always his best work, the strongest, the most original, the most suggestive that he had ever done. And yet after reading all, there remained something more: it was to talk with him, and by him to be led to see. That same magic power that almost enabled him to see the things around him when his eyes were dark, enabled him to bring before those to whom he talked the real bearings of practical economic questions, with a vividness such that I at least have never known the like. But he is gone; and we who remain must carry on, as best we may, his work, guided by his clear thoughts and cheered by his brave example.

§ 2. It will be my endeavour to-day to give a short account of the province of the economist as I understand it, and of what it seems to me that Cambridge may best do in it.

It is generally known that Economics has to some extent changed its front during the present generation; but the nature of the change is much misunderstood. It is commonly said that those who set the tone of economic thought in England in the earlier part of the century were theorists who neg

lected the study of facts, and that this was specially an English fault. Such a charge seems to me baseless. Most of them were practical men with a wide and direct personal knowledge of business affairs. They wrote economic histories that are in their way at least equal to anything that has been done since. They brought about the collection of statistics by public and private agencies and that admirable series of parliamentary inquiries, which have been a model for all other countries, and have inspired the modern German historic school with many of their best thoughts.

And as to their tendency to indulge in excessively abstract reasonings, that, in so far as the charge is true at all, is chiefly due to the influence of one masterful genius, who was not an Englishman, and had very little in common with the English tone of thought. The faults and the virtues of Ricardo's mind are traceable to his Semitic origin; no English economist has had a mind similar to his.

§ 3. The change that has been made in the point of view of Economics by the present generation

is then not due to the discovery of the importance of supplementing and guiding deduction by induction, for that was well known before. It is due to the discovery that man himself is in a great measure a creature of circumstances and changes with them; and the importance of this discovery has been accentuated by the fact that the growth of knowledge and earnestness have recently made and are making deep and rapid changes in human nature.

At the beginning of this century the mathematico-physical group of sciences was in the ascendent. These sciences widely as they differ from one another have this point in common, that their subjectmatter is constant and unchanged in all countries and in all ages. The progress of science was familiar to men's minds but the development of the subjectmatter of science was strange to them. As the century wore on the biological group of sciences were slowly making way, and people were getting clearer ideas as to the nature of organic growth. They were learning that if the subject-matter of a science passes through different stages of development, the laws

which apply to one stage will seldom apply without modification to others; the laws of the science must have a development corresponding to that of things of which they treat. The influence of this new notion gradually spread to the sciences which relate to man. In different ways Goethe, Hegel, Comte and other writers called attention to the development of the inner character and outward institutions of man, and worked their way towards the notion of tracing and comparing the modes of growth of the different sides of human nature.

The

At last the speculations of biology made a great stride forwards: its discoveries fascinated the attention of all men as those of physics had done in earlier years. The moral and historical sciences of the day have in consequence changed their tone, and Economics has shared in the general movement. change is not chiefly attributable to any particular attacks that have been made on economic doctrine, nor to the influence of individual writers whether in England or other countries, though some exception may indeed be made in favour of Liszt. The change

is mainly due to the irresistible forces of the age affecting at once all the rising generation in all parts of the world.

§ 4. The chief fault then in English economists at the beginning of the century was not that they ignored history and statistics, but that Ricardo and his followers neglected a large group of facts and a method of studying facts which we now see to be of primary importance. They regarded man as so to speak a constant quantity, and gave themselves little trouble to study his variations.

The people whom they knew were chiefly city men; and they took it for granted tacitly that other Englishmen were very much like those they knew in the city. They were aware that the inhabitants of other countries had peculiarities of their own; but they regarded such differences, when they thought of them at all, as superficial and sure to be removed as soon as other nations had got to know that better way which Englishmen were ready to teach them. The same bent of mind that led our lawyers to impose English civil law on the Hindoos, led our