ABSTRACT
Economic theory is the product of a advanced civilization. The facts from which it sets out belong to a highly developed condition of the social mind. The future of the world seemed at this time to lie in the free development of its economic forces, and inspiring duty of economic science was to push home the analysis of those forces and to secure the conscious adhesion of mankind to the natural laws of its own progress. Economic history owes even more to the science of history than it owes to the science of political economy. Economic history differs, then, from economic theory, in that it deals much less with individual actions and motives, and much more with actions and motives of groups. In the ’sixties and ’seventies the economists of this country began to be aware of an opposing school of historial economists in Germany, and to find their own principles labelled with the opprobrious epithets of Smithianismus and Manchesterthum.
