464 KEPORT — 1889. 



and verbal criticism — we shall perhaps come to hope that each of the rival 

 schools of economists may furnish a contribution which is a real aid to 

 the advance of the study. 



II. 



Human beings are forced to devote conscious efforts to the maintenance 

 and perpetuation of human life ; food, clothing, and shelter all subserve 

 this final end, and the conscious efforts for this end which have been 

 made by human beings, under different physical conditions, and in dif- 

 ferent stages of culture, supply the phenomena which the economist has 

 to investigate. 



In attempting to indicate a principle of arrangement by which this 

 vast mass of information may be tentatively grouped for our present 

 purpose, I fear I must discard the instance which has exercised such a 

 fatal fascination on many minds ; I shall leave Robinson Crusoe out of 

 account, and consider man, not as an isolated being, but as part of an 

 organised society. We may then note several social groups of different 

 types, each of which has been usually regulated as a whole for economic 

 purposes, and which may therefore be taken as distinct economic 

 organisms. 



A. The simplest of these is the famihj, whether in its early condition 

 as alluded to in the accounts of the patriarchs in Genesis, or when elabo- 

 rately regulated, like the villas of Charles the Great. ^ 



B. Again we have the village community as it has been described by 

 von Maurer, Sir Henry Maine, and others. 



C. Further, we may have the municipal organisation of Greek cities 

 or medigeval towns, where citizenship gave a man a place in industrial 

 and commercial life : there were minor associations of artisans or dealers ; 

 but besides all these there was a living unity, for economic purposes, in 

 the town as a whole. 



D. There are also cases where the nation is an economic whole : we 

 may have a great legislative body, like Parliameat, which controls the 

 industrial and commercial life of a country ; in such a case the commercial 

 rivalries will not be with other villages or other municipalities, but with 

 other countries. Our struggle with the Dutch in the seventeenth century 

 is a case in point. 



E. We even have the beginnings of international agreements which 

 aspire to embrace the whole world ; postal arrangements afford one illus- 

 tration, and bimetallists hope to furnish another. The economic importance 

 of such cosmopolitan organisations and their bearing on national industry 

 do not appear to me to have attracted the attention they deserve. 



1. If we for a moment compare these distinct types of economic 

 organism, we may certainly say that those which are mentioned later 

 are far more effective for their purpose than the earlier ones. The simplest 

 tests of efficiency are (1) the amount and character of the building done, 

 since it shows how much social energy can be diverted from supplying 

 immediate wants to the work of providing permanent improvements; 

 (2) the success in securing the necessaries of human life as evidenced by 

 the numbers of the population and the death-rate. Tried by these tests, 

 there can be no question as to the superiority of the larger and more 

 complex organisms : the patriarchal family drew its food-supply from a 



' Capitulary dc rillis. Pertz, 3Ionumenta Germania, iii., 184. 



