of Edinhurgli, Session 1883-84. 
945 
and concrete tendencies interests himself as exclusively in “ material 
wealth — its production, distribution, and consumj)tion giving hut 
scanty consideration to the nature and wants of the community for, 
and by which, this wealth is produced, distributed, and consumed. 
Most economists, however, are so far biologists as to recognise the 
physiological laws made prominent by Malthus. Psychologists and 
moralists, in insisting upon the estimation of pleasures and pains, or 
the analysis of mind and motive, have had no small influence upon 
economic theory ; the historian has now entered the fray, and urges 
weighty claims to predominance ; so too does the anthropologist ; in 
short, it has been attempted to constitute the economic science by 
the aid of almost every possible mode and department of scientific 
inquiry, and no better evidence of failure can be imagined than is 
afforded by the claims of each of these inco-ordinated systems to 
exclusive success. 
§ 5. Yet we are bound to assume the applicability of the sciences, 
and seeing that all have been by turns applied, how is the 
“ notorious discord and sterility of modern economics ” * to be 
explained? There are two main reasons for it — first, that the 
application of the sciences has not been systematic or in any way 
co-ordinated; secondly, that although applied, their application 
has been in almost all cases imperfect or faulty. The “ statistical 
method ” has been already criticised, and the few applications of 
higher mathematics yet made will not at present be discussed; but 
passing to physics, it will at once be evident to any reader, however 
little versed in science, that the discussions or definitions of the 
nature of material wealth,” of “ intrinsic value,” and the like, 
which are to be found at the outset of almost every economic 
treatise, remain at best in precisely the state in which Smith found 
them, and are wholly uninfluenced by modern physics. In biology 
too, — while the law of reproduction discussed by Malthus has become 
in the hands of Darwin the foundation-stone of that theory of 
evolution by natural selection, which has not only revolutionised 
modern biology, and with it our views of the origin, nature, and 
destiny of man, but has shed new and brilliant light upon the 
special sciences which concern him, anthropology, philology, 
* Ingram “On the Present Position, &c., of Pol. Econ.,” Brit. Ass. Beport, 
1878. 
