44 ECONOMICS 



For such a survey of the natural growth of institutions, history 

 is of obvious importance. It describes the field of investigation; 

 but more than history is needed. One has only to turn the pages 

 of Professor Schmoller's Grundriss to see how widely he has ranged 

 in fields of knowledge that lie beyond the conventional frontier of 

 economic science, as it has usually been cultivated by economists 

 of either the historical or the classical trend. Geography and geology 

 are pressed into service to explain environment, as ethnology and 

 psychology are to explain the human factors. It is the habitual 

 resort to knowledge of this kind, to explain the economic situation, 

 that gives to this latest enterprise of the leader of the historical 

 school its peculiar and striking character. Indeed, this most recent 

 example of Professor Schmoller's method marks so much of an 

 innovation upon the historical method, as it hitherto has been con- 

 ceived, that it is questionable whether it should be called historical 

 economics. What it is called is, however, of secondary interest. 

 The fact that is of moment, and that is to be signalized in following 

 the progress of our science, is that we have here a new type of eco- 

 nomics, a type that attempts, and with appreciable success, to carry 

 into the study of economic institutions something of the spirit and 

 method of the later-day sciences. 



