636 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are listed under these titles being free in the nature of things from any 

 possibility of foreign competition through the import of a product of 

 like kind. 



There may be nothing new in this essay, but until my own ob- 

 servation had led me to the conclusion that land, labor and capital were 

 alike inert and incapable without the coordinating power of mental 

 energy, the doubt continued to exist in my mind which is often ex- 

 pressed about the possibility of economic science having any real exist- 

 ence or right to the title. Also, until my own observation led me to 

 the conclusion that the cost of a man to the community is what he con- 

 sumes, and not what he secures in the way of income, the correlation of 

 wealth and welfare had not been satisfactorily reconciled. I think 

 that a very large part of what is written under the title of political 

 economy would be greatly modified, and perhaps never have been writ- 

 ten, had these concepts been derived by the writers from experience, as 

 they have been in my own observation. 



I have not much patience with abstract or a priori theories, my own 

 method being one of observation, then referring to the various au- 

 thorities in order to find out whether my observations or their abstract 

 theories have been shallow and superficial. 



Again, I find in the ideal of the continuous miracle of creation in 

 which man is a factor the solution of many intellectual difficulties. In 

 the face of such a perception of the methods of the universe, the larger 

 part of the dogmas that have been put forth under the name of religion 

 take their place with much of the historic rubbish which passes under 

 the name of history. When it becomes plain that every man has his 

 place in the progress of continuous creation, and is a factor in it; that 

 nothing is constant but change; that there is no such thing as fixed capi- 

 tal; all the doubts and fears regarding the future of humanity vanish in 

 the light of sure progress. 



What greater stimulus can there be than for every man each in his 

 own way rendering service for service, his objective point being only 

 the welfare of himself and his family, when he attains the conviction 

 that by so much as his mental energy adds to the sum of the utilities by 

 which mankind lives, so may that part which he consumes and which 

 represents his cost to the community be fully justified, even though it 

 is earned with more apparent ease and less physical exertion than are 

 called for from his poorer neighbors. 



Incomplete as his studies were, I have always found in the 'Har- 

 monies' of Frederic Bastiat the greatest encouragement and the greatest 

 incentive to the work which I have undertaken under the name of 

 political economy, leading more and more to the conviction that war 

 and warfare, whatever influence they may have had in developing 

 progress in the past, are now due to ignorance and greed; the war of 



