INTRODUCTORY

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of  its  results  to  these  other  studies  and  to
practice.  My  point  rather  is  that  Adam
Smith  had  not  clearly  envisaged  a  positive
science  of  economics,  and  possibly  had  not
sufficiently  severed  in  his  mind  the  purpose  of
natural  science  from  other  purposes  to  enable
him  to  avoid  confusion  of  issues.  It  is  only,
however,  when  the'  mind’s  eye  is  kept  fixed
on  one  aim,  at  one  time  at  any  rate,  that
rapid  progress  in  knowledge  can  be  looked  for.
The  pure  scientist  generally  leaves  the  practical ­
  application  of  his  discoveries  to  others  ;
and  practical  application  may  hang  years
behind.
It  was  left  to  Ricardo  to  unravel  from  the
tangle  in  which  he  found  them  the  portions
of  political  economy  which  treated  of  cause
and  effect,  and  to  give  to  many  of  them  a
more  scientific  finish.  But  even  Ricardo,
despite  the  cold  light  of  his  purely  scientific
interest,  was  not  entirely  successful.  And
there  followed  others  who  were  amazingly
successful  in  confounding  the  dry  scientific
point  of  view  with  a  conception  of  society  as
a  system  of  unemotional  atoms,  or  worse,  with
the  idea  that  a  soulless  mechanism  driven  by
self-interest  as  the  motive  power  was  the  right
thing  to  aim  at.  By  the  doctrines  of  these
blundering  teachers—for  whose  mistakes,