ABSTRACT
THE holder of a Chair of Economic History in a school of social sciences finds himself faced at the outset by a problem of integration. In less specialised universities or university institutions, where all the arts and sciences are gathered together, he can perhaps afford to pursue his way by an inner light of his own, not very profoundly affected by what the physicist is doing on one side of him or the classicist on the other, because the roads upon which they move are widely separated from his. But a Professor of Economic History in a school devoted specifically to the social sciences cannot look upon his department as a separate entity. He is bound to regard himself as a co-worker in a common field, his subject as a companion-study both to economics and to sociology, since the object of all these social sciences is the same. They seek to elucidate the present by the discovery of how things work. Their common watchword is the watchword of the School: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
