Page:Hull 1900 Petty's Place in the History of Economic Theory.djvu/14

320 clergyman of the pre-Darwinian era, he decided to demonstrate the being and attributes of God from his works of creation. While in the midst of that great argument, a chance reading of Graunt's book drew his attention to the constant relation subsisting between marriages, births, and burials. He recognized at once that this was but an admirable plan and management to keep the balance of mankind even; for, says he, "what can the maintaining throughout all ages and places of the proportions of mankind and all other creatures, this harmony in the generations of mankind, be but the work of One that ruleth the world?" Derham's lectures in no sense constitute a statistical work; and his incidental comments on Graunt and Petty would be unimportant in the history of statistics, had not their theological setting brought them to the hands of a Prussian military chaplain named Johann Peter Süssmilch. Süssmilch himself says that die göttliche Ordnung in den Veränderungen des menschlichen Geschlechtes first became clear to him while he was reading Derham's book; and he thereupon sent to England for the writings of Graunt and Petty, which were mentioned by Derham, and was in large part guided by them in producing his famous work. In view of these facts it is clear that the German historians of statistics are mistaken in making Süssmilch the father of vital statistics. The true beginnings of the science are to be found in the Observations on the Bills of Mortality of London. The author of that book thoroughly appreciated the importance of his work. He is the creator of statistics quite as truly as Boyle among his contemporaries is the father of chemistry, or Ray of botany, or as Newton was the originator of calculus. And it is not too much to say that no subsequent statistician has as yet modified Graunt's work so fundamentally as