202 HISTORY OF ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 



More recently in Germany, two men have devoted themselves to the 

 causes of economic history and have succeeded in gaining recognition 

 of its very great importance. I refer to Gustav Schmoller and Karl 

 Lamprecht. Both of them have been characterized by the one- 

 sidedness which is essential for pioneer work, but each has sought 

 to connect his science with economic history and to make it the 

 foundation of a new edifice, Schmoller for political economy, Lamp- 

 recht for history. Little as I can give my full adherence to either 

 of these investigators, I am nevertheless bound to acknowledge 

 their great service in this direction and to express the gratitude we 

 owe them for their work in economic history. But before we examine 

 their opinions more closety we must recall to mind the problem and 

 the inner nature of our science. 



Economic history must from its nature not only investigate and 

 describe the actual processes of economic life in different periods, 

 but must especially follow their development with a view to explain- 

 ing causal relations. 



Just as history itself started out with the special investigation 

 and description of a country at some definite period of the past, so is 

 it also the task of economic history to give historical cross-sections 

 either of the economic life of a country or a region or of a branch 

 of production. Examples have been given us by Schmoller in his 

 Strassburg Weaver's Guild, by Schonberg in his Financial History of 

 Bale in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (1879), and by Biicher 

 in his Population of Frankfort on the Main during the Fourteenth and 

 Fifteenth Centuries (1886). Here belong also such works as Troel- 

 Lund's * Danish and Norwegian History of the Sixteenth Century, and 

 Klemm's 2 History of Civilization, the former containing a detailed 

 investigation of housing conditions, etc., the latter a description 

 of utensils and ornaments of all kinds from the first beginnings of 

 civilization. This minute investigation has often been contempt- 

 uously regarded as useless trifling, and undoubtedly a love of minutiae 

 can be carried too far and thus injure the scientific character of a 

 work. It is certain, however, that such detailed research is indis- 

 pensable, and we should rejoice when investigators devote them- 

 selves to so tedious and ungrateful a task. Often the inner connec- 

 tion of various cooperating factors can be discerned only within 

 a small field, and only by penetrating and minute investigation is it 

 possible to discover those new and important factors which a merely 

 general survey would fail to reveal. Just as the microscopist dis- 

 covers injurious bacilli and thus the explanation of many diseases, 

 so a similar close examination shows processes in economic life 



1 Troel-Lund, Danmark og Norges Historie i Slutningen af det 16 Aarhun drede 

 10 vols. Copenhagen, 1887. 



2 Klemm's -Kulturgeschichte, 1843-52. 



