Purely Economical View of History Engels more Philosophical than Marx Utopian and Scientific Socialism how Distinguished Hegel's Dialectic, Conservative and Revolutionary Materialistic View of History . RELATION OF ECONOMICS TO THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Higher Form of Natural Selection, Group against Group Disunion of Socialists in Regard to Darwinism Darwinism and Evolution in (1) Theory of Wealth INTRODUCTION. POLITICAL ECONOMY, or the study of the relation of human society to its material wealth, and PHILOSOPHY, or the study of first principles and ultimate issues, have at various times exerted an influence on one another which the history of economics and philosophy makes very evident. Economical facts and practice, the actual condition of national industries, wealth, and trade, as distinguished from theories about them, have, no doubt, had a still greater influence, both on economists and philosophers; and to estimate this effect of practice on theory would be a larger and perhaps a more important inquiry. Some writers have regarded this second inquiry as almost superseding the other, on the ground that the supreme force in human history is economical. It is clear that we may at least go as far as Erdmann, who begins his chapters on Greek Philosophy with the remark that philosophy arises when the struggle for existence has given place to a life of leisure.2 But it is only the former question that can be considered here, namely, how far men's thoughts about the world, and human life in general, have affected their thoughts about the economical element of human life in particular, and how far this influence of thoughts upon thoughts may have been mutual. The subject cannot, in the limits of a single volume, be treated in full detail; but by the aid of the references the reader may supply this defect if he will. As a separate study, Economics comes very late; and See below, Book V. 2 Erdmann, Hist. of Philos., vol. i. p. 17, § 18. in our historical retrospect we shall be looking for answers to questions which have not always been consciously present to the authors embraced in our scrutiny. From the vantage ground of the comparatively complete and systematic economic doctrine of modern times, we shall be seeking in past philosophies for materials out of which to construct their answers to our questions. In one sense, of course, no study is separate; no single study can deal exclusively and exhaustively with every aspect of a selected subject. Least of all can any claim to exhaustiveness and exclusiveness be made by a science dealing with so concrete a subject as the material wealth of human society. Modern writers, who pursue economics as a separate study, accept such data and such help from other special studies as they cannot refuse without lapsing into unreality; and the extent of this necessary debt is very considerable. At the same time they are not merely borrowers; they are giving special consideration to subjects and aspects not specially considered by the studies that give the data and the help, and they make a contribution of their own to human knowledge. The economist looks at the phenomena of human wants and the material means of satisfying them simply as given causes, while to Psychology, Physiology, and Physics, the said phenomena are effects to be traced to remoter causes. He considers, for example, that the conditions of distribution or the causes of a particular system of property in land, or in movable goods, are subjects for History to investigate. More especially at the two ends of economical inquiry, at the beginning when dealing with wants and the means of satisfying them, and at the end when dealing with the economical aspects of the body politic, and of even larger groups of men, economic science becomes conscious of its shortcomings. Its students are forced to remember from how much, when merely economists, they have abstracted; and they are compelled to seek light from other and complementary branches of the study of human society. Not only at the end and the beginning, but even in the centre of their inquiries, they may well feel this need. Perhaps the most striking phenomenon observed by all economists, is the apparently spontaneous organization of |