haida, except for the fact that with 
them the food supply ("social surplus") was not scant, while their social groups 
were "strongly knit."
So again, in contrast,
"These concepts of peace and obedience do not come naturally to people living in 
hot, dry countries, where nature is arbitrary.... As their privations seem to be 
due to their own shortcomings, they develop readily the concept of sin and of a 
fallen nature. But peace they do not look for, and obedience they do not yield. 
On the contrary, they have inclinations toward a life of asceticism and 
individual freedom. Among these people there is no powerful priesthood and no 
concept of God except as a being to fear and avoid." (p. 63).
The Mexicans and Pueblos should afford illustration of this text, but credible 
accounts say that they do not altogether. The Pueblos, for instance, probably as 
clear a case as may be found, are currently held by students of their culture to 
be peaceable, obedient to their chosen authorities, not noticeably conscious of 
their own shortcomings, not perceptibly inclined to asceticism, with a 
priesthood constituting the strongest power among them, with an extensive and 
well-grown mythology and an intricate and elaborate cult, constantly resorting 
for comfort to their divinities, of whom they have but little fear.
This anthropological-economic verification of Mr. Patten's underlying principles 
of interpretation might be continued at considerable length without coming 
closer to a conviction of their adequacy. But all this touches only the 
preliminaries and premises of the discussion, not the main work of 
interpretation itself. It may seem gratuitous and ungraceful to apply these 
preliminary generalizations to the case of peoples that lie outside of that 
European culture with which alone his argument is occupied; but if the 
generalizations are to apply with such force as to afford a point of departure 
within the European culture they should be of such a consistency as to avoid the 
appearance of having been constructed ad hoc.
It is to be regretted that, even at points that are not peculiarly recondite or 
difficult, in the handling of the main question, faults of the same kind occur 
again. So, in the distinction made between his three typical civilizations, 
German, Semitic and Roman, Mr. Patten overlooks that difference of racial stocks 
that anthropologists make much of, and resorts instead to an unnecessarily bald 
appeal to the economic situation (p. 64). Similarly, the like persistent racial 
difference traceable between Catholics and Protestants, and in a less degree 
between Calvinists and Lutherans, is neglected at a later point (ch. ii, also 
pp. 110-142).
"The character of the early German was due mainly to the damp, cold climate in 
which he lived, and to the meagre food products upon which he subsisted." (p. 
65).
The evidence of the German's food products being meagre is not easy to find; 
where evidence of the early dietary is most available, as, for instance, in the 
case of the older Scandinavian communities, it goes the other way. Nor does the 
statement (p. 66) that in Germany the equilibrium of population was maintained 
by pressing against nature for the means of subsistence comport with the other 
statement, on the same page, that "their migrations seem to have been actuated, 
not by starvation, but by greed." So also it seems paradoxical to say that the 
character of that Germanic stock that won its way by the sword "has few of the 
traits which war creates."
But paradox and the inversion of received views are not among the things which 
this book avoids. Wide divergence from the commonplace interpretations meets the 
reader at almost all points of first-rate consequence. At first one is struck 
with the novelty and force of the new formulations, and one has a feeling that 
Mr. Patten must have discovered and will unfold a wealth of evidence that shall 
substantiate the new positions taken. But with further progress this feeling 
(perhaps unwarrantably) wears off, as the proliferation of novel ideas and the 
paucity of documentation goes on. The matter-of-fact material handled in the 
body of the volume raises fewer questions of authenticity than the striking 
statements made in the hundred-odd pages of theoretical groundwork, but there 
are few portions of the book in the reading of which one quite escapes the 
apprehension that the facts cited are speaking under constraint. And Mr. 
Patten's handling of the theme is so flexuous and multiform, and to one not in 
entire sympathy with his premises and his point of view it seems at times so 
whimsical and inconsequent, that a detailed scrutiny of the argument would be a 
large and by no means attractive employment and could scarcely avoid the 
appearance of captiousness.
It is a book of which it is not easy to say much in the way of commendation that 
shall be specific enough to bear itemized statement. But none the less it will 
afford valuable suggestion and incentive, and, indeed, guidance, to the economic 
study of many features of European culture. It abounds in irrelevant 
generalizations, but there is also much of shrewd observation, with many new and 
cogent characterizations of the writers and tenets with which the book deals. We 
may not be able to accept Mr. Patten's position that antagonism to Puritan 
enthusiasm was the deciding motive and guide in Locke's work; nor may many 
students: find conviction in the characterization of Darwin as a "philosopher on 
the downward curve," or of Hume as an economist changed into a philosopher. But 
the pointed contrast of Mr. Patten's views on these heads as against what has 
passed current will at least have a salutary effect in directing the attention 
of students to features in the development of thought which have commonly been 
passed over too lightly. The account given of the development of the English 
"home" and of the cultural causes and effects of the English status of women 
does not seem conclusive, in view of the fact that a passably equivalent 
economic situation in other communities, where race, religion, or social 
traditions have been different, has not worked out like results. But here again 
the discussion throws an effective light upon the questions in hand, though it 
is perhaps to be rated as a side light. One is somewhat at a loss to account for 
the very high degree of efficacy imputed to the Christian religion - an 
intrusive cult - in Germanic and English culture, in a discussion whose first, 
if not sole, postulate is that the economic situation shapes the cultural 
sequence without help or hindrance from any outside spiritual force or from any 
antecedent tradition or tenet. And still, inconsistent as it may be, his 
handling of this intrusive cult as a formative element in English spiritual life 
is by no means the least effective of Mr. Patten's work.
On one point at least, of general bearing, Mr. Patten's conclusion seems blind 
to those who do not see all these matters through his eyes. In chapter iii (pp. 
188-189) and again in his concluding remarks (p. 378) it is broadly stated that 
the English have shown a conspicuous incapacity for the development of political 
institutions. This raises a question as to what may be meant by a capacity for 
political life -in that economic relation with which Mr. Patten is avowedly 
occupied - beyond such an adequate adjustment to their economic situation as Mr. 
Patten shows the English to be eminently possessed of.
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