Outline of Lectures Upon Political Economy

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Excerpt from Outline of Lectures Upon Political Economy: Prepared for the Use of Students at the University of Michigan and Cornell University § 1. Political Economy treats of industrial society. Its purpose as an analytic science is to explain the industrial actions of men. Its purpose as a constructive science is to discover a scientific and a rational basis for the formation and government of industrial society. This statement is given in place of a definition and leads to three suggestions. (1) Political economy being a science demands scientific treatment, yet it bears no strict analogy to a physical science. (2) The study of economics starts with the conception of organized society, but limits its investigations to one set of social functions, I. a: business activity. (3) The object held in view by all students of economy is the well being of men so far as this is dependent on material prosperity. Read Cossa ch. I., and Marshall ch. I. § 2. The industrial actions of men are satisfactorily explained when shown to be in harmony with some ultimate truth which governs human conduct Such truths bring to view three classes of facts. (1) Facts of human nature. ^The economist is thus obliged to understand the fundamental character of man and to accept the laws of human nature as data for his reasoning. To discover these laws he must rely on direct observation, both of the workings ot his own mind and the conduct of his neighbors, , upon history, and upon statistics. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.