206 HISTORY OF ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 



and activities assumes, therefore, up to a certain point an inde- 

 pendent character, though never without regard to the organization 

 and action of the state, which, however, falls into a secondary posi- 

 tion. A division of labor must be perfected in which economic 

 history takes its place beside political history as a helpful companion. 

 They are destined to walk arm in arm along the scientific highway, 

 not, as occasionally seems to be the case, to tear one another's hair 

 in rivalry. 1 



I hope now to have sufficiently indicated the high value of eco- 

 nomic history for universal history. It appears still more necessary 

 to define the limits of its usefulness and therefore of its importance. 

 Since the epoch-making appearance of Darwin, his doctrine of 

 evolution has been passed on from the natural to the mental sciences, 

 above all to history, and in the theory of evolution the mechanical 

 development not only of races but of nations and states, indeed of 

 all civilization, has been assumed and the attempt made to explain 

 it. According to this theory, natural conditions, influencing the 

 social and economic life, determine also the mental development of 

 mankind. In his materialistic conception of history, Karl Marx 

 in particular undertakes to prove that ideas of right and law itself 

 are the natural and necessary results of the social economy. The 

 influence of individuality and of ideas is thereby by no means 

 absolutely denied, but it is restricted within very narrow bounds. 

 The views of Auguste Comte in philosophy, of Lamprecht in history, 

 of Wohltmann and others in natural science, tend in a similar direc- 

 tion. In the development of civilization they are inclined to assign 

 too little significance to the free will of man, to the single individual, 

 and to the action of chance. Everything, they hold, is subject to 

 the laws of a mechanical development, and the discovery of these 

 laws is the proper task of history and of political economy. 



The physical theory of life dominates science to-day so completely 

 that I need not here discuss in detail what concession must undoubt- 

 edly be made to it. Every human action is the necessary consequence 

 of definite motives; furthermore every phenomenon in nature, whether 

 in economic or social life, has its sufficient reason. There can, there- 

 fore, be neither chance nor free will in the sense of unmotivated 

 caprice or unrelated action. Rather is the question to be asked, 

 whether from the fact that everywhere there is apparent a connection 

 between cause and effect and that intellectual activity is bound up 

 with and conditioned by material environment, the necessary con- 

 sequence must be the acceptance of the materialistic theory of life, 



1 K. Lamprecht, Zwei Streitschriften. den Herrn H. Oncken, H. Delbriick, M. 

 Lenz zugeeignet. Berlin, 1897. 



Dietrich Schafer, Das eigentliche Arbeitsgebiet der Geschichte. Jena, 1888. 

 Dietrich Schafer, Geschichte und KuUurgeschichte. Jena, 1891. 

 E. Gothein, Die Aufgaben der Kulturgeschichte. Leipzig, 1889 



