XII. REPRINTS, TRANSLATIONS, AND NEW EDITIONS. SCHLOSS (D. F.). Methods of Industrial Remuneration. New edition, revised and enlarged. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. [Announced.] SOMBART (Professor Werner). Socialism and the Social Movement in the Nineteenth Century. Translated by A. P. Atterbury, with introduction by J. B. Clark. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 12mo. pp. 216. $1.25. XIII. NOT CLASSIFIED. BACHMANN (H.). Die Effektenspe- State in France and Germany. Amer. Acad. Polit. and Soc. Sci., LIMOUSIN (Ch. M.). De la Pré- nomic Consequences of the Liberation of Cuba. Yale Rev., Aug. PARKER (E. W.). Concentration in Pig-iron and Coal Production (in the United States). Publ. Amer. Statist. Assoc., June. SMITH (Ch. W.). De la Spéculation Internationale sur les Marchandises et les Fonds Publics [suite]. Rev. d'Econ. Pol., May, July. STOKES (H.). Business in Futures. Econ. Rev., July. TAYLOR (B.). The Coal Supplies of the World. Nineteenth Cent., July. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS JANUARY, 1899 THE PRECONCEPTIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE. IN an earlier paper* the view has been expressed that the economics handed down by the great writers of a past generation is substantially a taxonomic science. A view of much the same purport, so far as concerns the point here immediately in question, is presented in an admirably lucid and cogent way by Professor Clark in a recent number of this journal.† There is no wish hereby to burden Professor Clark with a putative sponsorship of any ungraceful or questionable generalizations reached in working outward from this main position, but expression may not be denied the comfort which his unintended authentication of the main position affords. It is true, Professor Clark does not speak of taxonomy, but employs the term *“Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?" Quarterly Journal of Economics, July, 1898. "The Future of Economic Theory," Ibid., October, 1898. "statics," which is perhaps better suited to his immediate purpose. Nevertheless, in spite of the high authority given the term "statics," in this connection, through its use by Professor Clark and by other writers eminent in the science, it is fairly to be questioned whether the term can legitimately be used to characterize the received economic theories. The word is borrowed from the jargon of physics, where it is used to designate the theory of bodies at rest or of forces in equilibrium. But there is much in the received economic theories to which the analogy of bodies at rest or of forces in equilibrium will not apply. It is perhaps not too much to say that those articles of economic theory that do not lend themselves to this analogy make up the major portion of the received doctrines. So, for instance, it seems scarcely to the point to speak of the statics of production, exchange, consumption, circulation. There are, no doubt, appreciable elements in the theory of these several processes that may fairly be characterized as statical features of the theory; but the doctrines handed down are after all, in the main, theories of the process discussed under each head, and the theory of a process does not belong in statics. The epithet "statical" would, for instance, have to be wrenched somewhat ungently to make it apply to Quesnay's classic Tableau Economique or to the great body of Physiocratic speculations that take their rise from it. The like is true for Books II. and III. of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, as also for considerable portions of Ricardo's work, or, to come down to the present generation, for much of Marshall's Principles, and for such a modern discussion as Smart's Studies in Economics, as well as for the fruitful activity of the Austrians and of the later representatives of the Historical School. But to return from this terminological digression. While economic science in the remoter past of its history has been mainly of a taxonomic character, later writers of all schools show something of a divergence from the taxonomic line and an inclination to make the science a genetic account of the economic life process, sometimes even without an ulterior view to the taxonomic value of the results obtained. This divergence from the ancient canons of theoretical formulation is to be taken as an episode of the movement that is going forward in latter-day science generally; and the progressive change which thus affects the ideals and the objective point of the modern sciences seems in its turn to be an expression of that matter-of-fact habit of mind which the prosy but exacting exigencies of life in a modern industrial community breed in men exposed to their unmitigated impact. In speaking of this matter-of-fact character of the modern sciences it has been broadly characterized as "evolutionary"; and the evolutionary method and the evolutionary ideals have been placed in antithesis to the taxonomic methods and ideals of pre-evolutionary days. But the characteristic attitude, aims, and ideals which are so designated here are by no means peculiar to the group of sciences that are professedly occupied with a process of development, taking that term in its most widely accepted meaning. The latter-day inorganic sciences are in this respect like the organic. They occupy themselves with "dynamic" relations and sequences. The question which they ask is always, What takes place next, and why? Given a situation wrought out by the forces under inquiry, what follows as the consequence of the situation so wrought out? or what follows upon the accession of a further element of force? Even in so non-evolutionary a science as inorganic chemistry the inquiry consistently runs on a process, an active sequence, and the value of the resulting situation as a point of departure for the next step in an interminable cumulative sequence. The last step in the chemist's experimental inquiry into any substance is, What comes of the substance determined? What will it |