PHYSICAL METHOD. 493 



in which the immediately determining causes are principally 

 those which act through the desire of wealth ; and in which 

 the psychological law mainly concerned is the familiar one, 

 that a greater gain is preferred to a smaller. I mean, of 

 course, that portion of the phenomena of society which 

 emanate from the industrial, or productive, operations of man 

 kind ; and from those of their acts through which the distri 

 bution of the products of those industrial operations takes 

 place, in so far as not effected by force, or modified by volun 

 tary gift. By reasoning from that one law of human nature, 

 and from the principal outward circumstances (whether uni 

 versal or confined to particular states of society) which operate 

 upon the human mind through that law, we may be enabled to 

 explain and predict this portion of the phenomena of society, 

 so far as they depend on that class of circumstances only ; 

 overlooking the influence of any other of the circumstances of 

 society ; and therefore neither tracing back the circumstances 

 which we do take into account, to their possible origin in 

 some other facts in the social state, nor making allowance for 

 the manner in which any of those other circumstances may 

 interfere with, and counteract or modify, the effect of the 

 former. A science may thus be constructed, which has 

 received the name of Political Economy. 



The motive which suggests the separation of this portion 

 of the social phenomena from the rest, and the creation of a 

 distinct science relating to them is, that they do mainly 

 depend, at least in the first resort, on one class of circum 

 stances only ; and that even when other circumstances inter 

 fere, the ascertainment of the effect due to the one class of 

 circumstances alone, is a sufficiently intricate and difficult 

 business to make it expedient to perform it once for all, and 

 then allow for the effect of the modifying circumstances ; espe 

 cially as certain fixed combinations of the former are apt to 

 recur often, in conjunction with ever-varying circumstances of 

 the latter class. 



Political Economy, as I have said on another occasion, 

 concerns itself only with &quot; such of the phenomena of the social 

 state as take place in consequence of the pursuit of wealth. 



