Page:The wealth of nations, volume 1.djvu/43

 hard and fast conclusions and pretended laws of the orthodox economy, but his intellect saw no effectual means of escaping them. In consequence, his book is an alternation of clear statements of the current views and confused attempts to evade their consequences.

The recent developments of Socialist economy, combined with general economic conditions, have resulted in the formation of a school of economists called in Germany the "Katheder-Sozialisten," or the "Socialists of the Professorial Chair," which, while criticising the classical economy, both as to premises and conclusions, recognizes its fundamental principles, and seeks to harmonize them with rejection of laissez-faire and a systematized State regulation of industrial relations. Among its representatives the names of Held, Rösler, and Wagner are the most prominent. Schäffle may also be noticed in this connection, though, in some respects, leaning more to the Socialist side. Similar tendencies have not been wanting on other parts of the continent or in this country. Prominent among non-German exponents of this school, though differing in the degree of their alienation from the orthodox system, as well as in the nature of their results, are the Belgian writer Laveleye and the English economists Jevons and Sidgwick. Emile de Laveleye would apparently refuse to recognize the existence of any determinate lines of economic development, and hence of economics at all as a science. He would thus reduce the solution of the whole question to the goodwill of individuals, a position which necessarily cuts at the root of the historical method, though the only consistent one for the Christian or Sentimental Socialist to adopt.

A very different writer, Professor Henry Sidgwick, is