ABSTRACT
The volume reproduces in collected form three well-known essays of various dates: (1) the polemical chapters of Professor Schmoller’s controversy with Treitschke (Über einige Grundfragen des Rechts und der Volkswirtschaft – 1874-75); (2) the essay on the Scope and Method of Economic Science (Die Volkswirtschaft, die Volkswirtschaftslehre und ihre Methode – 1895), originally written for Conrad’s Handwörterbuch; and (3) the Inaugural Address of October last, delivered on the occasion of Professor Schmoller’s induction into the rectorship at the University of Berlin (Wechselnde Theorien und feststehende Wahrheiten im Gebiete der Staats – und Socialwissenschaften und die heutige deutsche Volkswirtschaftslehre – 1897). It is notable as indicating the extent and the character of the changes that have passed over the “historical method” during the past twenty-five years. The earlier of the essays gives Professor Schmoller’s position at the time when he first came prominently forward as the champion of that method, and its defender against those who spoke for a return to a rehabilitated classicism. It marks the supersession of Roscher’s “historico-physiological” by the “historical” method, through discontinuing, or at least discountenancing, the use of the physiological analogy in economic theory. On the basis of this early controversy with Treitschke, Professor Schmoller got the reputation, not altogether gratuitous, at the hands of his critics, of being spokesman for the view that economic science is, and of right ought to be, without form and void. But if this construction of his views was not altogether gratuitous, still less was it altogether well grounded. The elements of his later methodological work are visible in this early essay, but they are most readily visible and most significant when seen in the light of his later utterances on the same head. Without the consistency and application given to these elements in his later work, it is doubtful if there would have been occasion seriously to qualify the disparaging opinion [417] passed upon his efforts by his Austrian critics. What gives added color to the contentions of those who carp at the historical method, as shown in Schmoller’s exposition, is the fact that very much of his constructive work has been of a character to bear out the criticisms leveled at him on methodological grounds.
Much of his own work, as well as the greater part of the voluminous work carried on under his hands by his many disciples, has been of the nature of compilation and description – narrative, often discursive and fragmentary. But as to this prevalent character of his publishedwork, it is to be said that he has, professedly, been occupied with the foundations of a prospective theoretical science of economics. And this prospective science “is, as regards its foundation, descriptive” (p. 226). The second of the essays contained in the volume leaves no ground for the objection that Professor Schmoller makes the science an undisciplined congeries of data. He gives, in concise and telling form, a prospectus for a theoretical science, such that, whatever strictures may be offered by his critics, it can assuredly not be characterized as being without form and void.
