The theme of the book is handled with,perhaps,an undue degree of expansion and detail.The author exhibits much sagacityas well as learning,and criticises effectively the errors,inconsistencies,and exaggerations of his predecessors.But incharacterising and vindicating the historical method he has added nothing to Comte.A second edition of his treatise waspublished in 1883,and in this he makes the singular confession that,when he wrote in 1852,the Philosophie Positive ,thesix volumes of which had appeared from 1830to 1842,was entirely unknown to him and,he adds,probably to all Germaneconomists.This is not to the credit of their open-mindedness or literary vigilance,if we remember that Mill was already incorrespondence with Comte in 1841,and that his eulogistic notice of him in the Logic appeared in 1843.When,however,Knies at a later period examined Comte's work,he was,he tells us,surprised at finding in it so many anticipations of,or"parallelisms"with,his own conclusions.And well he might;for all that is really valuable in his methodology is to be foundin Comte,applied on a larger scale,and designed with the broad and commanding power which marks the dii majores ofphilosophy.
There are two points which seem to be open to criticism in the position taken by some German economists of the historicalschool.
1.Knies and some other writers,in maintaining the principle of relativity in economic theory,appear not to preserve the duebalance in one particular.The two forms of absolutism in doctrine,cosmopolitanism and what Knies calls perpetualism,heseems to place on exactly the same footing;in other words,he considers the error of overlooking varieties of localcircumstances and nationality to be quite as serious as that of neglecting differences in the stage of historical development.
But this is certainly not so.In every branch of Sociology the latter is much the graver error,vitiating radically,wherever it isfound,the whole of our investigations.If we ignore the fact,or mistake the direction,of the social movement,we are wrongin the most fundamental point of alla point,too,which is involved in every question.But the variations depending ondifference of race,as affecting bodily and mental endowment,or on diversity of external situation,are secondary phenomenaonly;they must be postponed in studying the general theory of social development,and taken into account afterwards whenwe come to examine the modifications in the character of the development arising out of peculiar conditions.And,thoughthe physical nature of a territory is a condition which is likely to operate with special force on economic phenomena,it israther on the technical forms and comparative extension of the several branches of industry that it will act than on the socialconduct of each branch,or the co-ordination and relative action of all,which latter are the proper subjects of the inquiries ofthe economist.
2.Some members of the school appear,in their anxiety to assert the relativity of the science,to fall into the error of denyingeconomic laws altogether;they are at least unwilling to speak of "natural laws"in relation to the economic world.From atoo exclusive consideration of law in the inorganic sphere,they regard this phraseology as binding them to the notion offixity and of an invariable system of practical economy.But,if we turn our attention rather to the organic sciences,whichare more kindred to the social,we shall see that the term "natural law"carries with it no such implication.As we have morethan once indicated,an essential part of the idea of life is that of development,in other words,of "ordered change."And thatsuch a development takes place in the constitution and working of society in all its elements is a fact which cannot bedoubted,and which these writers themselves,emphatically assert.That there exist between the several social elements suchrelations as make the change of one element involve or determine the change of another is equally plain;and why the nameof natural laws should be denied to such constant relations of coexistence and succession it is not easy to see.These laws,being universal,admit of the construction of an abstract theory of economic development;whilst a part of the Germanhistorical school tends to substitute for such a theory a mere description of different national economies,introducingprematurelyas we have pointed outthe action of special territorial or ethnological conditions,instead of reserving this asthe ground of later modifications,in concrete cases,of the primary general laws deduced from a study of the commonhuman evolution.
