Page:The wealth of nations, volume 1.djvu/19



is essentially a modern department of learning. It may be defined as the science which treats of the production, distribution and exchange of commodities. In the ancient world we have only fitful adumbrations of the conception of such a science. In the Middle Ages proper, as might naturally be expected, no advance is made. Indeed, the idea itself is even lost. Production was almost exclusively for use, and trade or exchange were so little developed that the economic aspect of things never presented itself distinctively. At the end of the fourteenth century, however, when the medieval order was gradually breaking up, and the germination of the modern industrial system was beginning to be apparent, a French bishop in the service of Charles V, of France, and a translator of Aristotle, revived the teaching of the great master of ancient speculation, but with no immediate results. Early in the sixteenth century, the famous astronomer and mathematician, Copernicus, wrote a treatise on the coining of money, again based on the principles of Aristotle; and toward the end of the century modern economic science began to take shape in the great mercantile theory which held sway more or less almost until the days of Adam Smith. Before his time there were, however, isolated writers who attacked with more or less perspicuity the fallacies of this theory, and had glimpses, in some cases not (9)