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Proceedings of the Boyal Society 
of population, of their wants, and of the existing society, — which 
furnish the principles underlying any moral theory, — has long since 
brought the whole subject of morals into disgrace among econo- 
mists, with the lamentable yet not unnatural result that any one 
attempting to introduce ethical considerations, even in their proper 
place, is apt to he scouted as a ‘‘ sentimentalist.” Again, the econo- 
mist to whom the society is of paramount interest, frequently 
ignores its individual components, and so on. So strong, indeed, 
is this tendency to transcendentalism, that the class of principles 
with which we shall commence our ascending survey — the physical 
— has been the very last to secure a hearing. In short, each of the 
succeeding chapters, physical, biological, &c., looked at alone, is a 
systematised materialism to its successors, and a transcendentalism 
to those which precede it. Hence the need for an ultimate synthesis, 
which must aim at reconciling all these different points of view. 
§ 1 4. The synthesis to be attempted, then, must aim not only at 
balancing the claims of all these principles without that excessive 
or defective insistance upon one order of them which constitutes 
materialism or transcendentalism, but at interw^eaving them into a 
lasting whole. The postponement of the construction of a system 
(imperfectly foreshadowed, however, in the Classification of Statistics) 
to the present task — the discussion of principle — is thus necessitated ; 
hence the plan of the present work. 
Chaptek I. — Physical Principles. 
§ 15. General Enunciation of the Problem . — Passing over the dis- 
cussion of the mathematical aspects of economic phenomena to the 
consideration of their concrete physical aspect, we are not simply 
concerned with the abstract theory of statistics or of exchange, but 
have to investigate the concrete economic facts ; and these not only 
in their quantitative, but also in their qualitative relations. The 
apparatus and the processes of social activity have to be observed and 
classified with an equal eye towards minuteness of detail and extent 
of generalisation; they must, moreover, be expressed in terms of 
physical science. Por as the physical physiologist has long since 
definitely undertaken the task of explaining the mechanism of the 
individual organism in terms of chemistry and physics ; or as the 
