repairing bit by bit, whose search for shortcuts and easier paths may be rewarded, but also frustrated. There is the disposition to pause and ponder, to change one's mind or to see the landscape from changing standpoints; and this influences history no less than religious conversions.

A critique, likewise, may turn either to details or to cardinal points in a doctrine. We may disagree with the conclusions in general or with a few of a considerable mass. We may fail to see the validity of premises, or detect fallacies in deduction, or take exception to technical devices for measurement and correlation. Where verification is out of the question reasoning is more likely to be scrutinized closely than in cases that lend themselves readily to an objective test. If the perceivable facts about us belie a statement of science it will not be long before the critic has made his point. Otherwise a more arduous duty is before him. Sciences, e. g., claim methods in part peculiarly their own, or they rely upon premises which form the end results of another group of inquiry. The instruments for computation are perhaps found to lack more than the accustomed degree of precision; or conclusions and premises meet with approval, but the way they are coupled together provokes our censure. The history of any one science such as economics may therefore be attacked from several points, but what counts finally is not the length of argument or manner of exposition, but the net sum of revisions deemed necessary. Results once more measure

effort!

Now, as regards the science of economics, the critical approach will be either predominantly practical or theoretical; and any review of its growth is likely to exhibit here and there the choice made.

In a utilitarian spirit we may point to the existing socio-economic evils, of which there are surely enough, and ask whether they are an unavoidable part of progress at any given stage, or chiefly the result of mistakes, of ignorance, and carelessness that will automatically correct itself as soon as social processes are studied more earnestly than they have been up to date. In recent years of course students of these phenomena have been given a hearing and somewhat of a chance to test the applicability of their doctrines. People have been willing, in growing number, to accept the opinion of specialists. However, on the other hand, the skeptical attitude has always seemed natural because of the elusive character of so much that is important in social investigation. Men have despaired of getting light on their practical questions by going to the theorist. The prevailing note has been: Economics has been over-confident, not to say over-pretentious and officious. Evils will continue to

exist because no rationale of meliorism will ever be found, because there is no such thing as a scientific, systematic way of improving the lot of mankind. Progress is real, but it cannot be forced. Economics, therefore, has been a failure and will go on failing in so far as legislation must designedly ignore it. Rough estimates alone are possible. A knowledge of human nature gained at first hand is safer than any amount of abstraction offered by experts.

Scientists, however, will not dismiss the subject so lightly. To them the theoretical approach to any critique of their work or that of another is the only one worth while. As they see it, the important thing is not an assigning of guilt or an acquittal from a moral standpoint, but a probing into data, methods, and conclusions so far as a science has reached any. The ever repeated

query is: Do the principles enunciated square with the facts? Do they reflect the best knowledge of the day in allied fields of research? Do they rest on sound reasoning and a correct use of hypotheses? As to the now dominant economic system, for instance, is it self-consistent and fashioned out of materials, with the help of premises, that meet our experiences where they are available? And so far as the premises are concerned, on which hinges so much, do they substantially agree with the verdict of the science whence they were taken, or are readjustments and cancellations in order?

It is undoubtedly true that some sciences, in spite of the revisions found necessary from time to time, have nonetheless a residuum that is continuous and as near axiomatic as experimental methods can make them; while the social scientist or the philosopher treats of questions apparently never settled. The revaluation is partial in one case, and complete in the next. The alterations occur seldom in the first instance, separated by long intervals of time, and frequently in the next where one viewpoint seems as legitimate as a second and third. How are we to explain this difference, how to remove it if we can, how to accept it and yet feel entitled to the most serious consideration by outsiders? The question is as old as it is possibly unanswerable, but a severely critical attitude toward, e. g., economics must reckon with it sooner or later.

The larger issue raised a while ago takes on therefore a more engaging aspect. One is constrained to inquire just exactly what science is anyway, what the tests for any one, what the limits within which methods or applications may vary. The history of economics abounds in attempts to find a solution of this problem. From the outset men have sought to prove the scientific nature of

economics, to formulate definite laws of much breadth of operation and lasting value. The idea of law has engrossed philosophers and social scientists more perhaps than the investigators who have furnished the bulk of our scientific information. Again and again leading economists have expatiated on the inward nature of social regularities, on means and ways for getting at them, on initial steps by which a deductive or inductive mode of inference should assure us permanent fruits. To find truths independent of a single system of production or exchange, to make applicable to all nations what the life of any one revealed, to bring under a single central theme the richest variety of phenomena, all this has been the ambition of a Smith, Mill, Carey, and Jevons. Nothing was neglected to make conclusive the argument brought before the reader. The whole range of topics, once the sphere par excellence of philosophy, was scanned in order to find unity amid diversity. Thus a history of economics has to deal incidentally with questions not turning on price, distribution, or production. The founders cultivated a broad viewpoint. They strove to get at the roots of an ultimate problem of prosperity, explaining not merely why supply and demand are equalized, but how the weal of mankind might be deliberately fostered. In other words, pragmatic and purely theoretical aspects were never separated completely. It was a persistent search for ultimates rather than for values immediately at hand.

Hence the recurrent inquiry into what is fact and what fancy, what the relation between things and thought, what the control exercisable by mind over matter. Economists from time to time made these queries basic to others. They wished to know what reality was, what the nature of control or of causation, of law and will, of truth and

virtue, and the relation of one to the next. The Is and the Ought, repetition in history and possibilities of progress, such and like fundamentals were touched upon by men whose nearby field was wealth and income. A critic of economics in its present condition must take cognizance of these speculations, and the historian must record them if his survey is to have a perspective.