The description of how money evolved by Doug Mackenzie is quite old and
straight out of Aristotle's Politics. Monchretien in fact (1615) chastised
Plato and Aristotle for believing that things could be organized without
planning.  But is this Hayekian spontaneous order? Joan Robinson once
remarked that Radford's article on the POW camp described the perfect
Walrasian economy. (Red Cross endowments, cigarette numeraire, etc.)

My personal favourite on "spontaneous order" is An Essay on the History of
Civil Society by Adam Ferguson 1767 [Part Third Of the History of Policy
and Arts, Section II The History of Subordination], but Hayekians don't
like him very much (see e.g., the Bibliographical Essay on Spontaneous
Order by Norman Barry in OLL).

And certainly A.C. Waterman is dead right on JS Mill. I copy - paste JS
Mill text from OLL.




The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume VIII - A System of Logic
Ratiocinative and Inductive Part II > CHAPTER X: Of the Inverse Deductive,
or Historical Method > paragraph 590

In the difficult process of observation and comparison which is here
required, it would evidently be ac great assistance if it should happen to
be the fact, that some one element in the complex existence of social man
is preeminent over all others as the prime agent of the social movement.
For we could then take the progress of that one element as the central
chain, to each successive link of which, the corresponding links of all
the other progressions being appended, the succession of the facts would
by this alone be presented in a kind of spontaneous order, far more nearly
approaching to the real order of their filiation than could be obtained by
any other merely empirical process.



The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X - Essays on Ethics,
Religion, and Society (Utilitarianism) > Nature > paragraph 988

Let us then consider whether we can attach any meaning to the supposed
practical maxim of following Nature, in this second sense of the word, in
which Nature stands for that which takes place without human intervention.
In Nature as thus understood, is the spontaneous course of things when
left to themselves, the rule to be followed in endeavouring to adapt
things to our use? But it is evident at once that the maxim, taken in this
sense, is not merely, as it is in the other sense, superfluous and
unmeaning, but palpably absurd and self-contradictory. For while human
action cannot help conforming to Nature in the one meaning of the term,
the very aim and object of action is to alter and improve Nature in the
other meaning. If the natural course of things were perfectly right and
satisfactory, to act at all would be a gratuitous meddling, which as it
could not make things better, must make them worse. Or if action at all
could be justified, it would only be when in direct obedience to
instincts, since these might perhaps be accounted part of the spontaneous
order of Nature; but to do anything with forethought and purpose, would be
a violation of that perfect order. If the artificial is not better than
the natural, to what end are all the arts of life? To dig, to plough, to
build, to wear clothes, are direct infringements of the injunction to
follow nature.

and further down:

The consciousness that whatever man does to improve his condition is in so
much a censure and a thwarting of the spontaneous order of Nature, has in
all ages caused new and unprecedented attempts at improvement to be
generally at first under a shade of religious suspicion; as being in any
case uncomplimentary, and very probably offensive to the powerful beings
(or, when polytheism gave place to monotheism, to the all-powerful Being)
supposed to govern the various phenomena of the universe, and of whose
will the course of nature was conceived to be the expression. Any attempt
to mould natural phenomena to the convenience of mankind might easily
appear an interference with the government of those superior beings: and
though life could not have been maintained, much less made pleasant,
without perpetual interferences of the kind, each new one was doubtless
made with fear and trembling, until experience had shown that it could be
ventured on without drawing down the vengeance of the Gods. The sagacity
of priests showed them a way to reconcile the impunity of particular
infringements with the maintenance of the general dread of encroaching on
the divine administration. This was effected by representing each of the
principal human inventions as the gift and favour of some God. The old
religions also afforded many resources for consulting the Gods, and
obtaining their express permission for what would otherwise have appeared
a breach of their prerogative. When oracles had ceased, any religion which
recognized a revelation afforded expedients for the same purpose. The
Catholic religion had the resource of an infallible Church, authorized to
declare what exertions of human spontaneity were permitted or forbidden;
and in default of this, the case was always open to argument from the
Bible whether any particular practice had expressly or by implication been
sanctioned. The notion remained that this liberty to control Nature was
conceded to man only by special indulgence, and as far as required by his
necessities; and there was always a tendency, though a diminishing one, to
regard any attempt to exercise power over nature, beyond a certain degree,
and a certain admitted range, as an impious effort to usurp divine power,
and dare more than was permitted to man. The lines of Horace in which the
familiar arts of shipbuilding and navigation are reprobated as vetitum
nefas,[*] indicate even in that sceptical age a still unexhausted vein of
the old sentiment. The intensity of the corresponding feeling in the
middle ages is not a precise parallel, on account of the superstition
about dealing with evil spirits with which it was complicated: but the
imputation of prying into the secrets of the Almighty long remained a
powerful weapon of attack against unpopular inquirers into nature; and the
charge of presumptuously attempting to defeat the designs of Providence,
still retains enough of its original force to be thrown in as a
make-weight along with other objections when there is a desire to find
fault with any new exertion of human forethought and contrivance. No one,
indeed, asserts it to be the intention of the Creator that the spontaneous
order of the creation should not be altered, or even that it should not be
altered in any new way. But there still exists a vague notion that though
it is very proper to control this or the other natural phenomenon, the
general scheme of nature is a model for us to imitate: that with more or
less liberty in details, we should on the whole be guided by the spirit
and general conception of nature's own ways: that they are God's work, and
as such perfect; that man cannot rival their unapproachable excellence,
and can best show his skill and piety by attempting, in however imperfect
a way, to reproduce their likeness; and that if not the whole, yet some
particular parts of the spontaneous order of nature, selected according to
the speaker's predilections, are in a peculiar sense, manifestations of
the Creator's will; a sort of finger posts pointing out the direction
which things in general, and therefore our voluntary actions, are intended
to take. Feelings of this sort, though repressed on ordinary occasions by
the contrary current of life, are ready to break out whenever custom is
silent, and the native promptings of the mind have nothing opposed to them
but reason: and appeals are continually made to them by rhetoricians, with
the effect, if not of convincing opponents, at least of making those who
already hold the opinion which the rhetorician desires to recommend,
better satisfied with it. For in the present day it probably seldom
happens that any one is persuaded to approve any course of action because
it appears to him to bear an analogy to the divine government of the
world, though the argument tells on him with great force, and is felt by
him to be a great support, in behalf of anything which he is already
inclined to approve.


Nicholas Theocarakis