These general principles affect the economic no less than other branches of social speculation;and with respect to thatdepartment of inquiry they lead to important results.They show that the idea of forming a true theory of the economic frameand working of society apart from its other sides is illusory.Such study is indeed provisionally indispensable,but no rationaltheory of the economic organs and functions of society can be constructed if they are considered as isolated from the rest.Inother words,a separate economic science is,strictly speaking,an impossibility,as representing only one portion of acomplex organism,all whose parts and their actions are in a constant relation of correspondence and reciprocal modification.
Hence,too,it will follow that,whatever useful indications may be derived from our general knowledge of individual humannature,the economic structure of society and its mode of development cannot be deductively foreseen,but must beascertained by direct historical investigation.We have said "its mode of development ";for it is obvious that,as of everysocial element,so of the economic factor in human affairs,there must be a dynamical doctrine,a theory of the successivephases of the economic condition of society yet in the accepted systems this was a desideratum,nothing but some partial andfragmentary notions on this whole side of the subject being yet extant.(3)And,further,the economic structure and workingof one historic stage being different from those of another,we must abandon the idea of an absolute system possessinguniversal validity,and substitute that of a series of such systems,in which,however,the succession is not at all arbitrary,butis itself regulated by law.
Though Comte's enterprise was a constructive one,his aim being the foundation of a scientific theory of society,he couldnot avoid criticising the labours of those who before him had treated several branches of social inquiry.Amongst them theeconomists were necessarily considered;and he urged or implied,in various places of his above-named work,as well as ofhis Politique Positive ,objections to their general ideas and methods of procedure essentially the same with those which westated in speaking of Ricardo and his followers.J.S.Mill shows himself much irritated by these comments,and remarks onthem as showing"how extremely superficial M.Comte"(whom he yet regards as a thinker quite comparable with Descartesand Leibnitz)"could sometimes be,"an unfortunate observation,which he would scarcely have made if he could haveforeseen the subsequent march of European thought,and the large degree in which the main points of Comte's criticism havebeen accepted or independently reproduced.
GERMANY
The second manifestation of this new movement in economic science was the appearance of the German historical school.
The views of this school do not appear to have arisen,like Comte's theory of sociological method,out of generalphilosophic ideas;they seem rather to have been suggested by an extension to the economic field of the conceptions of thehistorical school of jurisprudence of which Savigny was the most eminent representative.The juristic system is not a fixedsocial phenomenon,but is variable from one stage in the progress of society to another;it is in vital relation with the othercoexistent social factors;and what is,in the jural sphere,adapted to one period of development,is often unfit for another.
These ideas were seen to be applicable to the economic system also;the relative point of view was thus reached,and theabsolute attitude was found to be untenable.Cosmopolitanism in theory,or the assumption of a system equally true of everycountry,and what has been called perpetualism,or the assumption of a system applicable to every social stage,were alikediscredited.And so the German historical school appears to have taken its rise.
Omitting preparatory indications and undeveloped germs of doctrine,we must trace the origin of the school to WilhelmRoscher (18171894).Its fundamental principles are stated,though with some hesitation,and with an unfortunate contrastof the historical with the"philosophical "method,(4)in his Grundriss zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirthschaft nachgeschichtlicher Methode (1843).The following are the leading heads insisted on in the preface to that work.
