Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/531

 RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO ECONOMIC HISTORY I1 GERMANY WHEN I promised the Editor of the Economic Journal to give in one short essay a survey of the growth during the last few years of the literature of economic history in Germany, I believed it would be possible to condense within these narrow limits an epitome of the contents of each book, and briefly to indicate its special characteristics. To accomplish this I have confined myself generally to the last six years, 1885-90. I have eliminated all works of a strictly statistical, or strictly sociological nature, as for 'instance that by Lippert on the history of the family and the investigations in the history of property by Felix; I pass over the writings of Adler and Rosenthal on the organization o! the State-administration in Austria; I do not mention even Roscher's essays on the typical features of certain political constitutions (Naturlehre) cven though they brilliantly illustrate his method. And yet there still remains so large a number of publications calling for notice, that I shall be content if, by classifying them accurately and giving a few words of de- scription to the most important, I may effect something for the reader's guidance. Beginning with researches in the borderland of our subject, we come first to a series of articles by Schmoller, which he has been publishing since 1889 in his Jahrbuch, treating of the phenomena of the division of labour and of the fimction of the entrepreneur, both of which he interprets in the light of historical development. In so doing he opens up an interesting perspective of what might be made of a theory of political economy upon a basis of historical sociology. Turning from a confessed attempt to found afresh as well as reconstruct an existing science, we are confronted by efforts to instil a new spirit into the modern science of finance, which has