42 ECONOMICS 



actually are/' " free ... of all a priori theories." 1 The frankly 

 avowed preoccupation of many members of the school with learn- 

 ing the " significance and appropriateness " of things discredits 

 their theoretical work no less decisively than it does that of the 

 Manchester school which they set out to supplant. The doctrines of 

 the one are as unmistakably of metaphysical derivation as those 

 of the other. But since historical induction seems a less competent 

 contrivance than abstract deduction for turning a metaphysical 

 postulate to rapid account in the formulation of theory, the theoret- 

 ical output of the historical school has been notably small. Indeed, 

 many of the school appear to have given up the profession of theory, 

 being content to use as their working principles, when the occasion 

 arises, the body of doctrines worked out by the later economists of 

 the classical trend. It was such a change of heart, no doubt, that 

 made it possible for Professor Wagner, 2 some years ago, to express 

 such ready acquiescence in the work of Professor Marshall. It 

 would appear, from this and many other symptoms, that the large 

 group of historical economists for whom Wagner speaks has aban- 

 doned the field of theory and taken to other work. 



When, however, we turn to the branch of the historical school of 

 which Professor Schmoller may be taken as the representative, we 

 meet a different situation. There is much in the later activity of this 

 branch that is of promise for the future of economic theory, and 

 much that sets it apart from its own past as well as from the con- 

 ventional line of the historical trend. Taking, at the outset, a posi- 

 tion so radical that it drew from his colleagues the characterization 

 of " extreme Historismus," Professor Schmoller yet stands to-day 

 as one of the foremost workers in the field of theoretical con- 

 struction. Whether or not such an outcome was to have been ex- 

 pected as a result of the interest that has hitherto engaged the activ- 

 ity of Professor Schmoller and his school may be doubted. It is 

 well known that Professor Schmoller began his career by discour- 

 aging all attempts at theory as premature and ill-advised until an 

 extensive equipment of historical, statistical, and other material 

 should have been provided; and his utterances on different occasions 

 left no doubt that this preliminary work would need to be done with 

 such exhaustiveness as to absorb the energy of at least one genera- 

 tion. An eventual formulation of results was avowed to be the end 

 in view; but the long-continued and painstaking devotion to history, 

 and the easy avoidance of theory, gave much ground for the belief 

 that history rather than theory would always be their characteristic 



1 So Professor Ashley in the preface to his English Economic History. Cf. 

 also the same author's inaugural lecture on the Study of Economic History 

 printed in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. vn, especially p. 136. 



2 In a review of Marshall's Principles of Economics published in the Quarterly 

 Journal of Economics, vol. v, p. 319. 



