II.-Mill says the a priori is the only proper Method to investigate Economics. 13. What, then, is our astonishment to read :-"With the consideration of the definition of a science is inseparably connected that of the philosophic method of the science; the nature of the process by which its investigations are to be carried on, its truths to be arrived at. "Now, in whatever science there are systematic differences of opinion-which is as much as to say in all the Moral or Mental Sciences, and in Political Economy among the rest; in whatever science there exist, among those who have attended to the subject, what are commonly called differences of principle, as distinguished from differences of matter of fact, or detail--the cause will be found to be a difference in their conceptions of the philosophic method of the sciences."1 Also:-"In the definition we have attempted to frame of the Science of Political Economy, we have characterised it as assentially an abstract science, and its method as the method à priori. Such is undoubtedly its character as it has been understood and taught by all its most distinguished teachers. It reasons, and as we contend it must necessarily reason, from assumptions, not from facts. It is built upon hypotheses, strictly analogous to those which, under the name of definitions, are the foundations of the other abstract sciences." 2 Again:-"This ought not to be denied by the Political Economist. If he deny it, then, and then only, he places himself in the wrong. The à priori method which is laid to his charge, as if his employment of it proved his whole science to be worthless, is, as we shall presently shew, the only method by which any truth can possibly be attained in any department of the Social Science!!" 3 Also:-"But we go farther than to affirm that the method à priori is a legitimate mode of philosophical investigation in the Moral Sciences-we contend that it is the only mode. We affirm that the method à posteriori, or that of specific experience, is altogether inefficacious in these sciences as a means of arriving at any considerable body of valuable truth; though it admits of being usually applied in aid of the method à priori, and even forms an indispensable supplement to it." 4 14. Now, we simply place these extracts before our readers, and ask-Is it not astonishing that they should proceed from the same writer, who enjoys a reputation as a logician? 1 Essays upon some unsettled questions of Political Economy, p. 141. 3 Ibid. p. 145. "Can such things be, And overcome us like a summer's cloud, Without our special wonder?" We shall postpone the consideration of the reasons alleged by Mill for maintaining this extraordinary doctrine, so plainly contradictory to what he himself had set forth in the previous extracts, until we have examined his assertion as to a matter of fact. He asserts that all the most distinguished Economists have treated it as an à priori science. We have already shewn that this assertion is utterly contrary to fact. J. B. Say, as we have shewn, expressly declares it to be an experimental science, and says that it is entirely founded on facts, and so far from sanctioning the à priori method of treating Political Economy, he expressly condemns those who do so. He says:-"Other considerations not less delicate relate to what precedes. Some writers of the eighteenth century, and of the dogmatic school of Quesnay, as well the English Economists of the school of David Ricardo, without employing algebraical formulæ evidently inapplicable to Political Economy, have wished to introduce into it a kind of reasoning, which as a general rule all sciences reject, which acknowledge no foundations but experience, I mean reasoning which rests on abstractions. . . . . When we admit as a basis, instead of a well-observed fact, a principle which is only founded on disputation, we are in danger of imitating the schoolmen of the Middle Ages, who disputed about words instead of discussing facts, and who proved to be quite beside the truth." And he gives instances where he considers, and in one at least justly, Ricardo and McCulloch to have fallen into error by adopting this method, and he dwells on the mischief produced in the Science by adopting this method. Speaking of Quesnay, he says:-"Instead of first observing the nature of things—namely, the way in which things really happen, classifying observations and educing general principles from them— they began by laying down abstract generalities, which they called Axioms, and which they taught were absolutely self-evident. They then tried to bring particular facts into accord with them, and deduced rules from them. This entangled them in the defence of maxims evidently contrary to good sense, and to the experience of ages."2 While fully acknowledging their excellence as men, and also the real services they performed to the State, he says:-"But, on the other hand, the Economists did harm by decrying several useful maxims, by making it be thought by their sectarian spirit, by the dogmatic and abstract language of most of their writings, by their 2 Ibid. p. 24. 1 Traité d'économic politique, p. 15. oracular tone, that all those who employed themselves in such researches were only dreamers, whose theories, however good they might seem in books, were inapplicable in practice." 3 He then points out that Adam Smith pursued exactly the opposite method-namely, the inductive method of educing principles from facts:"When we read Smith as he deserves to be read, we perceive that there was no Political Economy before him." Again :-"Before Smith many true laws had been brought forward. He was the first to shew why they were true. He did more: he has given the true method of pointing out errors: he has applied to Political Economy the new method of treating the Sciences, in not searching out their principles abstractedly, but in going to facts most constantly observed, to the general laws of which they are a consequence. As soon as a fact may have a cause, the spirit ofsystem decides that it is the cause. The analytical spirit wishes to know why such a cause produces such an effect, and to satisfy itself that it could not have been produced by any other cause. Smith's work is a collection of demonstrations which have raised many propositions to the rank of undoubted principles, and have plunged a greater number in the gulf where vague ideas and hypotheses, extravagant imaginations, struggle a short time, before being swallowed up for ever." Thus we see that Mill's assertion that all the most distinguished Economists have considered Political Economy as an à priori science, and have treated it so, is entirely disproved. Whether we agree on all points with Say is another matter, but every one must admit him to be a distinguished Economist, and we see plainly that he not only declares, in the most emphatic language, that it is an experimental and an inductive science, but he condemns by anticipation the very doctrines Mill has put forth in the extracts given above, and points out the mischievous effect they had already produced. We entirely concur in and adopt these views of Say. So far from all the most distinguished Economists having adopted the à priori method, it is only Ricardo and his followers who have done so in this country, and, as we shall shew in the subsequent part of this work, with the most pernicious consequences. 15. Having thus shewn that Mill is completely in error in his allegations of fact, and contradictory to himself on the method of investigation proper to the subject, we shall now examine the reasons he alleges for his last-mentioned doctrine. He says"There is a property common to almost all the moral sciences, and by which they are distinguished from many of the physical; that is, 3 Ibid. p 25. that it is seldom in our power to make experiments in them. In chemistry and natural philosophy, we can not only observe what happens under all the combinations of circumstances which nature brings together, but we may also try an indefinite number of new combinations. This we can seldom do in ethical and scarcely ever in political science. We cannot try forms of government, and systems of national policy, on a diminutive scale, in our laboratories; shaping our experiments as we think that they may most conduce to the advancement of knowledge. We therefore study Nature under circumstances of great disadvantage in these sciences, being confined to the limited number of experiments which take place (if we may so speak) of their own accord, without any preparation or management of ours, in circumstances, moreover, of great complexity, and never perfectly known to us, and with the far greater part of the processes concealed from our observation. "The consequence of this invariable defect in the materials of this induction, is that we can rarely obtain what Bacon has quaintly, but not inaptly, termed an experimentum crucis." Also"Since, therefore, it is vain to hope that truth can be arrived at, either in Political Economy or in any other department of the Social Science, while we look at the facts in the concrete, clothed in all the complexity with which Nature has surrounded them, and endeavour to elicit a general law by a process of induction from a comparison of details; there remains no other method than the à priori one, or that of abstract speculation."2 16. And that this opinion is no hasty or ill considered one, is evident, because Mill repeats the very same argument in his later work-"We have thus already come within sight of a conclusion which the progress of the inquiry will, I think, bring before us with the clearest evidence, namely, that in the sciences which deal with phenomena, in which artificial experiments are impossible (as in the case of Astronomy), or in which they have a very limited range (as in Physiology, Mental Philosophy, and the Social Science); induction from direct experience is practised at a disadvantage generally equivalent to impracticability, from which it follows that the methods in these sciences, in order to accomplish anything worthy of attainment, must be, to a great extent, if not principally, deductive. This is already known to be the case with the first of the sciences we have mentioned, astronomy; that it is not generally recognised as true of the others, is probably one of the reasons why they are 1 Essays upon some unsettled questions in Political Economy, p. 146. still in their infancy." And we must protest against Mill's doctrine -"The deductive method, which in the present state of knowledge is destined henceforth irrevocably to predominate in the cause of scientific investigation. A revolution is peaceably and progressively effecting itself in Philosophy, the reverse of that to which Bacon has attached his name. That great man changed the method of the sciences from deductive to experimental, and it is now rapidly reverting from experimental to deductive." 2 Of this doctrine we shall have something more to say hereafter. 17. Mill's reason, therefore, for maintaining in exact opposition to what he had done before, that Political Economy is not an Inductive Science, is that it is not possible to perform an unlimited number of experiments in it, as may be done in some physical sciences. The slightest reflection will show that this argument is quite untenable. It is not possible to perform experiments in Mental Philosophy, yet all the most distinguished cultivators of Psychology in modern times, have unanimously declared it to be an Inductive Science. is not possible to perform experiments in Comparative Philology, and yet, Max Müller strenuously urges that Comparative Philology is a physical Inductive Science. And it certainly would be most monstrous to declare that Comparative Philology is an à priori science. The power of performing experiments at will is by no means an essential feature of an Inductive Science, though, no doubt, it gives enormous advantages in some cases. It is rarely possible to perform experiments in Geology, yet if any one were to maintain that Geology is an abstract à priori science, few people now-a-days would care to listen to such a person. Mill's example of astronomy is scarcely relevant, because modern astronomy is undoubtedly founded on induction, and is only a branch of mechanics, which is certainly an Inductive Science. And there are many other sciences to which the preceding remarks are applicable. It is perfectly true that in Economics it is not generally possible to make experiments, except by those at the head of the State. We may therefore at once admit that a solitary inquirer has not the power of making an unlimited number of arbitrary experiments, and that he can only watch by direct observation those performed by the State, and these will be found to be amply sufficient for the purpose. But in Economics and the Moral Sciences generally-we can have what are in all respects equivalent to experiments- namely Feigned Cases. It is perfectly well known that when the application of a legal principle is doubtful, it is customary to feign a 1 Logic, bk. iii. c. 7, § 3. Logic, bk. iii. c. 13, § 7. C |