System der volkswirthschaft. English

This is an essay book. It is no foolish desire to make a vain display of citations, that induces us, at the beginning of this essay, intended to point out the results of the application of a new method to the study of Political Economy, to invoke the authority of a poet and moralist, of a jurisconsult and of a philosopher. The writer finds in the words just quoted the loftiest expression of the thought which dictates these lines, viz. : that the impartial researches of history, a profound feeling of man’s moral and material wants, and the light of philosophy, should govern in the teaching of a science, the object of which is to show us how those things which are intended to satisfy our wants are produced and distributed among the several classes or individuals of a nation; how they are exchanged one against another, and how they are consumed. The nineteenth century affords us something more than the admirable spectacle of the rapid and fertile development of mechanical power and natural forces. This is but one of the aspects, we might even say but one of the results, of the general progress of the human mind. The renovation of moral and intellectual studies has served as a starting point for the application to facts of the conquests of thought. Science has preceded art.