ly in Germany, have attached too much importance to putting formal bounds to their special science. Why not rather follow the example of the students of nature who care little whether this or that discovery belongs to physics or chemistry, to astronomy or mathematics, provided, only, very many and important discoveries are made?3

SECTION XXI.

WHAT POLITICAL ECONOMY TREATS OF.

Political Economy treats chiefly of the material interests of nations. It inquires how the various wants of the people of a country, especially those of food, clothing, fuel, shelter, of the sexual instinct etc., may be satisfied; how the satisfaction of these wants influences the aggregate national life, and how in turn, they are influenced by the national life. (Gospel of Matth., 4, 4.) This alone suffices to enable us to estimate the importance of the science. The relation of virtue to wealth is likened by Bacon to that of an army to its baggage. In Xenophon's opinion, wealth is really useful only to him who knows how to make a good use of it. From an economic point of view, the happiest man is he who has accumulated most, honorably, and used it best.1 That, even in a material sense, the intellect of a people is their most important element, is evident from the example of the Chinese, who were so long acquainted with printing, powder, and the mariner's compass, without, by their means, attaining to intelligent public opinion, forming a good army, or coming to an understanding of the art of navigation, to any great extent.

The undervaluing of economic matters, for which ages of inferior cultivation, our own middle ages for instance, are now

3 See also Rau (Ueber die Cameralwissenschaft, Entwickelung ihres Wesens und ihrer Theile, 1825); Baumstark (Cameralistische Enclycopädie, 1835).

1 1 Xenoph. Econom. I, 8 ff. Cyrop. VIII; 2, 23. He saw with equal clearness the moral light and shade of wealth. Econ. XI. 9. Conviv. 4. Memor. I, 6. Cyrop. VIII, 3, 35 ff. Hiero 4.)

2

praised and now blamed, was really a rare exception even during these ages. Other kinds of acquisition and enjoyment then occupied the foreground; but there never was a time, when gain and enjoyment in general were not favorite objects of pursuit, and held in high esteem. The physical wants of uncultured men cry out much louder than intellectual ones. (§ 2, 14.) On the other hand, in over-cultivated ages, when decay begins, an over-estimation of material things is wont to become general. The mere servants of mammon, whether as political economists or as private individuals, may see their depravity faithfully reflected in communism as in a mirror. We should not overlook the fact that it is with whole nations

2 Thomas Aquinas values earthly goods according to the end they are made to serve; when used for a good purpose, they have a mediately true valHence it was an error of the stoics to despise them under all circumstances. (Summa Theol. II, 2. Qu., 50, 3. 58, 2. 59, 3. 125, 4.)

ue.

Whateley considers the savage much beneath the materialist, instead of superior to him. The latter possesses, although he frequently abuses it, the faculty of self-control and forethought, which is entirely wanting in the former. (Lectures, No. 6.) Dunoyer, De la Liberté du Traväil, liv. IV, ch. I, 8, an apology for the moral wholesomeness of civilization, since promotive of military prowess, favorable to the development of the sciences, and even poetical. Baudrillart, Manual d'ŒEkonomie politique, 1857, 24. See Fallati, Ueber die sogennannte materiellen Tendenz der Gegenwart, 1842.

♦ See the inscription on the tomb of Sardanapalus: taut' ïyw, doo' ἔφαγον καί ἐφύβρισα καί μετ' ἔρωτος τέρπν ἔπαθον. (Strabo, XIV, 672.) Isaiah, 122, 13, 56, 12, and the book of wisdom (2) characterizes the view of the fallen Jewish people. In Greece, the Cynic and Epicurean schools were only different phases of the same degeneration. "Thirst, for money, and nothing else, will be the ruin of Sparta!" (Cicero, De Offic., II, 22, 77.) See the magnificent description by Demosthenes, in which he shows the over-estimation of material things to be the principal cause of the decline of Athens, and in which he lays great stress on the fact, that Athens, on its decay, had a larger population, more wealth, ships, and evidences of external power, than in its golden age. (Phil., III, 120 seq.) Also Phil., IV, 144, cautions us against the Manchester criterion of national prosperity. See Plato, De Rep., VIII. In Rome, the principle ommia venalia esse was a chief element in the total decline and fall of the republic. (Sallust, Cat., 10 ff., Jug., 8 ff.) In an age when people think they can do everything with money, the ruin of all things is the last end of mercantile, financial and political speculation. (Condillac, Le Commerce et le Gouverment, 1776, II, 18.)

He

as with the individual man who amasses his own fortune. reaches the culminating point of his wealth generally after he has passed the prime of life. The most flourishing period of a nation's existence is wont just to precede its decay, and to introduce it.5 Hence, here nothing could be more untrue, as Macchiavelli has remarked, than the general opinion that money is the sinew of war.

5 Under Pericles, the Athenian treasury of the state contained at most 9,700 talents. (Thucyd. II, 13.) On the other hand, Alexander the Great had a treasure of 180,000 talents accumulated in the citadel of Ecbatana. (Strabo, XV, 731); Ptolomy II. left after him 740,000 talents. (Appian. præf. 10, Droysen, Geschichte des Hellenismus II, 44 ff.) In Nero's time there was many a freedman's daughter who owned a looking glass worth a greater sum than the senate had appropriated as a dowry to the daughter of the great Scipio. (Seneca, Quæst. Natur. I, 17. Compare Cons. ad Helviam, 12.) McCulloch says that an intelligent despotism can enrich a nation as well as freedom. (In his Discourse on the Rise, etc. of Polit. Econ., 1825, 77 seq.)

Bacon (Sermones, 56) says that youthful states distinguish themselves specially by their warlike instincts; mature states in literature; old and decaying ones in industry and commerce. Davenant very happily remarks, that the development of commerce among a people has an ambiguous value. It, indeed, increases wealth, but, at the same time, it may introduce luxury, covetousness and fraud, destroy virtue, do away with simplicity of manners and.customs, and then it inevitably ends in internal or external slavery. (Works II, 275.) The simplicity of the patriarchal state, however, cannot last always, if for no other reason, because of the emulation of foreign nations. (1, 348, ff.) The impoverishment of even the wealthiest nation is certainly inevitable when its morality declines. It is especially true, that the public economy of a people can be prosperous only where political liberty obtains, and this, independent of the fact that wealth without freedom has no value. (II, 336 ff., 380, ff., 285.) According to Ferguson, private wealth, honestly acquired, used rightly and with moderation, managed with a sense of independence, may be to those who possess it, an element of self-confidence and of liberty, provided they loosen their purse strings not through vanity or for their personal gratification, but for commendable party purposes. But in periods of decay, even a greater amount of wealth is very far from producing these results. (History of Civil Society, VI, 5.) Whately, on the contrary, maintains that only personal wealth-never national wealth-has a disastrous influence on morals. Lectures, No. 2.

CHAPTER III.

THE METHODS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

SECTION XXII.

FORMER METHODS.

The methods' which would apply to any science of national life, principles borrowed from any other science, are now generally looked upon as obsolete. This is true, especially, of the theological method which prevailed, almost exclusively, during the middle ages, and of the juridical method of the seventeenth century.

It would be much more in harmony with the intellectual tendencies of the time, to adopt a mathematical mode of treatment in Political Economy, involving, as such a mode of treatment does, not the matter of the science, but only a formal

"The method of a science is of much greater importance than any individual discovery, however wonderful.” (Cuvier.)

Thus, for instance, G. Biel (ob. 1495), the “last of the schoolmen," gives us his doctrine of Political Economy, in a work on Dogmatic Theology, in the chapter on Penance, his starting point being the inquiry, how the economic damage caused by the sinner may be repaired. Roscher, Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutchland, 1074, I, 23. The Melittotheologia, Arachnotheologia of later times! A recent attempt in this direction has been made by Ad. Müller, Nothwendigkeit einer theologischen Grundage der gesammten Staatswissenschaften und der Staatswirthschaft insbesondere (1819), i. e., “necessity of a theological basis for all political science, and especially for Political Economy." He divides political science into two parts: the science of law, and the science of wisdom, embracing under the latter denomination, politics, Political Economy, etc. Law emanates from God, as supreme judge; the science of wisdom from God, as our Supreme Father.

principle. That which is general in Political Economy has, it must be acknowledged, much that is analogous to the mathematical sciences. Like the latter, it swarms with abstractions. Just as there are, strictly speaking, no mathematical lines or points in nature, and no mathematical lever, there is nowhere such a thing as production or rent, entirely pure and simple. The mathematical laws of motion operate in a hypothetical vacuum, and, where applied, are subjected to important modifications, in consequence of atmospheric resistance. Something similar is true of most of the laws of our science; as, for instance, those in accordance with which the price of commodities is fixed by the buyer and seller. It also, always supposes the parties to the contract to be guided only by a sense of their own best interest, and not to be influenced by secondary considerations. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that many authors have endeavored to clothe the laws of Political Economy in algebraic formula. And, indeed, wherever mag

3 Abstraction is indulged in on a large scale, when a number of elements which are always found combined in life, are here separated and examined apart. It is precisely thus that anatomy proceeds, dissecting each member of the human frame, separating the bones, ligaments and muscles from one another, thus becoming the necessary preparatory school to physiology.

4 Thus, for instance, Canard, Principes d'Economie politique (1801). Also Kröncke, in several of his works, and Count Buquoy, in his Theorie der Nationalwirthschaft (1816), p. 333 ff.; Lang, Grundlinien einer politischen Arithmetik, Charkow, 1811, and more especially v. Thünen, Der isolirte Staat, vol. 1 (1842), vol. II, 1850. See my criticism of his method in Birnbaum's Georgika, 1869, 77 ff. Von Thünen's first volume is an essay towards a geometrical exposition of the science. See also Rau, Lehrbuch 1, § 154, appendix; von Mangoldt, Grundriss der Volkswirthschaftslehre (1862); Cazaux, Elements d'Economie privée et Principes mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses (1838); F. Fuoco, Saggi economici (1827) II, 61 ff. Walras, Eléments d'Econ. politique pure (1874). Jevons has recently endeavored to give Political Economy a mathematical basis by reducing the objects of which it treats to the calculable feelings of pleasure (+) and pain (—). The duration of a feeling is treated as an abscissa, its intensity as the ordinate of a curve, and its quantity as the area. Future feelings are reduced to present ones, by allowing for their distance, and the uncertainty of their occurrence. All this, however, is rather curious than scientifically useful.