Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/158

 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. order to compare two sciences, to distinguish their relations, it is necessary in the beginning to give each of them a precise definition. As to political economy we may accept the current definition: political economy is the science of wealth—the science of the processes of production, circulation, distribution and consumption of material objects useful to human life. We remark immediately, however, that in this definition we consider political economy as a science only, not as an art. This discrimination of economic science from economic art is familiar. Science is the study of facts as they are. Art is an effort to organize things as we wish them to be. Art and science to be sure both speak of laws, but with this difference. For science, laws are, according to the formula of Montesquieu, "necessary relations which spring from the nature of things." They are formulas, derived by induction, which sum up the relations of coexistence and of succession found to be constant in the facts studied. For art, on the contrary, laws are a priori precepts, which claim domination over all application and all practice. Hence laws are for science the goal, for art the point of departure.