ABSTRACT
The prospect of making progress in economics is bright, one seems to be entering upon a period of rapid theoretical development and of constructive application. This chapter sketches the various types of theory developed since the Napoleonic Wars impoverished Europe. It shows what manner of thing economics has meant to successive generations, what varying outlooks it has opened before them, what hopes they have cherished for its future development, and how they have striven to apply its teachings. Orthodox economic theory as one has it today inherits its problems and its methods from classical political economy. Classical political economy in turn got its problems from English politics in the period of reconstruction that followed Waterloo, and its methods from the conception of human nature then current among philosophers and men on the street. A new type of economic theory was announced to the world by Stanley Jevons in 1871. He called it "the mechanics of utility".
