18 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 
able too narrowly and too superficially, was 
the characteristic vice of the age. Even 
the opponents of the political economists 
fell victims to it : Godwin, the visionary, 
attempted (in vain) “ to pass the Arctic 
Circle and Frozen Regions, where the under 
standing is no longer warmed by the affec 
tions, nor fanned by the breeze of fancy.” 
But Bentham, nevertheless, by his abstrac 
tions, though they represented human nature 
as far too simple—indeed, one might say, 
because they did so—gave to economic science 
an impulse which has endured up to the 
present time. The data of the science were 
rendered manageable ; and when its funda 
mental ideas were revised it was happily found 
that not demolition and reconstruction of 
the science, but rather adaptation, re-facing 
and extension were involved. It is nothing 
new in the history of thought that a study 
founded on false hypotheses should embody a 
framework of permanent value. Physics so 
frequently alters its hypotheses that physi 
cists themselves may be left behind. But 
on each occasion the science of physics does 
not collapse ; on the contrary little has to 
be sacrificed; and in its unchecked building 
up "we are presented with the spectacle of 
scholars working on different hypotheses, but