INTRODUCTORY 
13 
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 practi 
cal 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,