economic maturity, the three productive powers of agriculture,
manufactures and commerce should be alike developed. But the
two latter factors are superior in importance, as exercising a more
effective and fruitful influence on the whole culture of the nation,
as well as on its independence. Navigation, railways, all higher
technical arts, connect themselves specially with these factors;
whilst in a purely agricultural state there is a tendency to stagnation.
But for the growth of the higher forms of industry all countries
are not adapted—only those of the temperate zones, whilst the
torrid regions have a natural monopoly in the production of certain
raw materials; and thus between these two groups of countries
a division of labour and confederation of powers spontaneously
takes place.
List then goes on to explain his theory of the stages of economic development through which the nations of the temperate zone, which are furnished with all the necessary conditions, naturally pass, in advancing to their normal economic state. These are (1) pastoral life, (2) agriculture, (3) agriculture united with manufactures; whilst in the final stage agriculture, manufactures and commerce are combined. The economic task of the state is to bring into existence through legislative and administrative action the conditions required for the progress of the nation through these stages. Out of this view arises List’s scheme of industrial politics. Every nation, according to him, should begin with free trade, stimulating and improving its agriculture by intercourse with richer and more cultivated nations, importing foreign manufactures and exporting raw products. When it is economically so far advanced that it can manufacture for itself, then a system of protection should be employed to allow the home industries to develop themselves fully, and save them from being overpowered in their earlier efforts by the competition of more matured foreign industries in the home market. When the national industries have grown strong enough no longer to dread this competition, then the highest stage of progress has been reached; free trade should again become the rule, and the nation be thus thoroughly incorporated with the universal industrial union. What a nation loses for a time in exchange values during the protective period she much more than gains in the long run in productive power—the temporary expenditure being strictly analogous, when we place ourselves at the point of view of the life of the nation, to the cost of the industrial education of the individual. The practical conclusion which List drew for Germany was that she needed for her economic progress an extended and conveniently bounded territory reaching to the sea-coast both on north and south, and a vigorous expansion of manufactures and commerce, and that the way to the latter lay through judicious protective legislation with a customs union comprising all German lands, and a German marine with a Navigation Act. The national German spirit, striving after independence and power through union, and the national industry, awaking from its lethargy and eager to recover lost ground, were favourable to the success of List’s book, and it produced a great sensation. He ably represented the tendencies and demands of his time in his own country; his work had the effect of fixing the attention, not merely of the speculative and official classes, but of practical men generally, on questions of political economy; and his ideas were undoubtedly the economic foundation of modern Germany, as applied by the practical genius of Bismarck.
See biographies of List by Goldschmidt (Berlin, 1878) and Jentsch (Berlin, 1901), also Fr. List, ein Vorläufer und ein Opfer für das Vaterland (Anon., 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1877); M. E. Hirst’s Life of Friedrich List (London, 1909) contains a bibliography and a reprint of List’s Outlines of American Political Economy (1827).
LIST (O.E. liste, a Teutonic word, cf. Dut. lijst, Ger. Leiste,
adapted in Ital. lista and Fr. liste), properly a border or edging.
The word was thus formerly used of a geographical boundary
or frontier and of the lobe of the ear. In current usage “list”
is the term applied to the “selvage” of a piece of cloth, the
edging, i.e. of a web left in an unfinished state or of different
material from the rest of the fabric, to be torn or cut off when
it is made up, or used for forming a seam. A similar edging
prevents unravelling. The material, cut off and collected,
is known as “list,” and is used as a soft cheap material for
making slippers, padding cushions, &c. Until the employment
of rubber, list was used to stuff the cushions of billiard tables.
The same word probably appears, in a plural form “lists,”
applied to the barriers or palisades enclosing a space of ground
set apart for tilting (see Tournament). It is thus used of any
place of contest, and the phrase “to enter the lists” is frequently
used in the sense of “to challenge.” The word in this application
was taken directly from the O. Fr. lisse, modern lice, in
Med. Lat. liciae. This word is usually taken to be a Romanic
adaptation of the Teutonic word. In medieval fortifications the
lices were the palisades forming an outwork in front of the main
walls of a castle or other fortified place, and the word was also
used of the space enclosed between the palisades and the enceinte;
this was used for exercising troops, &c. From a transference
of “list,” meaning edge or border, to a “strip” of paper,
parchment, &c., containing a “list” of names, numbers, &c.,
comes the use of the word for an enumeration of a series of names
of persons or things arranged in order for some specific purpose.
It is the most general word for such an enumeration, other
words, such as “register,” “schedule,” “inventory,” “catalogue,”
having usually some particular connotation. The chief
early use of list in this meaning was of the roll containing the
names of soldiers; hence to “list a soldier” meant to enter
a recruit’s name for service, in modern usage “to enlist” him.
There are numerous particular applications of “list,” as in “civil list”
(q.v.), “active or retired list” in the navy or army. The
term “free list” is used of an enumeration of such commodities
as may at a particular time be exempt from the revenue laws
imposing an import duty.
The verb “to list,” most commonly found in the imperative, meaning “hark!” is another form of “listen,” and is to be referred, as to its ultimate origin, to an Indo-European root klu-, seen in Gr. κλύειν, to hear, κλέος, glory, renown, and in the English “loud.” The same root is seen in Welsh clûst and Irish clûas, ear. Another word “list,” meaning pleasure, delight, or, as a verb, meaning “to please, choose,” is chiefly found in such phrases as “the wind bloweth where it listeth.” This is from the O.E. lystan, cf. Dut. lusten, Ger. lüsten, to take pleasure in, and is also found in the English doublet “lust,” now always used in the sense of an evil or more particularly sexual desire. It is probably an application of this word, in the sense of “inclination,” that has given rise to the nautical term “list,” for the turning over of a ship on to its side.
LISTA Y ARAGON, ALBERTO (1775–1848), Spanish poet
and educationalist, was born at Seville on the 15th of October
1775. He began teaching at the age of fifteen, and when little
over twenty was made professor of elocution and poetry at
Seville university. In 1813 he was exiled, on political grounds,
but pardoned in 1817. He then returned to Spain and, after
teaching for three years at Bilbao, started a critical review at
Madrid. Shortly afterwards he founded the celebrated college
of San Mateo in that city. The liberal character of the San
Mateo educational system was not favoured by the government,
and in 1823 the college was closed. Lista after some time spent
in Bayonne, Paris and London was recalled to Spain in 1833
to edit the official Madrid Gazette. He was one of the founders
of the Ateneo, the free university of Madrid, and up till 1840
was director of a college at Cadiz. All the leading spirits of the
young generation of Spaniards, statesmen, writers, soldiers and
diplomatists came under his influence. He died at Seville on
the 5th of October 1848.
LISTER, JOSEPH LISTER, 1st Baron (1827– ), English surgeon, was born at Upton, in Essex, on the 5th of April 1827. His father, Joseph Jackson Lister, F.R.S., was eminent in science, especially in optical science, his chief claim to remembrance being that by certain improvements in lenses he raised the compound microscope from the position of a scientific toy, “distorting as much as it magnified,” to its present place as a powerful engine of research. Other members of Lord Lister’s family were eminent in natural science. In his boyhood Joseph Lister was educated at Quaker schools; first at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and afterwards at Tottenham, near London. In 1844 he entered University College, London, as a student in arts, and took his B.A. degree at the University of London in 1847. He continued at University College as a medical student, and became M.B. and F.R.C.S. in 1852. The keen young student was not long in bringing his faculties to bear upon pathology and the practice of medicine. While house-surgeon at University College Hospital, he had charge of certain cases during an outbreak of hospital gangrene, and carefully observed the phenomena of the disease and the effects of treatment upon it. He was thus early led to suspect the parasitic nature of the disorder, and searched with the microscope the material of the spreading sore, in the hope of discovering in it some invading fungus; he soon convinced himself of the cardinal truth that its causes were purely local. He also minutely investigated cases of pyaemia, another terrible scourge of hospitals at that time,
