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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



extreme, and much that passed for brill- 

 iant philosophizing fifty or even thirty 

 years ago is now regarded as little better 

 than obsolete sophistry. Two of the 

 latest works that have fallen into our 

 hands Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe's 

 " Individualism ; a System of Politics," 

 and Prof. Thorold Rogers's " Economic 

 Interpretation of History " illustrate 

 this very strongly. "Practical men," 

 says the former, "have long since ceased 

 to attach any importance to the slipshod 

 twaddle of those who pose as the the- 

 orists of the art of wealth-producing." 

 The latter, referring, as it would seem, 

 particularly to Mill, says : " The politi- 

 cal economist of the later school has 

 thoroughly carried out in his own per- 

 son the economical law which he sees 

 to be at the bottom of all industrial 

 progress that of obtaining the largest 

 possible result at the least possible cost 

 of labor. He has, therefore, rarely been 

 at the trouble of verifying his conclu- 

 sions by the evidence of facts. He has, 

 therefore, constantly exalted into the 

 domain of natural law what is, after 

 all, and at the best, a very dubious tend- 

 ency, and may be a perfectly baseless 

 hypothesis. His conclusions have been 

 rejected by workmen and flouted by 

 statesmen." 



We quote these passages not as fully 

 indorsing them, but simply as showing 

 to what extent the authority of a school 

 that once was dominant is to-day called 

 in question, if not discredited. At the 

 same time, we fully believe that, before 

 political economy can be a science in 

 any satisfactory sense of the term, it 

 has to be reconstructed and rewritten 

 in the light of careful inductions from 

 vast collections of facts. The basis of 

 the "orthodox" economy was too nar- 

 row, while its method was too deductive 

 and dogmatic. Mr. Mill was a man of 

 a mind at once acute and candid ; but 

 he had not received the education that 

 fitted him for the vast task which he 

 assumed of reviewing the whole field of 

 economics and enlarging its boundaries. 



In his youth he was overdrilled by a 

 stern and remorselessly logical father. 

 His attention was largely turned to 

 classical, historical, and mathematical 

 studies. In the region of natural sci- 

 ence he never acquired any real com- 

 petency. His tendency was, therefore, 

 rather to read theories into facts than 

 to make facts point the way to theories. 

 His mind was extremely hospitable to 

 new ideas, and his sympathies were 

 quick and warm; upon the whole, few 

 truer or better men have ever lived; 

 but he had only a kind of literary ac- 

 quaintance with economic facts, and it 

 is not surprising that much of the rea- 

 soning in which he indulged is now seen 

 to have been concerned rather with 

 fanciful abstractions than with real 

 things. 



The political economy of the future 

 will be of comparatively slow growth, 

 but it will deal with men as creatures 

 of flesh and blood ; not as automata 

 moved by a few ticketed wires. The 

 materials for the rising science are being 

 laboriously gathered by many earnest 

 investigators, who are fully alive to the 

 errors of their predecessors, and who 

 mean, therefore, to let the facts as much 

 as possible speak for themselves. To 

 the new political economy many inde- 

 pendent lines of inquiry will contribute. 

 The biologist, the moralist, the states- 

 man, the lawyer, will all bring their 

 stores of carefully assorted data; and, 

 when these have been further arranged 

 and correlated by minds of competent 

 scope and grasp, we shall begin to see 

 the outlines of a much more compre- 

 hensive theory of economics than any 

 that has heretofore been given to the 

 world. In a word, science will under- 

 take to organize a region that in the past 

 has been too much given over to a pri- 

 ori speculation, with its natural accom- 

 paniment of presumptuous dogmatism. 

 In future our concern will be not with 

 the opinions of individual writers, but 

 with their demonstrations; mere hy- 

 potheses will carry no more weight in 



