258 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 609. 



under modern free competition is quite 

 different from their determination under 

 the medieval system of custom and status; 

 that the remuneration of labor depends on 

 what are the historical and legal institu- 

 tions with respect to slavery, labor legisla- 

 tion, etc. ; that the economic phenomena 

 of to-day are not comparable with those of 

 the times of the Greeks and Romans, nor 

 are the phenomena in America comparable 

 with those in Russia. 



To one whp is familiar with the spirit of 

 science, however, these variations, so far 

 r&om being objections, are really confirma- 

 t'ians of the theory that economies is a sci- 

 ence. For in all science it is fundamen- 

 tally true that phenomena will 'differ ac- 

 cording to circumstances,' and the office of 

 the scientist is simply and solely to find 

 -out under what circumstances one set of 

 ■phenomena will occur, and under what cir- 

 >cumstances another set will occur. We 

 vsoiil'd hardly claim that hydrostatics is not 

 a science for the reason that in a mountain 

 lake water is found to be stationary and at 

 a level, whereas at Niagara it is found to 

 be in motion and passing from one level 

 to another; that whereas the water in a 

 mill-race passes in a downward direction, 

 the water which we draw in our houses 

 moves through the pipes upward; that 

 whereas, by means of a syphon, water may 

 be induced to flow out of a receptacle, it 

 will, in an ordinary tub, remain inert. The 

 whole science of hydrostatics has developed 

 as a consequence of the persistent effort to 

 unravel these puzzles, and to-day we know 

 not only that under different circumstances 

 water will act in different ways, but we 

 can formulate what are the precise condi- 

 tions under which it will act in each sepa- 

 rate manner. 



In economic study we should in like 

 manner apply ourselves to discover what 

 conditions make the difference in the phe- 

 nomena between modern and ancient or 



eastern and western civilizations, rather 

 than content ourselves with the truism that 

 they do . differ. Much of the field has in 

 fact already been covered. It is known, 

 for instance, that under conditions of free 

 contract and competition, the price of an 

 article will be determined by the intersec- 

 tion of its supply and demand curves, and 

 that, on the other hand, if the regime be 

 one of monopoly, the price will be deter- 

 mined on the principle of 'what the traffic 

 will bear,' in the manner so admirably 

 shown by Cournot. In these cases the re- 

 sults are not absolute and unconditional, 

 but depend on specified hypotheses. In 

 this respect they are exactly similar to any 

 other scientific result. The formula of 

 science, as Newcomb points out, is always 

 conditional — if A is true, then B is true. 

 The formula of history, on the other hand, 

 is unconditional — simply B is true. 



If economics is a science, its truths must 

 be conditional. Thus, the incidence of a 

 tax on ground rent will lower the value of 

 land, provided there are no counteracting 

 causes. This does not assert that actually, 

 after such a tax, the value of the land will 

 fall, for in the meantime some opposing 

 cause may have intervened, such as the 

 discovery of an oil-welL Again, an in- 

 crease of the quantity of circulating me- 

 dium will raise prices proportionately, pro- 

 vided the velocity of circulation and the 

 volume of business transactions remain the 

 same. This 'quantity theory' does not as- 

 sert that prices do rise after every increase 

 in the quantity of money, and those who 

 thus interpret it are guilty of the confu- 

 sion already noted between conditional and 

 unconditional truth— in other words, be- 

 tween a scientific law and a historical fact. 



The confusion between historical and 

 scientific truth is very common among 

 economists, especially in the German his- 

 torical school. Mobile Roscher and his fol- 

 lowers verbally classify economics as a sci- 



