470 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VI., No. 147. 



stations, particularly Moose Jaw (which owes its 

 name to the shape of the bend in a creek there), 

 you may buy excellent specimens of buffalo-horns, 

 somewhat polished, and bound together with 

 forehead-hides or bead-embroidered flannel, — the 

 work of Indians and haK-breeds. 



Ernest Ingersoll. 



NEWCOMB'S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



In illustrating the ease with which labor may 

 rush from one channel to another in case of a 

 change in demand, Professor Newcomb remarks 

 on p. 115 that "a professor of one science can 

 commonly teach another." If he had said that it 

 is unhappily true that an ignorant and unthinking 

 public often considers that a man eminent in one 

 department is equally so in several or aU other 

 departments, or that it is a common but most 

 vicious notion that a coUege professor of one 

 branch might just as well be professor of another 

 also — as, for instance, that the professor of Chi-is- 

 tian evidences and New Testament Greek may 

 also take physics as well as not, — and that this 

 absurd notion is at present one of the most serious 

 obstacles to any real improvement of our educational 

 system, he would have been very much nearer the 

 truth, and, we cannot help beheving, nearer to 

 his own real opinions when in his soberer mo- 

 ments. Certain it is, at any rate, that if a man 

 who had given the best years of his life to the 

 study of political economy should wander over 

 into the field of astr6nomy and physics, and un- 

 dertake "to bring order into the reigning con- 

 fusion," and "to give the subject a recognized 

 place among the sciences by being the first to 

 treat and develop it as a science," Professor New- 

 comb would be just the man to administer a severe 

 and deserved castigation. The offence is none the 

 less serious, because in this case we have a great 

 and successful astronomer and physicist wander- 

 ing over into the economic field and undertaking 

 to set things to rights. 



The fact is that the progress of modern science 

 in every branch has been so great within this 

 century, that he is a bold man indeed who thinks 

 that he is entitled to speak as an authority even in 

 two or three fields, though they be very closely 

 alhed. The mere work of mastering the facts 

 which are necessary to enable one to speak with 

 confidence has become so great in almost any of 

 the more developed branches of human science, 

 that it is the task of years to do this for a single 

 branch, to say nothing of a half dozen. It is, 

 however, perfectly within the power of an able 

 man to write a treatise on a science of whose 



Principles of political economy. By Simon Newcomb, 

 Ph.D., LL.D. New York, Harper <& Bros., 1886. 548 p. 



present status he knows next to nothing, which 

 shall present the subject as it was some time in 

 the past, provided he goes back far enough 

 toward the beginning of things. This is just what 

 the author has done in this book. If he had pub- 

 lished it fifty years ago it would have been a 

 valuable contribution to the subject. Coming at 

 this late day, it is still valuable as an instance of 

 how completely a man may enter into the ideas 

 and thoughts of a past generation, and how skil- 

 fully he may re-present them. 



There is no evidence in the style of reasoning in 

 tliis work that the author is at all acquainted with 

 the recent literature of the science either in Eng- 

 land or on the continent. One great advance in 

 economic science of the last twenty-five years lies 

 in a change of its prevailing method. It has been 

 affected in a most healthy way by the enormous 

 progress of physical and natural science. It is 

 reaching out to avail itself of their methods so far 

 as possible. As a result of this new method, it has 

 come to reject the old generalizations, and, while 

 recognizing that they were exceedingly valuable 

 in their time, and formed important, nay, neces- 

 sary links in the chain of scientific progress, it 

 now insists that we have ample evidence of their 

 crudeness and incompleteness, and that, taking 

 whatever may be left of them that is true, we 

 must now look for valuable results to careful and 

 far-reaching inductive study of the facts of our 

 social and economic organism as the indispensable 

 basis of new and more fruitful generalizations. 



Of all this there is scarcely a trace in Professor 

 Newcomb's treatment. He repeats exploded theo- 

 ries and almost universally rejected laws with the 

 utmost naivete as "principles which wiU be ac- 

 cepted by all who understand the subject." It is 

 true that he calls attention, in his chapter on 

 economic method, to the necessity of more exact 

 definition and careful reasoning ; but taken in 

 connection with his actual treatment, it has much 

 the same effect on the professional economist that 

 would be produced on the physicist or astronomer 

 by an attempt on the part of Wilhelm Roscher or 

 Cliff e Leslie to restate the corpuscular theory of 

 light on the Ptolemaic system of astronomy with 

 a greater exactness of definition, and closeness of 

 reasoning. A work prepared in this latter spirit 

 would doubtless have a value, as, for example, for 

 disciphnary purposes in an old-fashioned college, 

 but it would hardly be accepted by prevailing 

 authorities as in any sense a productive contribu- 

 tion to the science. 



Professor Newcomb's work is written from the 

 old stand-point of extreme individualism. The au- 

 thor takes it for granted, and indeed expressly asserts 

 in more places than one, that the individual, in fol- 



