IN the preceding chapters of this work I have endeavoured to follow the evolution of the orthodox academical Economy from the time of the Mercantilists down to our own day, and have discussed in more or less detail practically all the main positions which have been taken up by its leading representatives; but before passing on to a consideration of the fresh germs of thought which have been dropped into it, as it were, at points here and there along its course by independent outside thinkers, I am anxious to gather up into a definite statement the results which have followed, and which in my opinion must follow, the statical method pursued by the orthodox and academical economists.

The first is, as indeed we might know beforehand, that no 'law' in the scientific sense of the term, whereby from something known you will be able to foresee something unknown, and on the result of which human action can be taken, can emerge from a science of Political Economy founded on a purely statical basis, inasmuch as every law is in its very nature a tendency, and always involves movement from one point to another, - whether it be direct, or by reaction and rebound, - or, in other words, it involves dynamical force. It always involves, besides, at least two different terms between which the law operates, and which it has to draw into a unity of relation. If it be a law of the human mind, for example, which is in question, then it must draw a relation between a thought, say, and a feeling, or between one kind of feeling and another, or between both of these and the will, or what not, - as is seen in the penetrating maxims of great poetic philosophers like Bacon, Carlyle, and Emerson, and in the interplay of action and passion in the dramas of great philosophic poets like Shakespeare and Goethe. Or, again, if it be a physical law that is in question, like gravitation, then the law must draw a relation between one body in space, and another but different body whose movement under the influence of the first the law seeks to determine.

But no law of any kind can be got out of the relation between two parts of the same thing, as between the two divisions of a stick, nor yet from its infinite subdivisions; and this, as we have seen, is precisely the present method of the academical Political Economists. Indeed one might almost go so far as to say that every step of their procedure is as if designed to prevent any real law whatever from emerging. Instead of keeping the different factors in direct relation with each other, their tendency has been more and more to isolate them, and to treat each in relation to itself alone, by mere subdivisions and margins of itself; with the result, as we have seen, that not only have they discovered no true law, but have fallen into the most convicted fallacies which the history of human thought affords, - perpetual motion, the 'flying arrow,' the confusion of the laws of dead with the laws of living things, the cutting of an organism from its environment and treating it as if it existed by itself alone, etc.

I am aware of course that many mathematical problems bearing on human life can be solved by statical methods; but that is only when the dynamical force or power which enters into them, and which is always presupposed in the background, can be dispensed with for the nonce, inasmuch as, like gravitation, it acts equally on all things alike from outside them; just as the water which envelopes alike all the fishes that swim in it, does not alter their relations with each other. But in all human Sciences like Political Economy, the dynamical powers concerned are the possessions of living individual human beings, are part of them as it were, and so tend to accumlate around and adhere to them; and are not like mere physical things, such as sea-sand which is washed on and off the beach with equal indifference as the tides and waves determine. And the consequence of this for the Academical Political Economists is, that they can get nothing more out of their Science than mere abstract definitions, or mere inventories of the various rules and practices of business men, digested into summary abstract formula which they dignify with the title of 'laws.' And although these are quite necessary for the purpose of teaching the elements of the Science to the youths for whom their textbooks are written, they are as barren as the rules of grammar; and will no more enable the pupil (as true laws ought to do) to construct an economic scheme, than definitions of the 'parts of speech or catalogues of the rules of grammar will enable a man to construct a sentence above the average, or to write a line of poetry above mediocrity.

What these statical dividers of single sentences into their separate clauses, with the proper use and disposition of verbs, adverbs, prepositions, etc., do, is to follow some recognised master of style who has furnished them with a model; in the same way as a grammar of music is but a pale abstract statical re-hash of the practice of the great musicians. It is the same with the statical Academical Economists who, to make up for the want of scientific 'laws' in their works, give minute analyses and elaborate abstract digests of the practices of the most successful business men in their industrial operations; so that the idea of a Government calling them in to advise, as is often done, on some economic problem, is as absurd as if on a medical one, they were to call in the newspaper reporters who had been sent around to report on the methods of the best men in the profession, instead of directly consulting the medical specialists themselves. And that I am not doing the academical economists an injustice in this impeachment of their methods, may be seen by a glance through any of their text-books, and in none more, perhaps, than in the works of Professor Marshall. For when not engaged in giving names to super-subtle distinctions which the ordinary business man takes for granted as truisms and matters of course, - such impressive looking abstractions for example as 'Marginal Utility,' 'Producers' Rent,' 'Consumers' Rent,' 'Composite Demand,' 'Composite Supply,' 'Quasi-Rent,' and the like, most of which ideas I have had to use in this volume without giving them these high-sounding names, and so boring the reader by elevating into importance platitudes he already knows, - Marshall is mostly occupied in discussing such a purely business question as the different modes of investment of capital; but discussing it, it must be admitted, not with any pretence of adding anything to the knowledge of the capitalists actually engaged in these operations, but simply of making a short-hand abstract transcript of them and the considerations which are operative in the mind of the capitalist in deciding to invest his capital in this or that way.