THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 7 



merges it in a science the scope of which is far Book i 

 wider and deeper. This is a science which 

 primarily sets itself to explain, not how a given set 

 of social conditions affects those who live among 

 them, but how social conditions at one epoch are 

 different from those of another, how each set of 

 conditions is the resultant of those preceding it, and 

 how, since the society of the present differs from 

 that of the past, the society of the future is likely to 

 differ from that of the present. 



What political economy has thus lost in precision This excites 

 it has gained in general interest. So long as it jesting great 

 merely analysed processes of production and dis- 

 tribution which it was assumed would always con- 

 tinue without substantial modification, political 

 economy was mainly a science for specialists, and 

 was little calculated to arouse any keen interest in 

 the public. But now that it has been merged in 

 that general science of evolution, which offers to an 

 unquiet age what seems a scientific licence to regard 

 as practically producible some indeterminate trans- 

 formation in these processes, political economy has 

 come to occupy a new position. Instead of being 

 ignored or ridiculed by the more ardent school of 

 reformers, and even neglected by conservatives as a 

 not very powerful auxiliary, it has now been brought 

 down into the dust of the general struggle, and is 

 invoked by one side as the prophetess of new 

 possibilities, and by the other as an exorcist of 

 mischievous and mad illusions. And what is true 

 in this respect with regard to political economy is 



