SCIENCE OF FINANCE AND ALLIED SCIENCES 187 



use; while the sociologist has finally succeeded in giving vitality 

 to the conception of organic unity in social relations, from which 

 he concludes that any line of conduct that rests solely upon personal 

 or individual considerations will result disastrously for the individual 

 as well as for the state. But jurisprudence, the oldest as well as the 

 most dignified of all the sciences that deal with human relations, is 

 still confinad within the narrow limits of the purely personal concep- 

 tion of private property. Such at least is the impression one re- 

 ceives when he considers the present condition of the science of 

 finance, for he observes many suggestions for the readjustment of 

 fiscal conditions, and for the development of financial institutions, 

 that must remain unrealized, if not, indeed, unexpressed, until 

 jurisprudence again becomes a living humanistic science. The 

 writings of financiers are replete with condemnations of the general 

 property tax, but that scheme of imposts will continue to exert its 

 baneful influence as long as jurisprudence maintains that equity 

 between individuals demands equal and universal taxation, and 

 this claim will be maintained as long as the institution of private 

 propsrty continues to be defmsd in the language now common in 

 our courts of law. 



Tliis illustration pertains primarily and perhaps exclusively to 

 conditions as they exist in the United States. We need not consider 

 European conditions. What has been said is ample to make clear 

 the relation that exists between the science of finance and the science 

 of jurisprudence. It is a vital relation, not only as limiting and 

 directing the development of fiscal institutions, but in theory also 

 the relation is vital. Even the nomenclature of finance is largely 

 supplied by jurisprudence. 



Relation to Sociology 



It is not, psrhaps, necessary to make a formal statement of the 

 relation of the science of finance to sociology, partly because this 

 latter science is too new and as yet too indefinite to be in possession 

 of a well-defined field of investigation and a compact body of 

 classified information, and partly because the chief service .of socio- 

 logy to the enlargement of human knowledge has been already 

 referred to, namely, the vitalization of the conception of social unity. 

 In a sense the science of finance has always made use of this concep- 

 tion. Considered philosophically, such a conception is inseparable 

 from financial analysis, while on its administrative side, the science 

 of finance is obliged to assume the fundamental unity of human 

 interests. When, however, the financier came to deal with individ- 

 uals, partnerships, and corporations under the industrial and jurid- 

 ical conditions of the last half of the nineteenth century, he seems 



