Some business specialties may necessitate a knowledge in detail of the physical characteristics of sugar, for instance, or of cotton; but what an understanding of the science of Economics requires in such particulars is an intelligent grasp of the nature of sugar or cotton with reference to fundamental Economic categories—whether they are human, or natural, or artificial,—and to what extent, therefore, they are Economically related to all other commodities in the realm of trade. For into one or the other of those three categories, all the myriads of Economic details assemble themselves.
For purposes of Economic specialization, this assignment of details to categories is not enough; but without it no specialization is dependable. Some such identification of particular facts with reference to their fundamental differences or identities, is absolutely necessary for accurate observation of Economic phenomena and clearness of Economic thought; and are not accurate observation and clarity of thought the prime requisites of Economic study?
Not to make those identifications and differentiations is to turn Economics into the hopeless mixture of “masses of particular unexplained facts” which John Morley deplored as characteristic of a certain type of Economic science. “Scraps and pickings of reality” are worse than useless in any study of Economic science unless harmoniously classified according to their respective fundamental characteristics.
This comment does not mean that Economic details are to be ignored except for classification, even by non-specialists. Far from that. It means that they are to be thoughtfully considered and accurately classified for further and comparative consideration. To illustrate: Mankind must be regarded as a class or category in Economics; but not according to personal or individual capabilities, idiosyncracies, or social, business, or legal status. To the business specialist, the personal qualities of an associate or assistant are important; but Economics as a comprehensive science, the science of all “mankind making a living,” knows those special distinctions only in a secondary sense. It is concerned primarily with the individual man only as a unit in the human mass—only from the fact that he is in the human category and not in one or more other Economic categories. So of all Economic facts. To study Economic details without reference to Economic generalizations might be likened to studying an alphabet without reference to language, or numerals without reference to mathematics. Economic problems are not problems of how one individual may make a living at the expense of others. Such problems belong in the plundering pursuits. In Economics the basic problem is how all may make a living at the expense of none.
To that problem business details give no clew, unless the details be assigned to fundamental Economic categories. Piling up details without assigning them is, as Henry James the Elder wisely expressed it, to “sink the truth in endless confusion.” The last person in all the world from whom to get the basic facts of Economics is the business specialist, for he habitually limits his observations to his own specialty. Perhaps, however, a certain type of Economic teacher may be equally untrustworthy in that respect—the teacher who, though he imitates the physical scientist in devotion to details, disregards the physical scientist’s fidelity to the relations of cause and effect.
On the Economic surface we have the category of Money. To the wage-worker Money is the medium for trading the commodities he helps to produce for those he wishes to consume. To the merchant, however, or the manufacturer, or other Economic specializer, Money presents also a variety of minute details for expert study. The business accountant, for example, must familiarize himself with numerous details in connection with Money in its minute relationships to his specialty. He might very likely confuse facts Economically different, yet as a special business matter practically identical—the Money measurement of a natural mineral deposit, for instance, with the Money measurement of its artificial equipment. As an accountant in that specialty he would be right in doing so. Or, in slavery days, for another instance, an accountant might properly have classified the Money measurement of a human chattel with that of a domesticated horse or a constructed house. He also would have been right; for, as an accountant, he would have been dealing with a customary classification of private property; and not with Economic science comprehensively. It is doubtless specialty work of such kinds that has involved the science of Economics in so much confusion, especially among advanced students who are prone to identify business conventionalities with Economic normalities.
As a science, Economics cannot make its categories according to conventional maladjustments. It must make them according to essential differences. These admit of no categorical identification of mineral deposits with mining machinery, or of human beings with domesticated animals or buildings. Such classifications are as absurd in Economics as identifying sun and earth would be in astronomy, or bone with brain in anatomy.
The science of Economics—that is to say, the science of Business in the broad social sense in contradistinction to the narrow private sense—neither requires nor permits such classifications as slaves with domesticated animals, or mining machinery with natural mineral deposits. It is obedient to the ancient but still vital maxim of philosophy that things which are essentially different must not be mixed nor things that are essentially the same be separated.
Essentially different things in Economics are indeed confused by Money, which knows no difference, except in degree of Money measurement, between slaves and cattle, or mineral deposits and mining machinery. As the medium of trade, Money must measure the values of everything tradable; and custom may make tradable objects—human beings, for instance,—which in the science of Economics are no more within the normal boundaries of trade than are transfers by theft.
Whether we think of Money as tangible coin, or only as the Money signs and symbols of account books, Money is not a basic fact in Economics. Mankind cannot live upon Money. It is neither eatable nor wearable. Nor is it shelter. Likewise of Money terms. Money is a secondary Economic factor—a representative of value, whereby the relative desirability of commodities is measured and expressed in trade. It is therefore the comprehensive surface-fact of Economics beneath which the basic facts must be sought.