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ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

in their customs and institutions, must be taken into account,
if we would judge rightly of the application of general
economic principles to their special circumstances.
In order to deal with the complex facts of actual life in
any satisfactory manner, it is generally advisable to deal with
them a few at a time, and thus obtain clearly defined probtems
 for solution. This is especially necessary in the early
stages of economic analysis, before the habit has been formed
of keeping qualifying conditions in view, and making the
necessary allowances for their effect on the conclusions to
which we are led. A satisfactory examination of a part of
any problem of actual life, is likely to be preferable to an
unsatisfactory attempt to handle the confusing perplexities
of the complete problem. The latter may lead in an entirely
wrong direction, without satisfactory indications of the cause
and extent of error. The former may be wrong through
incompleteness, but the half truth it presents, being known
to be but a part of the truth, invites completion, and thereby
correction. In other branches of knowledge a similar procedure,
 in handling artificially simplified problems for the
purpose of learning the fundamental principles applicable to
such cases, is followed with advantage. When these fundamentals
 have been duly studied, the attention can be given
to more complex problems, more nearly representative of
real conditions, and thus, by the continued application of
the same method, the realities of experience may be handled
with some assurance. When directing our attention to
especially prominent features of industrial or other economic
problems, then, we shall proceed always as if the statement
of the case had included the phrase “other things being
equal,” or an equivalent expression, unless the opposite be
distinctly stated.
The assumptions which generally underlie an economic
argument, that is the facts which are of sufficient universality
to be accepted as general data even when not specially
named, may be briefly indicated, so far as their general nature
is concerned. First comes the assumption that men desire
wealth and endeavour to secure it at as little cost to themselves
 as possible. In the business relations of men. at