A nalyses of Books. 
[September, 
554 
and indeed all the branches of biology which deal ^ 
forms of animal life? Does he not confound together, under 
one common anathema, science and what 1S com ®°" y Ca Qm 
“ applied science,” making the former responsible as an accom 
plice before the fadt, for all the sms of the latter ? Lastly, 
though not least, is he not prone to imagine moial causes lor 
ph All C this M^Geddes does not seek to deny. But he discusses 
Mr Ruskin in his character as an economist, or rather as an 
assailant of the orthodoxies of “ poleetical” economy. He refers 
here to the highly strained relations between “ the economists 
on the one hand and the cultivators of the preliminary sciences on 
the other.” This state of things is shown “ not merely by the 
almost complete suspension of relations between the two camps, 
or by the fadt that only here and there a scientific society accepts 
economic communications, but also by the frequent o cc ^ renc ® 
of positive battle.” The author speaks of the proposal L first 
formerly made in 1876, to cut oft the Economic Sedhon (of the 
British ^Association) root and branch, as no better than a disgrace 
to a scientific association.” This proposal we have supported, 
and continue to support in the belief that this section °^ ers 
nidus for the bacilli of political agitation, which, in the interests 
alike of abstratt research and of praaical invention, we would 
treat with the most aaive germicide. 
But we can raise a further question : Are political economy 
and sociology two synonymes ? We say, no ! Political economy, 
as far as we understand, views man merely as a producer, accu- 
mulator, and consumer of “ wealth,” all his other functions bein & 
SU Now to U pro?eed e t d hus is, we admit, perfectly legitimate as a 
scientific artifice for convenience of study. To take an illustra- 
tion : Suppose that nothing definite were known concerning 
human anatomy and physiology, it would be quite justifiab e 1 a 
number of men fell to work to study the respiratory organs and 
their special function, ignoring all the rest of the system. By 
so doing they would doubtless make more rapid progress than if 
they had plunged at once into the study of the whole man. But 
if they assumed that this limited knowledge was human physio- 
logy they would be under a grievous error. Worse still if they 
undertook to practise medicine in the sole light of their results, 
it would be the vilest and most dangerous quackery, far worse 
than the empirical routine of their predecessors. 
Now this is just what the Economists have been doing. 1 hey 
have taken their shred of a science for sociology, and they have 
sought to find within it a hygeiene for the body politic. _ 
Now Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Geddes see the short-comings and 
miserable deficiencies of the economic view. According to it 
“value does not reside in commodities themselves, and is no 
more to be found in a loaf of bread than in a diamond, in watei, 
or in air.” 
