of Edinburgh, Session 1880-81. 
315 
tilings, and largely with, organised beings, there is probably no 
department of modern literature, not even poetry or romance, so 
little leavened by the recent advances of our knowledge of the laws 
of matter and of life. To judge from their writings the economists 
would seem to be unconscious of the very existence of such doctrines 
as those of the conservation and dissipation of energy, of evolution, 
and the like, and of the evident fact that the students of the 
physical and biological sciences can hardly much longer delay a 
combined invasion of their territory.* Moreover, although archaic 
psychological conceptions — frequently, of course, of fundamental 
importance — are tenaciously retained, the economist usually holds 
aloof from considering the important constructive sociological efforts 
already made from the side of the preliminary sciences, while 
the only ethical allusion to he found in many a lengthy economic 
treatise is a contemptuous dismissal of “sentiment.” 
Passing lightly over these disputes as to whether the subject is to 
be treated purely by deduction, or by induction, or by both, and 
evading the interminable discussions about the definition of terms, 
since they compel the abandonment of most of these altogether, 
we are arrested by the most serious discrepancy of all — that relating 
to the very scope and nature of political economy. We find that 
some schools narrow the subject to industry alone, others to govern- 
ment, others to value, others to exchange, so that it has actually 
been proposed within recent years to confine the title to the study 
of the commercial phenomena of the present industrial period in 
England, that is to say in the language of our tables, to little more 
than certain of the phenomena of movement at a given time in one 
society ; while even many of those systems which take a wider view 
and seek to investigate production, partition, and use are often 
justly reproached with ignoring the organisms composing the 
society altogether, or at the very least with too scanty attention to 
the all-important results of production, occupation, partition, and use 
upon these organisms, while they are prone to state their generalisa 
tions of the local and the temporary as absolute laws. And, finally, 
we find that many of these widest systems concern themselves 
little with actual periodic detailed and quantitative observation of 
* See Presidential Addresses to Sections A, F, G of the British Association, 
York. 1881. 
