528 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



problems with the whole facts of which they were imperfectly ac- 

 quainted. Given certain conditions of supply and certain conditions of 

 demand, the economist should have no doubt as to the resulting de- 

 termination of value; but he is more than ever alert to make sure that 

 he has all the material factors of the case before him; that he under- 

 stands the facts and their mutual relation before he ventures to pro- 

 nounce an opinion upon any mixed question. He must have the facts 

 before he can analyze them. A small array of syllogisms, which, as 

 Bacon says, "master the assent and not the subject/' are not an ade- 

 quate equipment for him. He sees more and more the need for careful 

 and industrious investigation, and prominent among the subjects which 

 await his trained observation are the condition of the people and the 

 related subject of the consumption of wealth. Training is, indeed, 

 indispensable. Every social question has its purely economic ele- 

 ments for the skilled economist to unravel, and when this part of his 

 task has been achieved, he is at an advantage in approaching the other 

 parts of it, while his habit of mind helps him to know what to look out 

 for and what to expect. 



It is a curious paradox that, busying ourselves as we do with the 

 condition of the people, we are lamentably lacking in precision in our 

 knowledge of the economic life and state of the British people in the 

 present day. Political economy has, however, followed the lines of 

 development of political power. At one time it was, as the Germans 

 say, cameralistic — an affair of the council chamber, a question of the 

 power and resources of the king. Taking a wider but still restricted 

 view of society, it became capitalistic, identifying the economic inter- 

 ests of the community to a too great extent with those of the capitalist 

 class. It has at length become frankly democratic, looking consciously 

 and directly to the prosperity of the people at large. 



Thus, then, we have at once a more accurate theory, a livelier sense 

 of caution as to its limitations in practice, and the widest possible field 

 of study. So far as most of us are concerned, we might as well spend 

 our time in verifying the ready reckoner as in tracing and retracing 

 the lines of pure theory. These tools are made for use. Economic 

 science is likely to make the most satisfactory progress if we watch the 

 social forces that surround us, detecting the operation of economic 

 law in all its manifestations, and in observing, coordinating and record- 

 ing the facts of economic life. It is not enough, to borrow the language 

 of the biologist (part of which he himself borrowed from the old econ- 

 omist), to talk of the struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest 

 and of evolution. We want, above all, his spirit and his method — the 

 careful, minute, systematic observation of life as affected by environ- 

 ment, heredity and habit. Different problems are brought to the front 

 by different circumstances and appeal to different minds; but at all 



