ECONOMIC HISTORY AND KINDRED SCIENCES 203 



which would never otherwise be disclosed. Especially for the be- 

 ginner are such special historical studies an unsurpassed means for 

 obtaining a good historical training, for acquiring exact methods and 

 a more acute perception of combinations, etc., while, and this is a 

 weighty consideration, they permit the task to be proportioned to the 

 capacity. Building stones may thus be obtained, which of course 

 must be hewn into shape and in large numbers if an edifice is to be 

 erected. But the important point is that the historical method 

 be applied to determine the continuity of development, and in his 

 initial investigations the student must confine himself to those 

 particular branches or institutions of economic life which may be 

 mastered by the beginner. With reference to the value of detailed 

 investigation, I would mention Tooke and Newmarch's 1 valuable 

 History of Prices. They have given us entirely new ideas, not only 

 as to the conditions of earlier times but still more as to the nature 

 and significance of single economic measures. Thorold Rogers's 2 

 historical studies of agriculture, commerce, industry, and prices 

 in England, and Levasseur's 3 on the laboring classes in France, also 

 belong here. 



It was only by a comparison of guild institutions in their different 

 stages of development that a correct understanding was obtained 

 of the essential nature of the guild system. A closer study of the 

 condition of roads at different periods affords us an explanation 

 of the peculiarities of trade, of different branches of industry, and of 

 domestic life at different epochs. Truly amazing is the bee-like indus- 

 try with which hundreds of investigators in Germany now continually 

 engage in such detailed studies, concerning which Lamprecht, 4 for 

 instance, during the eighties gave in my Jahrbiicher very interesting 

 reviews. 



The chief task, however, will naturally be to construct a well- 

 balanced whole from these single contributions, not merely to give 

 a survey of the economic activity of mankind at different periods 

 but to present this in its historical development. As universal 

 history tends to develop from national history, the history of civil- 

 ization from political history, there must in like manner gradually 

 emerge an all-embracing economic history of different countries and 

 finally the economic history of mankind; thus for a certain country 



1 A History of Prices, etc., from 1793 to 1856. 6 vols. London, 1838-57. 



3 J. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England from 1257- 

 1793. 7 vols. Oxford, 1866-1902. 



J. Thorold Ropers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages. London, 1884. 



J. Thorold Rogers, The Industrial and Commercial History of England. London, 

 1892. 



3 Emil Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrieres en France depuis la conqucte de 

 Jules Cesar jusqu'd la Revolution (1859 2 vols.), and depuis 1789 jusqu'u nos jours. 

 Paris, 1867. 



4 Jahrb. f. Nationaldkonomie,1882, 1883,1884. Die urirtschaftlichen Studien in 

 Deutschland. 



