Section XVII.
Sciences Relating To National Life.—The Science Of Public Economy.—The Science Of Finance.
If, by the public economy of a nation, we understand economic legislation and the governmental guidance or direction of the economy of private persons,[138] the science of public economy becomes, so far as its form is concerned, a branch of political science, while as to its matter, its subject is almost coincident with that of Political Economy. Hence it is, that so many writers use the terms public economy, or the economy of the state (Staatswirthschaft), and National Economy (Volkswirthschaft), as synonymous.[139] The hypothesis, in accordance with which, this science should discard all consideration of the state, or should refuse to presuppose its formation,[140] would lead us into an ideal region, difficult to define, probably entirely impossible, and inaccessible to experience.
Just as clear, is the close connection between politics and Political Economy, in the case of the science of finance, or of the science of governmental house-keeping, otherwise the administration of public affairs. The latter, evidently, so far as its end is concerned, belongs to politics, but so far as the means to that end are concerned, to National Economy. As the physiologist cannot understand the action of the human body, without understanding that of the head; so we would not be able to grasp the organic whole of national economy, if we were to leave the state, the greatest economy of all, the [pg 092] one which uninterruptedly and irresistibly acts on all others, out of consideration.[141]
By the term police, we mean the state power whose office it is, without mediation, to prevent all disturbances of external order among the people.[142] It may extend its action into all the domains of national life mentioned above, whenever external order is there threatened, or calls for protection; but its action is important especially in the domains of law and economy. The science of the police power, therefore, of all those doctrines resulting from investigation into national life, takes up only one phase of each of them; and the phases of doctrine thus taken up, it combines into a whole, for practical ends. Its relation to those sciences is like that of surgery to the medical sciences, or like the science of legal procedure to the science of law.
Section XVIII.
Sciences Relating To National Life.—Statistics.
Statistics we call the picture or representation of social life at given periods of time, and especially at the present time, drawn on a scale in accordance with the laws of development discovered by means of the theoretical sciences above named; as it were, a section through the stream. (Schlözer calls them: history standing still.)[143] Statistics, as thus defined, are as far removed from saying too much as from saying too little. To give a complete tableau of their object, statistics should, of course, take in the life of a people, in all its aspects. But they should look upon such facts only as their own property, the meaning of which they are able to understand; that is, such only as can be ranged under known laws of development. Unintelligible facts are collected only in the hope of penetrating into their meaning in the future, by comparing them with one another. In the meantime, they are to the statistician only what unfinished experiments are to the investigator of nature.
The view is daily gaining ground, that statistics should be occupied—without, however, confining themselves to them—with present facts, with “facts affecting society and the state, which are susceptible of being expressed in figures.”[144] The more deceptive the immediate observation of an individual, isolated fact is, in cases where a great number of simultaneous [pg 094] or scattered individual isolated facts of national life should be observed, the more important it is to discover proper numerical relations, by noting all the like acts or experiences of men, the time and place in question, and the relation of the aggregate of these phenomena, to the sum-total of the population, or to the sum-total of corresponding phenomena in other places. When this is done, and the facts are completely enumerated and correctly recorded, there is no danger of subjective error. And this species of “political and social measuring,” as Hildebrand calls it, may be applied, not only to quantities, but to all qualities accessible to the observation of the senses; since the individual or isolated qualities of the things enumerated, may be again made objects of enumeration. Without doubt, this mode of numerical procedure is the most perfect for all those divisions of statistics in which it can be followed; and hence, it should be our endeavor to make the numerical side of statistics as comprehensive as possible. But, one side of a science is not a science itself. As there is no natural science proper called microscopy, embracing all the observations made by means of the microscope, so care should be taken not to deduce the principle of a science from the chief instrument it employs. There will always be many and important facts in national life which can not be subjected to numerical calculation, although they may be established with the usual amount of historical certainty. Were statistics to be limited, in the manner mentioned above, they would remain a collection of fragments, and instead of being a science, properly so-called, become a method.[145]