ABSTRACT
Throughout this chapter, it should be carefully borne in mind that the political economy is regarded as a positive science. It is maintained by Comte and his followers that on account of the extremely intimate connexion between the phenomena of wealth and other aspects of social life, any attempt to separate economic science from social philosophy in general must necessarily end in failure. The method of the abstract theory is almost wholly deductive and hypothetical; for though based ultimately on observation, it works from artificially simplified data. The pure theory may rightly be regarded as of great and even indispensable value as the general basis of economic reasoning, while it is at the same time held to be only part of a larger whole. The dynamics of political economy is exceptional in its almost entire dependence upon an historical method of treatment; and it is more distinctly subordinate than are other portions of economic doctrine to general sociology.
