CONCLUSION
Can a history of economic doctrines really be said to have a conclusion?
It is obviously impossible to regard the history of any science as complete so long as that science itself is not definitely constituted. This applies to all sciences alike, even to the more advanced—physics, chemistry, and mathematics, for example, all of which are continuously undergoing some modification, abandoning in the course of their progress certain conceptions that were formerly regarded as useful, but which now appear antiquated, and adopting others which, if not entirely new, are at least more comprehensive and more fruitful. And not only is this true of individual sciences, but it is equally true of the very conception of science itself. Progress in the sciences involves a modification of our ideas concerning science. The savant, to-day as of yore, is engaged in the pursuit of truth, but the conception of scientific truth at the beginning of the twentieth century is not what it was at the beginning of the nineteenth, and everything points to still further modifications of that conception in the future. It is scarcely to be expected that political economy, a young science hardly out of its swaddling-clothes, will prove itself less mutable than the sciences already mentioned. All that the historian is permitted to do is to point to the distance already traversed, without pretending to be able to guess the character of the road that still remains to be covered. His object must be to appreciate the nature of the tasks that now await the economist, and for this his study of the efforts put forth in the past, to which the preceding chapters bear record, should prove of some assistance.
A simple analogy will perhaps help us to gauge the kind of impression left upon us by a study of a century and a half of economic ideas. Imagine ourselves looking at a fan spread out in front of us. At the handle the separate radii are so closely packed together that they appear to form a single block. But as the eye travels towards the circumference the branches gradually separate from one another until they finally assume quite divergent positions. But their separation is not complete, and the more they are spread out the easier it is to detect the presence of the tissue that forms a common bond between the various sections of the fan and constitutes the basis of a new unity which is quite as powerful, if not perhaps more so, than the unity which results from their superposition at the base.
So it was with the Physiocrats, and still more with Adam Smith, whose theory of political economy was a doctrine of such beautiful simplicity that the human mind could grasp it at a single glance. But as time went on and the science progressed it was realised that the unity which characterised it at first was more apparent than real. The contradictory theories which Smith had seemed able to reconcile gave rise to new currents of thought, which tended to drift farther and farther apart as they assumed a greater degree of independence. Conflicting theories of distribution and of value began to take the field, and quarrels arose over the relative merits of the abstract and the historical method, or the claims of society and the rights of the individual. With a view to self-defence, each of these schools took its own path, which it followed with varied fortune, including not a few setbacks. Each of them also surrounded itself with a network of observations and inductions, thus bringing into the common fund a wealth of new truths and useful conclusions. All this has resulted in the gradual formation, around each great current of economic thought, of a thick enveloping layer of great resistance and of increasing extent, which constitutes a kind of common scientific matrix uniting them together, and underneath which may still be detected the salient features of the great systems. What strikes us now is not the multiplicity of branches which go to make up the fan, but the presence of the common tissue in which, especially towards the circumference, the different radii seem to lose themselves and to disappear altogether. In other words, the sum total of acquired truths is the only legacy left us by the various systems of the past, and this is the only thing that interests us to-day.
Hence one result of so much discussion and polemical warfare has been the discovery of some common ground upon which all economists, whatever their social and political aspirations, can meet. This common ground is the domain of economic science—a science that is concerned, not with the presentation of what ought to be, but with the explanation and the thorough understanding of what actually exists. The superiority of a theory is measured solely by its explanatory power. It matters little whether its author be Interventionist or Liberal, Protectionist or Free Trader, Socialist or Individualist—everyone must necessarily bow before an exact observation or a scientific explanation.
But while these divergent schools tend to be lost in the unity of a more fully comprehended science, we see the emergence of other divisions, less scientific perhaps, but much more fertile so far as the progress of the science itself is concerned. It seems as if a new kind of fan arrangement were making its appearance underneath the old.
This is obviously the case with regard to method, for example, where the separation between pure and descriptive economics, or between the theoretical systematisation and the mere observation of concrete phenomena, is becoming very pronounced. Both kinds of research are equally necessary, and demand different mental qualities which are very seldom found combined in the same person. Economic science, however, cannot afford to dispense either with theory or observation. The desire to seize hold of the chain of economic phenomena and to unravel its secret connections is as strong as ever it was. On the other hand, in view of the transformation and the daily modifications which industry everywhere seems to be undergoing, it is useless to imagine that we can dispense with the task of observing and describing these. The two methods are developing and progressing together, and the violent quarrels as to their respective merits appear to be definitely laid at rest.