Annual Report of the Council. 233 



Gervinus, Ottfried Miiller (the philologist and archaeologist), 

 and Albrecht. During his University career he gave special 

 attention to philosophy, history, and political economy. 

 From 1843 to 1848 he occupied a chair at Gottingen, and 

 in 1849 he was appointed to the Professorship of Political 

 Economy in the Leipsic University, where he remained 

 until his death in June, 1894, successively declining invita- 

 tions from the Universities of Zurich, Vienna, Munich, and 

 Berlin. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of 

 Laws from Konigsberg, Bologna, and Edinburgh, and 

 distinctions were conferred upon him by other German and 

 by Russian seats of learning, as well as by many learned 

 societies in Europe, including the Institute of France. He 

 was elected an honorary member of our own Society in 

 1889. The publication in 1843 of a small treatise on 

 the historical method of economic inquiry practically 

 inaugurated a new departure in the science to which his life 

 was devoted, and in his subsequent writings he developed 

 the principles then laid down. Whereas Adam Smith 

 introduced his great work as an inquiry into the annual 

 labour of nations as the basis of economics, and J. B. Say 

 took the production of wealth, and Ricardo the theory of 

 value as the fundamental ideas of the science, Roscher 

 characteristically begins his greatest work, the " System der 

 Volkswirthschaft," with the sentence " Ausgangspunkt, 

 wie Zielpunkt unserer Wissenschaft ist der Mensch " — the 

 starting point and the goal of our science is humanity. In 

 the introduction to the first volume of this work, designed as 

 " a manual and text-book for business men and students," 

 Roscher sketched his plan and intimated that he proposed, 

 if his life were spared, to complete it in four volumes. He 

 lived to achieve the task. The first volume appeared in 

 1854, and was devoted to the general principles of national 

 economy. It was translated into French by Wolowski, the 

 bimetallist, into English by Lalor, and into Russian by 



