22 ECONOMICS 



such master-works as Marshall's Principles and Schmoller's Grund- 

 riss, to appreciate how considerable the divergence of aims and 

 methods still is. Economic science is still a thing of schools, each 

 contemplating the results of its own work with much understanding 

 and satisfaction, but taking little regard of the others. It was only 

 the other day that a brilliant and dispassionate critic of the present 

 position of economics lamented the persistence of w r hat he called an 

 "archaic habit of thought" 1 in the methods of the economists 

 working under the guidance of the classical tradition. And but a 

 short time before this, Professor Nicholson 2 had characterized the 

 work of the historical school as "impressionism." This evidence 

 and much more of similar effect might be quoted to show that 

 economists are still far from being of one mind, and the reviewer who 

 looks to find in the present state of economics a definite objective 

 standard by which to estimate the work of the past, will find little 

 guidance. We must, therefore, look elsewhere. 



The place assigned to economics in the programme of the Congress 

 might seem to suggest a way of handling the matter. Economics 

 is grouped here with the "utilitarian sciences," -with engineering, 

 medicine, and agriculture. Though it is true that economics, like 

 most of the sciences, began as a utilitarian science, its theoretical 

 formulations being directed by a keen practical interest, and though 

 it is true that the science derives its chief interest from the light it 

 may throw upon the great questions of economic organization and 

 control, and though it is also true that men of high repute claim that 

 the science "is wholly practical" and "has no raison d'etre except 

 as directing conduct towards a given end," 3 and though others, less 

 frank in their avowal have yet cultivated the science with homiletical 

 intent, yet I believe at this present day it would be a gratuitous 

 innovation to undertake to estimate the progress of economics as a 

 utilitarian science. The trend towards a scientific treatment of its 

 subject-matter as distinct from its application has been one of the 

 ,most marked symptoms of its growth. This is, in a sense, the 

 progress of the science. Few economists would go the length that 

 Cairnes did, a generation ago, but an increasing number would insist 

 upon the observance of a sharp distinction between economics as 

 science and political economy as art. Indeed, the vogue the term 

 economics is coming to enjoy, as against the older term political 



1 Dr. Thorstein Veblen, in an article entitled Why is Economics not an Evo- 

 lutionary Science, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xn, p. 379. See 

 also the remarkable series of articles on. The Preconceptions of Economic Science 

 by the same writer in the same journal, vols. xm and xiv. Much help has 

 been derived from these articles in the preparation of this address. 



2 In his presidential address on The Reaction in Favor of Classical Political 

 Economy, given before the economic section of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, 1893. 



3 Dr. William Cunningham in his Politics and Economics, 1885, p. 12. 



