example: rather it represents a rule holding extensively throughout chemical combination. In inorganic chemistry the salts are in general easily decomposed, while the less complex elements composing them-the oxides of the metals and the acids are mostly of very difficult analysis. And in organic compounds a similar rule prevails. So far, therefore, the relation between complexity and solidarity appears to be the reverse of that for which M. Comte contends. The case just considered illustrates the incidents of complexity within the range of a single order of relations. How stands the fact when the orders of relation exemplified in the phenomena are different? For example, water possesses, besides chemical, mechanical, optical, electrical, and other physical properties. Is it true that, as between these several orders of physical phenomena, the solidarity is, as M. Comte asserts, "little pronounced ?"—that the chemical, mechanical, optical, and electrical attributes of water are but slightly interdependent-less interdependent than, for example, physiological and moral qualities in a human being, or political and industrial conditions in a body politic? No one denies that there is here also solidarity; but the question is, not as to the existence of solidarity, but as to the degree. What M. Comte had to show was that the solidarity of co-operating agencies was greater in the case of the phenomena of society than in that of the phenomena of the physical world-so much greater as to necessitate in their case an inversion of the method of investigation practised in the study of physical nature; but to establish this he has not advanced a particle of proof. For my part, I can imagine no more eminent example of the solidarity of forces than that presented by the most ordinary phenomena of the physical world—the ebb and flow of the tides, the succession of the seasons, the freezing and thawing of water, a shower of rain, a drop of dew. Yet this has been no bar in the study of these phenomena to the employment of methods which M. Comte would nevertheless exclude from the domain of social science on the ground that its phenomena are solidaire.

So much for the grounds of general philosophy on which M. Comte relies in refusing to recognise Political Economy as a science; and he finds, as he conceives, corroboration of the soundness of the view he has taken in the history and actual condition of economic speculation. M. Comte opens his criticisms on the history and existing state of Political Economy with the remark, that its scientific pretensions could not well have been otherwise than inane, considering the sort of persons by whom it has been cultivated. These have, he tells us, nearly all proceeded "from the ranks of advocates and littérateurs":"Strangers by their education, even with regard to the least important phenomena, to every idea of scientific observa

(1) Philosophie Positive, vol. iv. p. 266.

tion, to every notion of natural law, to every sentiment of true demonstration, it was impossible for them, whatever might have been the intrinsic force of their intelligence, to apply duly to the complicated problems of society a method of reasoning of which they were wholly ignorant of the most simple applications,—destitute, as they were, of any other philosophical preparation than certain vague and inadequate precepts of general logic." From this sweeping characterisation he excepts Adam Smith, and Adam Smith alone, whose judgment is commended in having avoided the "vain pretension" of founding a special science, and in confining the aim of his work to the elucidation of some detached points of social philosophy. But with the single exception of the "Wealth of Nations," the whole dogmatic portion of the pretended science presents, according to M. Comte, the simple metaphysical character

-a phrase which, as M. Comte's readers are aware, supplies the strongest form of reprobation known to the Comtian vocabulary. Of the truth of this conclusion, if further evidence were needed, ample is found in "the avowal, spontaneous and decisive, of the respectable Tracy," implied "in the execution of his treatise on Political Economy as a fourth part, between Logics and Ethics, of his general treatise on Ideology."

The impression which these comments will leave on readers acquainted with the leading economical writers of France and England, will scarcely, I should think, be favourable to M. Comte's candour and sagacity. It is, in fact, quite evident that M. Comte had no effective knowledge of the branch of science which he denounced; and it is scarcely credible that he could even have remembered, as he wrote the passage from which I have made the above extracts, who its cultivators had been; for the list includes, to mention no others, the names of Turgot, Hume, Bentham, Ricardo, and the two Mills. There need be no hesitation in saying, and the remark implies no disrespect to M. Comte, that any one of these writers had quite as accurate a conception of what constitutes a law of nature, and of the sort of proof by which a law of nature is established, as M. Comte himself. It would seem, indeed, as if M. Comte's mind lost its proper balance and edge on coming into contact with Political Economy. He not only forgets what is due to the able thinkers who preceded him, and who-would he but believe it —were his fellow-labourers in building up that science of society of which he wished to constitute himself the sole and exclusive founder, but his sense of logical cogency seems to fail him: I know not how else to account for his reference to the collocation of topics adopted by M. Destutt de Tracy in his treatise on Ideology, as "decisive" evidence of the unpositive character of Political Economy. What M. Comte's reasons were for excepting Adam Smith from the genera condemnation passed upon the cultivators of economic science, it is

not easy to surmise. One is almost tempted to believe that his acquaintance with the eminent masters in the science was confined to the author of the "Wealth of Nations." Had he known, for example, and to mention no other instances, Turgot's brief but pregnant "Essai sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses " -a work for which his biographer Condorcet, not unreasonably, prefers the claim of being "the germ of the Wealth of Nations' " -or Ricardo's "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation," it is not easy to believe that he could have committed himself to a distinction, not less unjust than invidious. Two works more thoroughly saturated with the severest spirit of the Positive Philosophy would not easily be found in the literature of scientific speculation.

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But, passing from the personal question, M. Comte proposes to try the Positive character of economical speculation by two tests— continuity" and "fecundity." These qualities, he remarks, are the least equivocal symptoms of really scientific conceptions. "When the work of the present time, instead of presenting itself as the spontaneous sequel and gradual consummation of former work, takes, in the case of each new author, a character essentially personal; and the most fundamental notions are incessantly brought into question; when the dogmatic constitution of a science, far from engendering any sustained progress, results habitually in the sterile reproduction of illusory controversies, ever renewed, never advancing; when these indications are found, there we may be certain we have to do, not with positive science, but with theological or metaphysical dissertation. Now is not this the spectacle which Political Economy has presented for half a century? If our economists are in reality the scientific successors of Adam Smith, let them show us in what particulars they have effectively improved and completed the doctrine of that immortal master, what discoveries really new they have added to his original felicitous aperçus?"

one.

The tests proposed are indubitably sound. The challenge is a fair If Political Economy cannot make good its pretensions by the criteria of continuity and fecundity, it deserves to be relegated to the limbo to which M. Comte consigns it.

But in proceeding to the ordeal it is necessary to distinguish. There would, it must at once be admitted, be no difficulty in showing that a great deal of writing on economical subjects, now no less than when M. Comte published his criticisms, is of the sort which he describes as metaphysical,- that is to say, vague, "personal," full of "sterile and illusory controversies;" it must further be acknowledged that this style of writing prevails to a far larger extent in the discussions of Political Economy than in those of any physical science. The least reflection, however, will show, what has often been pointed out, that this incident of economic speculation is

quite inevitable. It results from two circumstances: first, the intimate relation in which social questions, economic included, stand to personal and class concerns, and through them to general politics, and the keen interest consequently felt in such questions by the general public; and, secondly, the absence of a technical nomenclature and the necessity which hence arises for employing popular language in the exposition of the doctrines of social and economic science. The inevitable consequence of this state of things has been to draw into the arena of this branch of controversy a crowd of unqualified persons. The incident, however, is not peculiar to Political Economy; and, if a science is to be made responsible for all the unscientific and superficial argumentation to which it gives occasion, Sociology would have quite as much, perhaps rather more, to answer for than economic science. The question, therefore, cannot be decided by extracts drawn at random from the miscellaneous literature of economic discussion: it is not by extracts from such sources, but by the doctrines of the science as expounded in the works of acknowledged masters, that the issue must be determined. From the writings of M. Comte's avocats and littérateurs I must appeal to those of Malthus, of Say, of Ricardo, of Tooke, of Senior, of Mill. These I take to be the veritable scientific successors of Adam Smith-after him and Turgot, the true founders and accredited expositors of economic doctrine. Limiting the controversy to this arena, I venture to assert that a more remarkable example of continuity of doctrine, of development of seminal ideas, of original aperçus extended, corrected, occasionally re-cast, of new discoveries supplementing, sometimes modifying, the old-in short, of all the indications of progressive science—will not easily be found even in the history of physical speculation.1

The portion of economic science which Adam Smith carried furthest, and in which he left least for his successors to correct or supplement, is probably the theory of production. With true instinct he fixed on labour and land as the great original sources of wealth. Of these, the factor furnished by nature being a constant force, he saw that the progress of wealth must depend on the progressive efficiency of that other agency which man contributed. The problem of production thus resolved itself into ascertaining the conditions determining the efficiency of human industry. These conditions he grouped under three leading categories-division of labour, machinery, and the accumulation of capital. Such, stated in a few

(1) "L'économie politique," says M. Courcelle Seneuil, "bien que jeune encore, présente une suite de travaux dont l'objet, le but et la méthode, sont les mêmes, qui forment un corps, établissent une tradition et des croyances communes, une science enfin dans laquelle les conceptions, même fautives et imparfaites servent à éléver des théories moins fautives et moins imparfaites; dans laquelle chaque vérité découverte est recueillie et conservée et chaque erreur signalée comme un écueil à éviter."

words, is the theory of production propounded in the "Wealth of Nations." It has been submitted by his successors to a searching criticism; but it has emerged from the ordeal, in the main, unaffected as regards the essence of the doctrines, though more or less modified in detail. Land-though, without doing much violence to language, we may extend the term to cover all that the land contains, all the material objects, therefore, which form the subjectmatter of wealth, and even those productive powers resident in the earth-can yet scarcely be understood as comprising the forces in general of physical nature. Adam Smith, at all events, did not so employ the term; and, accordingly, his generalisation of the sources of wealth into land and labour is defective in not paying sufficient regard to the part performed in production by these latter agencies. As he overlooked their co-operation, so he necessarily failed to perceive the conditions on which it was rendered, and the consequences involved in the varying efficacy of those conditions-an omission which has been supplied by his successors, with important consequences in the general theory of economic development. Again, his conception of capital has been carefully sifted by more than one later writer, and has been cleared in the process of discussion of some extraneous elements which obscured the true nature of the functions performed by that agent of production. Division of labour, again, which he regarded mainly in its more obvious applications, has been shown to be a particular case of a larger principle, co-operation, which embraces not merely the class of phenomena adverted to by Adam Smith, but the great transactions of international commerce, and industrial organisation in its most extended sense. Subject to modifications of this minor kind, however, the doctrines of Adam Smith, in the theory of production, have been retained, and remain an integral portion of the existing body of economic science.

Passing to another field, and turning to his speculations on the phenomena of exchange value, one may with great truth apply to them what M. Say has said of his entire work: "The more we extend our knowledge of Political Economy, the more highly we shall appreciate both what he has done and what he has left for others to do." There are passages in the "Wealth of Nations" which touch the very core of the true theory of value. When, for example, he says: "The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people: "—when, again, he says: "Labour was the first price-the original purchase money that was paid for all things,"

(1) Turgot also saw in industrial production the original act of exchange: “L'homme est encore seul; la nature seule fournit à ses besoins, et déjà il fait avec elle un premier