«J V 



University Studies 



Vol. IV JANUARY, 1904 No. 1 



I. — The Kinetic Theory of Economic Crises 



EY W. G. LANGWORTHY TAYLOR 

 I 



THE KINETIC THEORY OF ECONOMIC LOGIC 



The theory that there is somehow or other such a sympathy 

 between the different phases of social life that they all bear the 

 same hall-mark at any particular epoch, and that a common 

 change takes place in ail of them from one epoch to another, is 

 so fascinating as to form the more or less unconscious assump- 

 tion of much of our reasoning about society. Even if it be 

 impossible to show that this sympathetic movement occurs 

 precisely at the same moment in all phases, it may still be most 

 plausibly assumed that a given impulse is propagated from one 

 phase of life to another so that all may share in the common 

 movement within a reasonably close period, although at any 

 given moment there will be some that are through with it and 

 others that it has not yet reached. 



Just what this is that can be common to so many and so 

 different elements we need not attempt to describe. We char- 

 acterize many social phenomena as belonging to the savage, 

 barbarous, civilized epochs. While we may err in cataloguing 

 our items into this or that epoch, we assume confidently our use 

 of stages and epochs. We assume, further, that this succession 

 of general stages constitutes a progress, although we do not often 



University Studiks, Vol. IV, No. 1, January, 1901. 



