UTILITARIAN SCIENCE. 91 



economic principles the social and political charlatan finds his choice 

 field of operation, just as the medical charlatan deals with some uni- 

 versal law of disease and its universal cure. The progress of science 

 in every field discredits these universal principles with their mystical 

 panaceas. There is all the more reason why in politics, as in medicine, 

 those generalizations which deal with necessary laws or actually ob- 

 served sequence of events should be critically and constructively 

 studied. 



In general, however, the progress of economics has followed the 

 same lines as progress in other sciences, through a ' minute investi- 

 gation and the application of principles already discovered or outlined 

 by painstaking inquiry as to facts.' This method of work has been 

 especially fruitful in the study of monetary problems, of finance, taxa- 

 tion and insurance, in the study of labor problems and conditions, in 

 the study of commerce and in the study of crime and pauperism. In 

 its development economics is, however, many years behind the natural 

 sciences, a condition due to reliance on metaphysical methods and to 

 the inherent difficulty in the use of any other. 



" Economics," says a correspondent, " has been less successful than 

 the material sciences in getting rid of the apparatus of metaphysical 

 presumptions. The economist is still too eager to formulate laws that 

 shall disclose the ultimate spiritual meaning of things instead of try- 

 ing to explain how these things came to pass. He has profited in 

 small degree by those lessons which the progressive evolutionary sci- 

 ences have driven home in the past, in the methods of thinking of 

 workers in other fields. Our science is still sadly behind the times 

 in its way of handling its subject matter. The greatest and most im- 

 portant work of economic investigations is to make students see things 

 as they are, to fit young men for the more highly organized business 

 new conditions are ushering in, and give a better appreciation of the 

 problems of government and a better training for participation in 

 them." 



Says another correspondent : " Training in research is in fact 

 essential to every technical man. The young technologist will be con- 

 fronted by new problems not covered by anything in literature or in 

 his past experience. Training in research is training in the art of 

 solving unsolved problems, and the practical man who has had disci- 

 pline of that kind has a great advantage over his more conventional 

 competitors. The Germans recognize this principle, and behold their 

 marvelous industrial growth. The student in every department of 

 science should be taught to think as well as to do." 



The time must come when a man who has no training and no ex- 

 perience in research will not be called educated, whatever may be the 

 range of his erudition. To unfold the secret of power is the true pur- 

 pose of education. 



