724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



really goes to get the experience of the best observers of all countries 

 with which to correct himself against false and narrow inferences 

 drawn from his own limited experience. 



In order to show how far this analysis is based on experience, 

 some appeal to the history of the work of the most ■successful econo- 

 mists will give results of an interesting and instructive kind. Adam 

 Smith, Ricardo, Mill, and Cairnes combined in a high degree the two 

 almost opposite kinds of powers needed for their success ; and these 

 men have contributed the most to the progress of our knowledge of 

 economic principles. It would be hard to name an author who has 

 wielded a greater influence by his writings than Adam Smith by his 

 "Wealth of Nations" (1776). His work was a great and admitted 

 success, as tried by any tests, whether of popularity or permanent in- 

 fluence on men's minds. But on his tombstone will be found inscribed 

 the name of an extensive ethical work (" The Theory of Moral Senti- 

 ments ") as an equal claim to distinction with the " Wealth of Na- 

 tions." What is worth noting is that the great writer was a Professor 

 of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, and had planned an extensive course 

 of lectures in which political economy formed but one part ; and we 

 find that by training, by aptitude, by study, he was a skillful master of 

 logic ; he had the power to separate the temporary and unimportant 

 from facts, and educe an abstraction of the truth unweighted by the 

 accidents of the form in which he found it ; and knew how to secure 

 a firm grasp upon principles apart from their illustrations, which gave 

 him later a scientific and systematic control over his subject, and 

 enabled him to weld it into a compact and cohering whole. It was 

 this power which made it possible for him to lay the foundations of a 

 science of political economy. It widened his views, and made it easy 

 for him to see the essentials of any concrete phenomena. In short, he 

 possessed in a remarkable degree the first of the two requisites for suc- 

 cessful economic work. But, then, to an almost equal extent, he hon- 

 estly reverenced industrial and commercial facts ; he studied them 

 eagerly, and made his book an extensive collection of data on many 

 special subjects. Everywhere one meets with the analysis and study 

 of particular industrial phenomena ; and in them the keen, observing 

 Scotchman, with a subtile, economic instinct, saw the operation of 

 laws where the ordinary man of affairs saw only a crowd of familiar 

 and monotonous details of business. The practical nature of his work 

 is so well known that it seems unnecessary to call further attention to 

 this side of his make-up. So well is this understood, that the late 

 Cliffe-Leslie claimed for Adam Smith that his method of working was 

 solely inductive, that is, starting from facts alone. It was, therefore, 

 without question, his philosophic and logical faculty, united with a true 

 and correct instinct for facts and the laws working in them, which lay 

 at the bottom of Adam Smith's world-wide success in his " Wealth of 

 Nations." He had the power to see the universal in the concrete ; to 



