666 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION P. 



services to statistics were especially fruitful in the domain of international com- 

 parisons. 



Two other veteran economists have passed away — namely, Dr. Julius Kautz, 

 the Hungarian economist, at the age of eighty; and Professor Aschehoug, of 

 Christiania, at the age of eighty-seven. Kautz is a link with the time of Boscher 

 and the early German historical school. Aschehoug had occupied a professorial 

 position in the university for fifty-six years. 



Turning from the review of our losses to the progress of economic science and 

 statistics during the past year we find perhaps little that is sensational to record, 

 but much evidence of quiet, steady, and solid progress along various lines of 

 research. I am now, of course, speaking of the output of new and original 

 economic work, not of the popular discussion of practical economic problems, 

 which has been perhaps more active and persistent, not to say blatant, during 

 the last twelve months than in any corresponding period of recent times. For 

 reasons which I shall indicate presently, I am by no means inclined to take a 

 purely cynical view of the value of these popular discussions even when carried 

 on amid the heat of party politics. Good as well as evil, and often in greater 

 measure than evil, may, and I am convinced does, result in the long run to 

 economic science from popular discussions of economic questions, however super- 

 ficial they may be, and however distorted by bias and passion. But it is not of 

 this sort of thing that I am now speaking, but of modern economic work and 

 thought properly so-called. 



Among the most welcome tendencies of recent economic thought and writing 

 has, I think, been a marked falling-off in the sterile and strident controversy 

 that has so long been carried on between the advocates of different methods of 

 research. We might, I think, be justified in saying that a truce, if not a perma- 

 nent peace, has been declared between the champions of the so-called historical 

 and abstract or analytic methods, based on the mutual recognition that both 

 methods are indispensable, and are, when rightly used, complementary rather 

 than antagonistic. The metaphor of the two feet which are necessary for walk- 

 ing (or at least for any advance which is other than a series of spasmodic hops) 

 seems to have brought comfort to some who, a short time ago, were at death- 

 grips. This happy cessation of a controversy which, though once big with great 

 issues, has of late years been little but a barren academic wrangle, is pure gain to 

 economic progress ; for it may be taken as a general rule that long-continued 

 and acrimonious controversies about scientific method are a sure sign of a low 

 level of scientific achievement. When men of science and action have important 

 work on hand they have no time or use for elaborate polemics and recriminations 

 as to the proper tools and apparatus to employ. Not, of course, that the problems 

 of method are ever unimportant, but in times of real active advance they occupy a 

 secondary place and are naturally and almost unconsciously solved in relation to 

 each positive economic question as it arises. It is only at times of low pos : tive 

 activity that the question of method assumes an independent position as the 

 dominating problem of the day. 



If we were to apply both the historical and analytic methods in combination 

 to the elucidation of the controversy between them which is now dying down, 

 it would, I think, appear that the supposed opposition between the two schools 

 of method, so far from being fundamental, arose largely from circumstances 

 which were local and temporary, that the antagonism was for a time both 

 necessary and fruitful, but that it has long ceased to have either of these 

 characters, and has been a real obstruction to advance. No doubt the pursuit of 

 the two branches of research will remain to a large extent distinct and in 

 separate hands, owing to the natural division of labour according to personal 

 tastes and aptitudes ; but the historian and the theorist will each in future be 

 clearly conscious that the work he is doing is only partial and one-sided, and 

 cannot be made complete without the assistance of the other. And both will, I 

 hope, be conscious to an increasing extent of their common dependence on a third 

 line of research, at present only in its infancy — namely, the quantitative investiga- 

 tion of economic phenomena mainly through the scientific study of statistics. I do 

 not know whether statistical investigation has been conceived as forming one or 

 more toes of both or either (and, if so, which) of the two now famous feet on 



