of Edinburgh, Session 1880 - 81 . 
321 
This coincidence of practical economics with practical ethics, of 
economy with morality, being implied in such common conceptions as 
those of conduct, duty, and the like, and indeed in almost every 
application of these terms, and having been often pointed out by 
philosophers and moralists should need little illustration, were it 
not that the introduction into practice of ethical conceptions, 
for various reasons of greater or less cogency, has been proclaimed 
irrelevant by not a few political economists, of whom some would 
indeed almost seem to have believed in a veritable antagonism of 
these two aspects of conduct. Such views of ethics and economics are 
harmonious with that want of relation to the preliminary sciences 
referred to in § 26 as characteristic of such economists. 
Such a comparison of the two aspects of proposed actions instead 
of being avoided should indeed invariably be adopted. Since we saw 
that economic action should be based upon scientific knowledge 
and that not fragmentary but complete, and since our sociological 
knowledge is dangerously incomplete, while action is inevitable, 
the utility of the moral check already referred to in § 28 becomes 
apparent. When the counsel of economics and of morals coincide 
the action may be regarded as ratified and its grounds as verified, 
while a discord between the two must similarly be regarded as 
indicating that the proposed course of action whether ethical or 
economic must be in error. Though the course of action proposed 
on ethical grounds may sometimes be even more liable to error than 
that proposed on those of our as yet so imperfect economic know- 
ledge, yet cases frequently occur more or less analogous to those 
taken for example in § 28 in which the former course is to be 
adopted, its accompanying emotional state then serving as a help 
not as a hindrance. 
§ 31. Having thus reached the ethical platform we find a new 
series of ethical systems inviting study and criticism, but a single 
instance chosen almost at hazard must suffice. If practical economic 
action coincides with ethical action, our most general principle of 
economic action, which we have seen to be “ act upon postulates,” 
is also a general principle of ethical action. But this principle is 
essentially similar to the most abstract law of the Intellectuals fc 
system of ethics, — the Categorical Imperative of Kant, — especially 
when developed into its individualistic and concrete forms. 
