There are other relations which we must not overlook in tracing the progress of economic opinion.The several branches ofthe science of society are so closely connected that the history of no one of them can with perfect rationality be treatedapart,though such a treatment is recommended --indeed necessitated --by practical utility.The movement of economicthought is constantly and powerfully affected by the prevalent mode of thinking,and even the habitual tone of sentiment,onsocial subjects generally.All the intellectual manifestations of a period in relation to human questions have a kindredcharacter,and bear a certain stamp of homogeneity,which is vaguely present to our minds when we speak of the spirit of theage,Social speculation again,and economic research as one branch of it,is both through its philosophic method and throughits doctrine under the influence of the sciences which in the order of development precede the social,especially of thescience of organic nature.
It is of the highest importance to bear in mind these several relations of economic research both to external circumstance andto other spheres of contemporary thought,because by keeping them in view we shall be led to form less absolute andtherefore juster estimates of the successive phases of opinion.Instead of merely praising or blaming these according to thedegrees of their accordance with a predetermined standard of doctrine,we shall view them as elements in an ordered series,to be studied mainly with respect to their filiation,their opportuneness,and their influences.We shall not regard each newstep in this theoretic development as implying an unconditional negation of earlier views,which often had a relativejustification,resting,as they did,on a real,though narrower,basis of experience,or assuming the existence of a differentsocial order.Nor shall we consider all the theoretic positions now occupied as definitive;for the practical system of lifewhich they tacitly assume is itself susceptible of change,and destined,without doubt,more or less to undergo it.Within thelimits of a sketch like the present these considerations cannot be fully worked out;but an effort will be made to keep them inview,and to mark the relations here indicated wherever their influence is specially important or interesting.
The particular situation and tendencies of the several thinkers whose names are associated with economic doctrines have,ofcourse,modified in a greater or less degree the spirit or form of those doctrines.Their relation to special predecessors,theirnative temperament,their early training,their religious prepossessions and political partialities,have all had their effects.Tothese we shall in some remarkable instances direct attention;but,in the main,they are,for our present purpose,secondaryand subordinate.The ensemble must preponderate over the individual;and the constructors of theories must be regarded asorgans of a common intellectual and social movement.
The history of economic inquiry is most naturally divided into the three great periods of (1)the ancient,(2)the mediaeval,and (3)the modern worlds.In the two former,this branch of study could exist only in a rudimentary state.It is evident thatfor any considerable development of social theory two conditions must be fulfilled.First,the phenomena must have exhibitedthemselves on a sufficiently extended scale to supply adequate matter for observation,and afford a satisfactory basis forscientific generalisations;and secondly,whilst the spectacle is thus provided,the spectator must have been trained for histask,and armed with the appropriate aids and instruments of research,that is to say,there must have been such a previouscultivation of the simpler sciences as will have both furnished the necessary data of doctrine and prepared the propermethods of investigation.Sociology requires to use for its purposes theorems which belong to the domains of physics andbiology,and which it must borrow from their professors;and,on the logical side,the methods which it has to employ --deductive,observational,comparative --must have been previously shaped in the cultivation of mathematics and the studyof the inorganic world or of organisms less complex than the social.Hence it is plain that,though some laws or tendenciesof society must have been forced on men's attention in every age by practical exigencies which could not be postponed,andthough the questions thus raised must have received some empirical solution,a really scientific sociology must be theproduct of a very advanced stage of intellectual development.And this is true of the economic,as of other branches of socialtheory.We shall therefore content ourselves with a general outline of the character of economic thought in antiquity and theMiddle Ages,and of the conditions which determined that character.
NOTES:
1."Que pourrions-nous gagner àrecueillir des opinions absurdes,des doctrines décriées et qui meritent de l'être?Il serait àla fois inutile et fastidieux."Écon.Pol.Pratique ,IXme Partie.The "cependant"which follows does not really modify thisjudgment.
2.See Roscher's Geschichte der National-oekoomik in Deutschland ,Vorrede.
