mind.” “The foundation of all economic reasoning.” “The all-compelling law that is as inseparable from the human mind as attraction is inseparable from matter.”[1]
With the sternness of vivisection he has resolutely laid bare inertia, and insists that this is the very heart of human nature; and if he fails to convince us that he is indeed a cold blooded investigator, it is not for lack of assertion. And it is Henry George himself who encourages us to look forward confidently to an equally relentless examination by him of the effects of his “supreme law of the human mind” in the new era which is to be ushered in with his remedy. He states, “The great fact which science shows in all her branches is the universality of law—beyond the reach of his (the Astronomer’s) telescope the law still holds good.”[2]Now this alleged, but very questionable, tendency toward inertia, so repeatedly affirmed, is without question the chief menace to the successful working out of his plans, for henceforward inertia is to be richly nourished by taxation; yet not only is it never alluded to but, again with the gesture of a conjurer, the ugly thing he has put so ostentatiously into his bag of tricks comes out transformed into a white rabbit with pink eyes, when he states, “Short-sighted is the philosophy which counts on selfishness as the master motive of human action.”[3] The desire for gratification without exertion is the most elementary form of selfishness: according to his own assertion, it is the “fundamental principle” of human action; so that the accusation of philosophic shortsightedness in those who regard it as the “master-motive” of human action is a little bewildering. There is also honor among critics, as Henry George would have known if he had really been one of them.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he felt he must utilize the force of his much-emphasized law to storm his way out of our present economic impasse with the largest possible number of followers, not excluding mercenaries, and being
