r ~ CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS OF ECONOMICS 17 



Subjective analysis applied to practical problems. Of what use 

 can the subjective analysis be in the practical aspects of industry 

 represented in this department? In seeking a science of the various 

 arts that make for the fuller life of man, we have to inquire what 

 are the wants that manufactures, transportation, commerce, mone- 

 tary 'agencies, public finance, and insurance seek to gratify? How, 

 when called forth by human desires, do these great institutions react 

 upon the estimates and even upon the nature of men? What aspects 

 of value are presented by each of these industrial agents? What 

 abstract conceptions are needed to make possible a logical classifi- 

 cation of the phenomena in each of these lines of action? The sub- 

 jective analysis is indispensable to the task of bringing order out 

 of the chaos of facts. It gives the selective principles around which 

 a' scientific treatment of these subjects can be made. The logical 

 starting-point of all economic inquiry is human nature and human 

 wants, as it is also the completion of the circle of economic action 

 and of economic science. 



The objective method of study. In the subjective analysis a re- 

 cognition of objective conditions is already implied. Owing to the 

 dual nature of economics, the study of the conceptions held by men 

 regarding goods can proceed but a few steps without turning the 

 eyes now and again at the kinds and qualities of goods. Even the 

 study of the economic categories cannot be carried on by the closet 

 philosopher. A knowledge of the ways in which men contemplate 

 goods can be gained only by a study of men under manifold condi- 

 tions and in manifold relations with goods. 



But there are many objective starting-points for economic study. 

 The animal has in its instincts and memory a store of conscious and 

 unconscious associations of goods with gratifications. The savage 

 from necessity roughly classifies the birds, beasts, soils, and materials 

 of his little world. Individual experience has grown at an ever- 

 increasing rate into a social store of accumulated wisdom. Maxims, 

 precepts, oral traditions, religious scruples, injunctions, faiths, and 

 moral codes embody the economic experience of generations. Frag- 

 mentary writings grow into systematic chronicles, and these into 

 the history of deeds and into the recorded observations and conclu- 

 sions of many minds. The growing delicacy of social organization 

 is making possible, and the scientific spirit is demanding, an exacter 

 study of contemporary occurrences. Larger resources are given to 

 the gathering and printing of statistics and to the establishment of 

 commissions of inquiry. Popular interest is encouraging the mono- 

 graphic study of the minutest details of industry, and the publica- 

 tion of these studies in many magazines. The spirit of economic 

 inquiry among industrial leaders is unlocking to the world untouched 

 treasures of practical experience and of wisdom in industrial affairs. 



