[837] Vol. ii, p. 502.
[838] Logic, vol. ii, p. 497.
[839] Principles, Book I, chap. 5, § 9.
[840] Marshall, Principles, Book I, chap. 5, § 7.
[841] Zur Litteraturgeschichte, p. 279.
[842] Untersuchungen über die Methode, p. 279.
[843] The English economists, even the most eminent, are often mistaken, says Wagner (Grundlegung, chap. 4, § 4), but their errors are not to be imputed to their method so much as to the use they make of it. And Menger, who so energetically undertook the defence of deduction, further undertakes to renew the Classical theories. Economic theory, says he, as constituted by the English Classical school, has not succeeded in giving us a satisfactory science of economic laws (Menger, loc. cit., p. 15).
[844] Cf. Menger, loc. cit., p. 79: “The student of pure mechanics does not deny the existence of air or friction, any more than the student of pure mathematics denies the existence of real bodies, of surfaces, and lines, or the student of pure chemistry denies the influence of physical forces or the physicist the presence of chemical factors in actual phenomena, although each of these sciences only considers one side of the real world, making an abstraction of every other aspect of it. Nor does the economist pretend that men are only moved by egoism or that they are infallible and omniscient because they envisage social life from the point of view of the free play of individual interest uninfluenced by other considerations, by sin or ignorance.” Wagner and Marshall take the same view.
[845] So great is the respect for psychology among the deductive writers of to-day that it has been suggested that the Austrian school should be known as the Psychological school. We can say that they have done much more in this direction than the Historical school.
[846] Manuale di Economia politica, p. 24 (Milan, 1906).