60 ECONOMIC THEORY 



them, and after them, the majority of English writers of the earlier 

 school. 



The tranquil acquiescence into which economic thought had thus 

 fallen in the late thirties with respect to accepted dicta of the province 

 and subject-matter of the science, was rudely shaken in the course 

 of the next generation by three distinct influences, about which 

 center the sustained and often acrimonious discussions of the proper 

 scope and method of economic science that constitute a distin- 

 guishing feature of the second half of the modern history of economic 

 thought. 



From France came the message of the unity of social phenomena 

 and the concept of a master science of sociology. From Germany 

 came protest against the doctrines of economic universalism and per- 

 petualism, and insistence upon the principle of historical relativity. 

 From England came the gospel of economic development and the 

 evolution of industrial organization. Comte, Roscher, and Spencer, 

 with their prototypes Hegel, Savigny, and Darwin, represent the 

 great forces that, in succession, first shook the structure of economic 

 science to its very base, and then inspired its extension and forti- 

 fication. 



We are still too near the scene of conflict to require any review of 

 its events. As so often in the history of science and, preeminently, 

 in the history of economic science, that which had come to overthrow, 

 remained to influence and to be influenced. The principles of indus- 

 trial evolution, of economic relativity, and of social interdependence 

 entered into the very heart and essence of economic study and left 

 their mark in a changed and bettered condition. If the din of doc- 

 trinal battle no longer resounds, it is not because of abandonment or 

 surrender, but because a sane and honorable modus has been arranged. 



In but one corner of the field does the struggle yet continue. 

 A handful of doughty spirits are still bravely hammering one another 

 in theoretical determination of the precise bounds of economic sci- 

 ence. Yesterday it was as to the interrelation of economics and 

 ethics; the day before of economics and mathematics or statistics; 

 to-day it is the respective provinces of economics and sociology on 

 the one hand, and of economics and history on the other. 



To this sustained dialectic I shall venture no further contribution. 

 Whatever advantages, in the nature of precision of thought and 

 economy of effort, attend the solemn partition of an undiscovered 

 country must long since have been attained. Further debate 

 suggests the waste of scholastic controversy, barren in result and 

 mischievous in the suspension of positive investigation, in the blunt- 

 ing of mental acumen and in the diminution of public respect. 



A far more promising service than the text-book demarkation of the 

 kingdom of knowledge seems to lie in a comparative survey of what, 



