4 THE STUDY OF ECONOMICS 



maintenance and evolution of a society. And if we 

 overlook this, our economics will become a play of 

 logic or a manual for the market, rather than a contri- 

 bution to social science ; whilst wearing an air of 

 completeness, they will be in truth one-sided and 

 superficial. Economic science is something far larger 

 than the Catallactics [science of money, banking] to 

 which some have wished to reduce it. A special 

 merit of the physiocrats [who flourished about 1770] 

 seems to have lain in their vague perception of the close 

 relation of their study to that of external nature ; and, 

 so far, we must recur to their point of view, basing our 

 economics on physics and biology as developed in our 

 own time. . . . We must bend ourselves to a serious direct 

 study of the way in which society has actually addressed 

 itself and now addresses itself to its oivn conservation and 

 evolution through the supply of its material wants. What 

 organs it has developed for this purpose, how they 

 operate, how they are affected by the medium in which 

 they act and by the coexistent organs directed to other 

 ends, how in their turn they react on those latter, how 

 they and their functions are progressively modified 

 in process of time — these problems, whether statical 

 or dynamical, are all questions of fact, as capable of 

 being studied through observation and history as the 

 nature and progress of human language or religion or 

 any other group of social phenomena. Such study 

 will of course require a continued " reflective analysis " 

 of the results of observation ; and, whilst eliminating 

 all premature assumptions, we shall use ascertained 

 truths respecting human nature as guides in the inquiry 

 and aids towards the interpretation of facts. And 

 the employment of deliberately instituted hypotheses 

 will be legitimate, but only as an occasional logical 

 artifice.'- — John KcUs Ingram's ' History of PoUtical 

 Economy,' 2nd edition, pp. 240-242. 



