DEFINITION OF SOME MODERN SCIENCES. 107 



work 'Six Centuries of Work and Wages' contains several instances 

 of this pernicious use of percentages. So, also, many are constantly 

 using the unscientific conclusions drawn from concomitants — because 

 one thing exists another logically exists contemporaneously. 



These illustrations show the necessity of making statistics, the 

 statistical method, thoroughly scientific in all directions, but this sci- 

 entific conception of statistics does not warrant statisticians in using 

 algebraic formula or in resorting to the calculus to secure results. The 

 results under such methods rarely vary from those secured by the simple 

 common-sense method of statistics; on the other hand, they disturb 

 the reader and the common mind cannot understand them. All sta- 

 tistics should be simple, straightforward and clear, and any confusing 

 element which disturbs this clearness is detrimental to the real purpose 

 cf the statistical method. While there are very many illustrations 

 going to show the misuse of the method, nevertheless all right-minded 

 men understand that, in economic questions especially, the comparative 

 and historical method of study is the correct one, and the concrete, 

 historical and comparative method is best carried on through the sci- 

 entific use of statistics. 



POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



By ROLAND P. FALKNER, 

 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



r I ^HE problem of definitions is a perplexing one, and some of the 

 -"■- most distinguished writers on political economy make no attempt 

 to introduce their treatment by a definition. Marshall, for instance, 

 tells us 'Political economy is a study of man's actions in the ordinary 

 business of life; it inquires how he gets his income and how he uses 

 it.' A definition is, at the best, but a guide-post whose accuracy cannot 

 be tested until the path has been tried. Its principal service is as 

 a preliminary line of demarkation in comparison with other things 

 supposed to be more familiar than the field to be entered upon. One 

 definition which has become commonplace is that political economy is 

 the science of wealth, and if we abstain from any discussion of what 

 constitutes a science and what constitutes wealth, it may be deemed 

 measurably satisfactory. 



After all, the phraseology of a definition is far less important than 

 the matter which follows it, and while economists, in common with the 

 devotees of other studies, have not been lacking in verbal controversies 

 as to the definition of their subject, the subject matter of their dis- 

 cussions, apart from mere questions of emphasis, has been in the main 

 identical. The question of definition resolves itself, therefore, into an 



