THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 609 



labor in any community does, in the present organization of society, 

 tend to reduce the general level of wages, so does the importation of 

 cheap goods. This, also — but I must leave you to analyze it for your- 

 selves — springs from a confusion of thought which does not distin- 

 guish between the whole and the parts, between the distribution of 

 wealth and the production of wealth. 



Did time permit, I might go on, showing you by instance after in- 

 stance how transparently fallacious are many current opinions — some, 

 even, more widely held than any of which I have spoken — when tried 

 by the simple tests which it is the province of political economy to 

 apply. But my object is not to lead you to conclusions. All I wish 

 to impress upon' you is the real simplicity of what is generally deemed 

 an abstruse science, and the exceeding ease with which it may be pur- 

 sued. For the study of political economy you need no special knowl- 

 edge, no extensive library, no costly laboratory. You do not even need 

 text-books nor teachers, if you will but think for yourselves. All that 

 you need is care in reducing complex phenomena to their elements, in 

 distinguishing the essential from the accidental, and in applying the 

 simple laws of human action with which you are familiar. Take no- 

 body's opinion for granted ; " try all things : hold fast that Avhich is 

 good." In this way, the opinions of others will help you by their sug- 

 gestions, elucidations, and corrections ; otherwise they will be to you 

 but as words to a parrot. 



If there were nothing more to be urged in favor of the study of 

 political economy than the mental exercise it will give, it would still 

 be worth your profoundest attention. The study which will teach 

 men to think for themselves is the study of all studies most needed. 

 Education is not the learning of facts ; it is the development and 

 training of mental powers. All this array of professors, all this para- 

 phernalia of learning, can not educate a man. They can but help him 

 to educate himself. Here you may obtain the tools ; but they will 

 be useful only to him who can use them. A monkey with a micro- 

 scope, a mule packing a library, are fit emblems of the men — and, un- 

 fortunately, they are plenty — who pass through the whole educational 

 machinery, and come out but learned fools, crammed with knowledge 

 which they can not use — all the more pitiable, all the more contemp- 

 tible, all the more in the way of real progress, because they pass, with 

 themselves and others, as educated men. 



But, while it seems to me that nothing can be more conducive to 

 vigorous mental habits and intellectual self-reliance than the study 

 which trains us to apply the analysis of thought to the every-day 

 affairs of life, and to see in constantly changing phenomena the evi- 

 dence of unchanging law ; which leads us to distinguish the real from 

 the apparent, and to mark, beneath the seething eddies of interest, 

 passion, and prejudice, the great currents of our times — it is not on 

 such incentives that I wish to dwell. There are motives as much 



VOL. XTI. 39 



