Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/442

 420 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL ment c]sintresss, ont souvent donn lieu , des rapprochements curieux' entre les Romains et les Anglo-Saxons.' M. Deloume has put together the authorities touching these matters, given a' useful summary of the bearings of Roman law upon dealers in money, and drawn out many points in contrast between ancient and modern capitalists. But we do not know that he has greatly extended the borders of knowledge. He is somewhat inaccurate in small points, and we cannot avoid an uneasy feeling on finding Polybius, Plutarch, and Appian, quoted in Latin, and sometimes in very curious Latin. FmNLm T. RCnRX)S. .The Scope and Method of Political Economy. By JOHN Nr. VLLr, S Kr. yNr. S, M.A. London: Macmillan & Co. MR. KErNES' first laurels were won in the com;aratively barren field of formal logic. He now has obtained an equally brilliant triumph by an attack on the most arduous parts of the material or inductive logic. It used to be true, according to Bagehot, of books relating to currency that the first question asked, perhaps the only curiosity felt, by most readers was directed to the Bank Act of 1844: was the author for or against that measure ? With equal truth it may be said that interest in a work relating to the method of Economics centres round the issues raised in recent years by the writers who have revolted against the abuse of abstract dogmas. We once heard the question put to a lecturer: ' Are you in favour of, the Old or the New Political Economy ?' ' I am in favour of the true Political Economy,' the person thus interrogated replied with sufcient readiness. We imagine that Mr. Keynes' answer to a question which had better not be asked would be very similar. ' The method of political economy cannot adequately be described by any single phrase,' he says justly. The Hallam of methodologists, he gives complete satisfaction to the partisans of neither extreme. ' No one method will be advocated to the entire exclusion of other methods.. ' If pure 'induction is inadequate, pure deduction is equally inade- quate. It is a mistake, that is only too common, to set up these methods in mutual opposition, as if the employment of either of them excluded the employment of the other. It is on the contrary by their unprejudice(] combination alone that any complete development of economic science is possible. For, as Professor Cohn remarks, all induction is blind, so long as the deduction of causal connection is left out of account; and all deduction is barren, so long as it does not start from observation.' This we hold to be the right faith concerning the double nature of economic methocl: in a just mean between the monophysite heresies at each extreme. It is significant that Mr. Keynes illustrating this doc- trine should have cited Professor Cobh, whose name is sometimes asso- ciated with a one-sided historical sect. The cllcta and examples of Pro-