Author's Preface. (1st Edition.)
My System der Volkswirthschaft shall, Deo volente, be completed in four parts. The second shall contain the national economy of agriculture and the related branches of natural production; the third, the national economy of industry and commerce; the fourth, of the economy of the state and of the commune (Gemeindehaushalt). While the entire work shall constitute one systematic whole, each part shall have its own appropriate title, constitute an independent treatise, and be sold separately.
Of the peculiar method which I have followed in this work, and which will produce still better fruits in the succeeding volumes, I have given a sufficient explanation in §§ [26] ff., and all I desire now is to say a few words on the relation the notes bear to the text. The careful reader will soon be convinced that of the many citations in this work, not one has been made from a vain desire of the display of erudition. Part of them serves as the necessary proof of surprising facts adduced, but which are little known. Another part of them is intended to incite the reader to the study of certain questions nearly related to those treated in the text, but which are still different from them. The object of the greater number is to supply information concerning the history of economic principles. As far as the sources at my command permitted, I have endeavored to point out the first germs, the chief stages of development, the contrasts, and, finally, what has been thus far attained in economic science. This sometimes required some little victory over self, inasmuch as I was conscious of having [pg viii] independently discovered certain facts, when I afterwards found that some old and long-forgotten writer had made similar observations. Thus, this work may serve both as a handbook and as a history of the literature of Political Economy. Students of the science know how little has thus far been done by writers in this direction. And hence I shall be very grateful to those who labor in the same field, if they will, either by writing to me personally, or through the medium of the press, inform me when I have erred in ascribing a truth, or a scientifically important error, to its earliest author.
I have already said in the title that this work is intended not for the learned only, but for all educated men, for men of a serious turn of mind, who desire truth and science for their own sake. Like that ancient historian, whom I honor above all others as my teacher, I desire that my work should be useful to those, ὅσοι βουλήσοντοι τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπειον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι. (Thucydides I, 22.)
University of Leipzig,
End of May, 1854.
From The Author's Prefaces. (2d to 11th Edition.)
The preface to the second edition is dated October, 1856; that to the third, April, 1858; that to the fourth, April, 1861; that to the fifth, November, 1863; that to the sixth, November, 1865; that to the seventh, November, 1868; that to the eighth, August, 1869; that to the ninth, March, 1871; that to the tenth, May, 1873; that to the eleventh (unaltered), December, 1873. Each successive edition, nearly, has been announced as an improved and enlarged one; and the tenth edition contains one hundred and fifty-six pages more than the first, although in places, a large number of abbreviations had been made from previous editions. There are many things in some of the previous editions which criticism induced me, long since, to change. I have considered it my duty to the public, who gave my work so warm and friendly a reception, to take into consideration, in each successive edition, not only my own new investigations, but those also of all others with which I became acquainted, and, whenever possible, to correct statistical illustrations from the latest sources. I have especially, in each following edition, enriched a number of paragraphs with here and there historical, ethnographic and statistical features. Plutarch is certainly right, spite of the fact that pedants may abuse him for it, when he says, that trifling acts, a word and even a jest, are often more important, as characterizing the life of a people or an age, than great battles which cost the lives of tens of thousands of men.