CONCLUSION
Let us briefly consider in conclusion,by the light of the preceding historical survey,what appear to be the steps in thedirection of a renovation of economic science which are now at once practicable and urgent.
I.Economic investigation has hitherto fallen for the most part into the hands of lawyers and men of letters,not into those ofa genuinely scientific class.Nor have its cultivators in general had that sound preparation in the sciences of inorganic andvital nature which is necessary whether as supplying bases of doctrine or as furnishing lessons of method.Their educationhas usually been of a metaphysical kind Hence political economy has retained much of the form and spirit which belonged toit in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,instead of advancing with the times,and assuming a truly positive character.Itis homogeneous with the school logic,with the abstract unhistorical jurisprudence,with the a priori ethics and politics,andother similar antiquated systems of thought;and it will be found that those who insist most strongly on the maintenance ofits traditional character have derived their habitual mental pabulum from those regions of obsolete speculation.We can thusunderstand the attitude of true men of science towards this branch of study,which they regard with ill-disguised contempt,and to whose professors they either refuse or very reluctantly concede a place in their brotherhood.
The radical vice of this unscientific character of political economy seems to lie in the too individual and subjective aspectunder which it has been treated.Wealth having been conceived as what satisfies desires,the definitely determinable qualitiespossessed by some objects of supplying physical energy,and improving the physiological constitution,are left out ofaccount.Everything is gauged by the standard of subjective notions and desires.All desires are viewed as equally legitimate,and all that satisfies our desires as equally wealth.Value being regarded as the result of a purely mental appreciation,thesocial value of things in the sense of their objective utility,which is often scientifically measurable,is passed over,and ratioof exchange is exclusively considered.The truth is,that at the bottom of all economic investigation must lie the idea of thedestination of wealth for the maintenance and evolution of a society.And,if we overlook this,our economics will become aplay of logic or a manual for the market,rather than a contribution to social science;whilst wearing an air of completeness,they will be in truth one-sided and superficial.Economic science is something far larger than the Catallactics to which somehave wished to reduce it A special merit of the physiocrats seems to have lain in their vague perception of the close relationof their study to that of external nature;and,so far,we must recur to their point of view,basing our economics on physicsand biology as developed in our own time.(1)Further,the science must be cleared of all the theologico-metaphysical elementsor tendencies which still encumber and deform it.Teleology and optimism on the one hand,and the jargon of "naturalliberty"and "indefeasible rights"on the other,must be finally abandoned.
Nor can we assume as universal premises,from which economic truths can be deductively derived,the convenient formulaswhich have been habitually employed,such as hat all men desire wealth and dislike exertion.These vague propositions,which profess to anticipate and supersede social experience,and which necessarily introduce the absolute where relativityshould reign,must be laid aside.The laws of wealth (to reverse a phrase of Buckle's)must be inferred from the facts ofwealth,not from the postulate of human selfishness.We must bend ourselves to a serious lirect study of the way in whichsociety has actually addressed itself and now addresses itself to its own conservation and evolution through the supply of itsmaterial wants.What organs it has developed for this purpose,how they operate,how they are affected by the medium inwhich they act and by the coexistent organs directed to other ends how in their turn they react on those latter,how they andtheir functions are progressively modified in process of tine these problems,whether sta tical or dynamical,are all questionsof fact,as capable of being studied through observation and history as the nature and progress of human language orreligion,or any other group of social phenomena.Such study will of course require a continued "reflective analysis "of theresults of observation;and,whilst eliminating all premature assumptions,we shall use ascertainec truths respecting humannature as guides in the inquiry and aids towards the interpretation of facts.And the employment of deliberately institutedhypotheses will be legitimate,but only as an occasional logical artifice.
