of Edinburgh, Session 1880 - 81 . 
317 
can only develop into ultimate products ; these, with the classifica- 
tion of occupations, are the ideas of the leader of the economic 
Renaissance, the physician and physiologist De Quesnay, although 
the more advanced science of our day enables us to avoid the errors 
into which he fell : so, too, the larger view of industry and commerce, 
the detailed examination of products and processes, of mediate and 
ultimate partition and the like, the statistical, historical, and com- 
parative inquiries, and, above all, the treatment of economic ques- 
tions as forming not a totally isolated department of knowledge, hut 
an integral part of the general study of man and of society, form the 
very essence of the “Wealth of Nations.” 
It would he easy to multiply examples, to show how complete 
and detailed a harmony of the matter and spirit of the various 
schools, statistical as well as economical, the scheme affords us, and 
how it solves so many apparently difficult and long-disputed pro- 
blems ; how, for instance, the fundamental conception of organisms 
utilising the matter and energy of nature clears up such time- 
honoured disputes as those concerning the nature of interest and 
of intrinsic value, or how light is thrown upon such phenomena as 
those of competition and co-operation by the biological conceptions 
of struggle for existence, of physiological differentiation, of poly- 
morphism, and of functional change. But space does not permit 
any further development of the scientific aspects of the subject, and 
it is necessary at once to proceed to the investigation of practical 
economics. 
§ 28. Since the organisms composing society are largely occupied 
in utilising matter and energy ; since, moreover, every action and 
every movement involves some disintegration and dissipation of 
energy — produces, that is to say, an economic result — it is evident 
that an exhaustive study of practical economics would involve a 
quantitative record and classification of every action going on in the 
society. Such exhaustiveness is, of course, impossible ; but with- 
out going to any such extreme it is desirable and interesting to 
make some attempt. Much can, of course, be done by observing 
and classifying the activities we see going on around us ; but as a 
convenient periodic record in which most of the more important 
actions going on in the community find at least occasional mention 
is furnished by the daily newspaper, it will suffice for the present 
