654 report — 1878. 



* 



of wealth. Yet again he admits that no one could determine a priori from the 

 principles of human nature and the general circumstances of the race the order in 

 -which human development takes place. Now this involves the conclusion, that the 

 laws of economic progress — like all dynamic laws of Sociology — must be ascertained 

 by observation on the large scale, and only verified by appeal to the laws of the 

 external world and human nature ; in other words, that the right method for their 

 study is the historical. 



I hope it is not inconsistent with a profound respect for the eminent powers and 

 high aims of Mill, to say that he appears to me never to have extricated himself 

 completely from the vicious habits in regard to sociological method impressed on 

 him by his education. His father had the principal part in the formation of his 

 mind in his early years. Now whatever were the intellectual merits of James 

 Mill, his mode of thinking on social subjects was essentially metaphysical, as 

 opposed to positive. Through him, as well as directly, John Mill came under the 

 influence of Bentham, of whom, whilst fully recognizing his services, we may truly 

 say that he was one of the most unhistorical of writers, building most, I mean, on 

 assumed a priori principles, and sympathizing least with the social past, in which 

 he saw little except errors and abuses. It is strong evidence of the natural force 

 of Mill's intellect that he more and more, as he advanced towards maturity, shook 

 himself loose of the prejudices of his early entourage. On every side, not even 

 excluding the aesthetic, he grew in comprehensiveness, and his Social and historic 

 ideas in particular become -wider and more sympathetic. The publication of the 

 letters addressed to him by Auguste Comte has revealed more fully, what could 

 already be gathered from his writings, that the study of that eminent thinker's first 

 oreat work happily concurred with and aided his spontaneous tendencies. Hence 

 in his economic studies he broke away in many respects from the narrow traditions 

 of the reigning English school, and by opening larger horizons and discrediting 

 ri"id formulas, did much to prepare the public mind for a more complete as well as 

 truly scientific handling of these subjects. But though the interval between his 

 father and himself represents an immense advance, yet never in regard to method 

 did he, in my opinion, attain a perfectly normal attitude. Whilst in his ' Logic ' he 

 criticized with just severity what he, not very happily, calls the geometrical mode 

 of philosophizing practised by the Benthamites in political research, he approves 

 what is essentially the same course of proceeding in economic inquiry ; and, whilst 

 protesting against the attempt to construct a special science of the political pheno- 

 mena of society apart from general sociology, he yet, with whatever restrictions 

 and qualifications, accepts the separate construction of a science of its industrial 

 phenomena. His ambition in his work on political economy was, as may be seen 

 from the preface, to replace the ' Wealth of Nations ' by a treatise which, whilst 

 more uniformly correct on points of detail, should be in harmony with contemporary 

 social speculation in the widest sense. Admitting fully the great merits of the book, 

 I yet must hold that, chiefly from the absence of any systematic application of the 

 historic method, he has not succeeded in attaining this end. The presentation of 

 what is solid and permanent in the work of the economists, in relation with the 

 largest and truest views of general sociology, is, in my judgment, a task which still 

 remains to be accomplished. 



The tendencies of the new school with respect to method are sufficiently indi- 

 cated by the names of the Realistic and the Historical by which it designates 

 itself. It declares, in the words of Brentano, the description of political economy 

 by the so-called orthodox writers as a hypothetic science, to be only a device to 

 cloak its dissonance with reality ; and affirms that much of the current doctrine 

 is made up of hasty generalizations from insufficient and arbitrary premises. It 

 sets out, says Held, from observed facts, and not from definitions, which often 

 serve only to mask foregone conclusions. It aims at describing objectively existing 

 economic relations, not as immutable necessities, but as products of a gradual 

 historical development in the past, and susceptible of gradual modification in 

 the future. " Its philosophical method," says Mr. Leslie, " must be historical, 

 and must trace the connection between the economical and the other phases of 

 national history." In these tendencies the rising school seems to me to be in har- 



