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controversial literature need not detain us further. But we must record the excellent performance of J.N.Keynes that settled most of these methodological issues in a spirit of judicial reasonableness and to the satisfaction of the profession. For two decades this book held a well-earned position of authority. Its perusal may be recommended even at this distance of time because of its merits as well as of its success. 25 [The manuscript of this chapter stops at this point. The section on American Institutionalism was apparently never written.] account of the fact that they lent the support of their great influence on a large section of opinion to methodological views akin to those of the German historical school. This at least was the impression I gathered from lectures on method delivered by S.Webb at the London School of Economics. 25 John Neville Keynes (1852–1949; father of Lord Keynes), Scope and Method of Political Economy (1st ed. 1891). Of those minor yet notable contributions that were overshadowed by his success, we may however mention those of Bagehot and Cairnes. Walter Bagehot’s vigorous pen repeatedly touched methodological subjects. Without questioning the validity of Ricardian procedure, he was inclined to limit its application to the cultural pattern of capitalist business and to look upon historical research as its natural complement. See in particular his essay on ‘The Postulates of English Political Economy,’ republished in Economic Studies (1880). John E.Cairnes’s Character and Logical Method of Political Economy (lectures delivered 1856, publ. 1857) was never appreciated according to its merit, either at the time or later, because, like Senior before him, he used the term Political Economy to designate what most people always considered as a small part of either Political Economy or Economics, viz. the logical scheme of economic rationality commonly known as ‘pure theory.’ His own works simply prove that he was far from believing that this logical schema (which, as will be remembered, does not even constitute the whole of economic theory in our sense) comprises all our knowledge about economic affairs. But by virtue of a misunderstanding, for which the blame rests with him in part, he was later on, e.g., by Ingram and Schmoller, represented as an uncompromising advocate of ‘deduction’ who had no use for any factual research. However, his analysis of the nature of that schema was a real contribution. Its purely hypothetical character, its unrealistic assumptions, the width of the gulf that separates it from the observable economic phenomenon, the difficulty of verifying its component propositions by statistical or other observational evidence (he even spoke of the impossibility of establishing or refuting ‘economic laws’ by such evidence), all this was exhibited more clearly than ever before, though he stopped short of the obvious conclusion that such a schema can never yield any ‘laws’ but only serve in an instrumental capacity. History of economic analysis 792 CHAPTER 5 The General Economics of the Period: Men and Groups 1. JEVONS, MENGER, WALRAS THE CALL of social reform created a new focal point for the practical interests of the economics profession; but though it influenced tone and direction, it did not affect the technique of analytic work. The historical school meant indeed to revolutionize the methods of the science; but this revolution ended in compromise even in Germany. So far as these influences went, General Economics remained, in scope and method, substantially what it had been before. But its analytic core, for which the term Value and Distribution became increasingly popular, experienced a revolution of its own which was to subside into a typical Classical Situation around 1900 and constitutes, in our field, the third great event of that period. According to a familiar tradition from which it is convenient to start, this revolution centered in the rise of the marginal utility theory of value that is associated with the names of three leaders: Jevons, Menger, and Walras. We pause to salute them. 1 Throughout his modest career as a civil servant and teacher, William Stanley Jevons (1835–82) never made a mark that was at all commensurate to the importance of his achievement. During his life he was better known for his writings on money and finance and on other practical questions of current interest—even for his sunspot or harvest theory of business cycles (see below, ch. 8)—than for the performance that was to make him immortal. In England, moreover, his memory was overshadowed by the strong leadership of Marshall, who consistently discounted the ‘Jevonian revolution.’ There are many reasons for this. Jevons left hardly any personal pupils, a fact that was in turn due not only to lack of opportunity (he never taught in a strategic position) but also to his amiable modesty or lack of assertiveness (which was quite compatible with the ‘compensatory’ habit of making large claims of revolutionary novelty for his ideas). But it is also true that his work in economic theory lacks finish. His performance was not up to his vision. Brilliant conceptions and profound insights (particularly his championship of mathematical modes of thought, his theory of value, his theory of capital and interest) were never properly worked out; they were stated as aperçus and so intermingled with old stuff as to look almost superficial. Marshall’s definitely ungenerous attitude toward him did the rest. In England, therefore, he never got his due. In particular his originality was never recognized as it should have been. For he was without any doubt one of the most genuinely original economists who ever lived. In very few other cases (John Rae is another) is it so difficult to speak of ‘roots’ as it is in 1 Forerunners will be mentioned in ch. 6, sec. 3, below. the case of Jevons. He heard of his fore-runners only after the event, which, in his particular case, was quite excusable, especially since he gave generous credit to those whom he did discover later on. Perhaps he owed more to Mill than he knew: he harbored a strong aversion to Mill’s Principles, which he had to use in his teaching; but Mill’s tergiversations, which are such excellent targets for rifle practice, may nevertheless have taught him many things. Barring this, however, he seems to have built the essentials of his teaching from bricks of his own manufacture. The bulk of his work in pure theory is contained in his Theory of Political Economy (1st ed. 1871; the date that fixes his priority as regards the concept of the ‘final degree of utility’ is however 1862, when he read a paper, ‘Notice of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy,’ at the Cambridge meeting [section F] of the British Association for the Advancement of Science); the bulk of his work in the fields of money and cycles has been assembled by Professor Foxwell in a volume entitled Investigations in Currency and Finance (1884), study of which no economist should neglect. In addition, Jevons was as much a logician as he was an economist. I mention his Principles of Science (1874), a work of truly Jevonian force and originality which has not, so it seems to me, received the recognition it deserves. A bibliography is appended to his Letters and Journal, edited by Mrs. W.S.Jevons in 1886. Mrs. and Professor H.S.Jevons contributed a brief article on his life and work to Econometrica, July 1934. 2 Carl Menger (1840–1921) was, after a brief career in the civil service, appointed to one of the two chairs of Political Economy at the faculty of law of the University of Vienna, which he held for the rest of his official career (1873–1903). This location was by no means ideal, both because there was no local tradition in the subject, let alone one that commanded the attention of the world, and because the future lawyers and civil servants who formed his audience were but mildly interested in what he had to say—if you were well up in civil and public law, you could afford to flunk the economics examination. But nothing daunted, this hickory of a man asserted himself eventually, found personal pupils of his own intellectual caliber, and—though not without an embittering period of strife—founded a school, which displayed vitality and coherence and, though lacking all the means and advantages that usually condition such achievement, exerted international influence until it was (temporarily?) dispersed in the 1930’s. His fundamental principle of marginal utility was his own—subjectively—though Jevons holds, of course, priority of rediscovery. And so were, both subjectively and objectively, many of the theorems that occur in the course of its elaboration. He was a careful thinker who rarely slipped, if ever, and his genius stands out only the more impressively because he lacked the appropriate mathematical tools. The ultimate roots of his teaching were in that German theoretical tradition which had reached peaks in Hermann and Thünen. But the influence of Smith, Ricardo, and especially J.S.Mill is also unmistakable. With Menger, as with Jevons, it was their teaching which he meant to revolutionize. Precisely because of this they were, in a sense, his teachers. His Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (1st ed. 1871; the 2nd ed. 1923, the work of his old 2 This is perhaps my best opportunity to mention the work of a man that is forgotten now but drew praise from both Jevons and Marshall: the Plutology (Melbourne, 1863; London, 1864) by W.E.Hearn, who taught in the University of Melbourne. The book has failed to impress me greatly. History of economic analysis 794 But in parts it does read curiously Jevonian. The date of its publication proves, however, Jevons’ independence as regards the utility aspect. age, adds nothing essential) as well as his other writings, some of which will be mentioned later, were republished (1933–6) in four volumes by the London School of Economics. The Introduction by F.A.von Hayek to these Collected Works (vol. I) is the best source of information on the man and the thinker. See also H.S. Bloch, ‘Carl Menger,’ Journal of Political Economy, June 1940. [An English translation of the Grundsätze, Principles of Economics, with introduction by F.H.Knight was published in 1950.] As has been emphasized before, economics is a big omnibus which contains many passengers of incommensurable interests and abilities. However, so far as pure theory is concerned, Walras is in my opinion the greatest of all economists. His system of economic equilibrium, uniting, as it does, the quality of ‘revolutionary’ creativeness with the quality of classic synthesis, is the only work by an economist that will stand comparison with the achievements of theoretical physics. Compared with it, most of the theoretical writings of that period—and beyond—however valuable in themselves and however original subjectively, look like boats beside a liner, like inadequate attempts to catch some particular aspect of Walrasian truth. It is the outstanding landmark on the road that economics travels toward the status of a rigorous or exact science and, though outmoded by now, still stands at the back of much of the best theoretical work of our time. Unfortunately, Walras himself attached as much importance to his questionable philosophies about social justice, his land-nationalization scheme, his projects of monetary management, and other things that have nothing to do with his superb achievement in pure theory. They have cost him the goodwill of many a competent critic, and must, I imagine, try the patience of many of his readers. In any case, the tribute above must be understood to refer to his pure theory alone. Marie Esprit Léon Walras (1834–1910) was a Frenchman and not only by virtue of his birthplace. The style of his reasoning and the nature of his achievement are characteristically French in the same sense in which Racine’s plays and J.H.Poincaré’s mathematics are characteristically French. So are all the roots of his achievement. He emphasized himself the influence of his father Auguste Walras and of Cournot. But, as has been pointed out before, we must add that of Say, his true predecessor. And behind the figure of Say there looms the whole French tradition—Condillac, Turgot, Quesnay, Boisguillebert—however much or little he may have consciously absorbed from it. He paid conventional respect to A.Smith. The rest of the great Englishmen meant little to him. His career displays the typical inability of the born thinker to master the practical problems of personal life. He was much too original to be a success at his schools. His training as a mining engineer, to which he owed his mathematics, failed to gain him a living. He turned to free-lance journalism, developing his various ideas about social reform—the ideas typical of the French middle-class radical of his time—but he made no mark. 3 A lucky chance, however, rescued his genius from the danger of going to waste. In 1860, he attended an international congress on taxation in Lausanne, where he read a paper that was well received. In the audience was M.Louis Ruchonnet, who later became chief of the department of education of the Canton de Vaud and, in 1870, founded a chair of political economy at the faculty of law of the University of Lausanne which he offered The general economics of the period 795 to Walras. Having found the anchorage he needed, Walras went to work and remained at work until the end. But his creative period roughly coincides with his tenure of professorial office (1870–92). All of his work that counts (and some material that does not), most of it previously published in memoirs and articles (beginning in 1873), was eventually consolidated into three volumes: Éléments d’économie politique pure (1st ed. 1874–7; 5th definitive ed. 1926); Études d’économie politique appliquée (1st ed. 1898; 2nd ed. edited by Professor Leduc, 1936); Études d’économie sociale (1st ed. 1896; 2nd ed. edited by Leduc, 1936). The first volume (leçons 5–34) contains the great achievement. The second volume contains supplements, some of which are of the first order of importance, especially those on money and credit. The third volume is, from our standpoint, of little interest. See his ‘Autobiography’ in Giornale degli Economisti, December 1908; his ‘Bibliography’ in Revue du droit public et de la science politique, May and June 1897; his correspondence with Jevons in Journal des économistes, June 1874; William Jaffé, ‘Unpublished Papers and Letters of At the present time, when it would be hard to find a theorist who does not acknowledge Walras’ influence, the statement will read strange that he formed no personal school. But the students of law who had the opportunity of listening to him at Lausanne were hardly accessible to his scientific message: his professorship brought him peace and security but very little influence. And his professional contemporaries were mostly indifferent or hostile. In France, practically no recognition was extended to him during his lifetime, though he found a few followers, such as Aupetit. In Italy, Barone was an early convert. Pantaleoni too was among the first to understand the importance of his work. It was through Pantaleoni, I believe, that he found his brilliant pupil and successor, Pareto, 4 who was the man to found what under the circumstances became a Paretian rather than a Walrasian ‘school of Lausanne.’ As a coherent school, this was, however, confined to Italy or almost so. In England, the parallel and much more powerful teaching of Marshall excluded any direct influence until Professor Bowley presented the gist of the Walras-Pareto system in textbook form (Mathematical Groundwork, 1924). The Germans (including the Austrians) saw nothing in Walras’ work but the Austrian doctrines dressed up in the particularly repellent garb of mathematics. In the United States, Walras acquired two first-rank followers, Fisher and Moore, but was practically ignored by the rest of the profession. All along he had had stray admirers, of course. But it was only in the 1920’s, that is to say, long after his ideas had won out and a decade or so after his death, that he got his due. ‘If one wants to harvest quickly, one must plant carrots and salads; if one has the ambition to plant oaks, one must have the sense to tell oneself: my grandchildren will owe me this shade’ 5 —so he once wrote to a friend. 6 Without going for the moment into the question what the Jevons-Menger-Walras ‘revolution’ amounted to or whether or not it succeeded in creating a new engine of analysis, we shall now proceed with our survey of men and groups in order to get a provisional idea of the lay of the land in the general economics of that period. As in Chapter 4 of Part III, this survey will be carried out by countries. 3 He acted, however (1866–8), as editor of Le Travail, an organ of the co-operative movement, to which he contributed currently. History of economic analysis 796 Léon Walras,’ Journal of Political Economy, April 1935; and J.R.Hicks, ‘Léon Walras,’ Econometrica, October 1934. 2. ENGLAND: [THE MARSHALLIAN AGE] Before 1885, the year of grace in which A.Marshall delivered his Inaugural Lecture in Cambridge, the English situation may be characterized like this. There was plenty of good current work, factual in particular, such as New-march’s; there was no lack of occasional sparks such as are to be found in the writings of Bagehot or Cliffe Leslie; there was competent teaching, deriving from J.S.Mill, Cairnes, and Fawcett, worthily upholding the flag. But there was nothing out of the common except the message of Jevons, and this, so far as theory was concerned, was as yet not more than a voice crying in a wilderness of dead wood. An after-dinner speaker of 1876 admirably expressed a very general feeling 1 when he said that, though much remained for economists to do in the way of development and application of existing doctrine, the great work had been done. It was Marshall who changed all that and led out of the valley on to a sunlit height. In England, the period is emphatically the Marshallian Age. His success was as great as A.Smith’s, if account be taken of the facts that a science must inevitably grow less accessible to the general public as its techniques develop and that Marshall had no winning political horse to back, such as free trade had been in its prime. [(a) Edgeworth, Wicksteed, Bowley, Cannan, and Hobson.] Marshall’s fig-ure overshadowed not only those English economists who continued to dwell in the post-Millian stratum of analysis, such as Sidgwick and Nicholson, though neither was without merit; 2 but it also overshadowed Edgeworth and Wicksteed, who indeed lacked Marshall’s range of comprehension, both of historical and contemporaneous fact and also his personal force but who were his intellectual equals within the compass of the theorist’s craft. Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926), one of the successors of Senior in the political economy chair at Oxford (1891–1922) and editor or co-editor of the Economic Journal (1891–1926), descended from a family of the Anglo-Irish gentry and was, in everything except sports, a typical product of a classical Oxford education. Two masters have drawn pictures of the man and the thinker—Keynes in the Economic Journal (March 1926; the piece is reprinted in Essays in Biography, pp. 267 et seq.) and Bowley in Econometrica (April 1934)—to which I must be content to refer. But a few points must nevertheless be mentioned here in order to place him for us. First, I mention his utilitarianism, which strongly asserted itself from the beginning (New and Old Methods of Ethics, 1877) and looked so incongruous in a man whose mind was nothing if not ‘cultured’; it did much to keep alive—quite unnecessarily— 4 Concerning Walras’ influence on Aupetit, Barone, Pantaleoni, and Pareto, see below, secs. 3 and 5. 5 Quotation from the Preface to Professor Étienne Antonelli’s L’Économie pure du capitalisme, 1939. [Translation by J.A.S.] The general economics of the period 797 6 [The reader is reminded that J.A.S. intended to have all the biographical sketches (with their many references) printed in small type so that they could be treated virtually as footnotes.] 1 See W.S.Jevons, ‘The Future of Political Economy,’ Fortnightly Review, November 1876. 2 The only work by Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) that has to be mentioned here, is his Principles of Political Economy (1883, 3rd ed., 1901). Substantially in the Millian tradition, it improves upon it by the neatness of its conceptualization and offers many valuable suggestions even where, as in the theory of international values, it fails to follow them up or to follow them up correctly. The treatment of money and interest deserves particular notice. His old-fashioned method of hunting for the meaning of words has been mentioned already. Joseph Shield Nicholson (1850–1927), who held the Edinburgh chair from 1880 to 1925, did excellent work on money but at the moment we are concerned only with his Principles of Political Economy (1893, 1897, 1901). Entirely unoriginal and dwarfed by Marshall’s performance, the work was yet a creditable achievement. the unholy alliance between economics and Benthamite philosophy on which I have commented repeatedly. But let me also repeat that in his case, as in that of Jevons, we can leave out the utilitarianism from any of his economic writings without affecting their scientific contents. Second, Edgeworth’s name will stand forever in the history of statistics: I do not mean primarily his work on Index Numbers (see below, ch. 8, sec. 4) but his work on statistical methods and their foundations that centered in his Generalized Law of Error. Third, there is the long series of his papers on economic topics, the powerful originality of some of which, hidden as it was by quaint peculiarities of presentation (that not everyone will find as delightful as I do myself), has never except by a few been adequately appreciated. In actually novel contributions (indifference curve, contract curve, decreasing returns, general equilibrium, and so on) to the analytic apparatus of economics, they amount to as much as, or more than, do Marshall’s Principles. Then, fourth, why was this great figure so entirely overshadowed by Marshall? The answer—which is interesting from the standpoint of the sociology of science and in particular of the question: what succeeds, and how and why?—seems to be this: Edgeworth lacked the force that produces impressive treatises and assembles adherents; amiable and generous, 3 he never asserted himself in any claims of his own; he was oversensitive on the one hand, overmodest on the other; he was content to take a backseat behind Marshall whom he exalted into Achilles; hesitating in conversation, absent-minded to a pathological degree, the worst speaker and lecturer imaginable, lie was personally ineffective—unleaderly is, I think, the word. His Papers Relating to Political Economy (3 vols., 1925) together with Mathematical Psychics (1881, London School Reprint, 1932) contain practically all his work in economic theory. Edgeworth’s Contributions to Mathematical Statistics have been summarized by Professor Bowley in a pamphlet published under the auspices of the Royal Statistical Society in 1928. I wish that space permitted me to do justice to the personality of Philip Henry Wicksteed (1844–1927) as it radiated upon me, in 1906, during an hour’s chat on the lawn in front of his house at Wantage—his repose that owed nothing to callousness, his benevolence that was not weakness, his simplicity that went so well with his refinement, 3 I think that everyone who knew Edgeworth will approve of the epithet ‘generous.’ But his generosity was of a peculiar kind. It all went in the direction of Marshall and of the Ricardo-Mill History of economic analysis 798 inheritance. Alas for human nature! He was distinctly ungenerous to the Austrians, to Walras, to Wicksteed, and, for reasons I have not been able to understand, to H.L.Moore. his unassuming modesty that did not lack dignity. As it is, I can merely record that this theologian, who was a lecturer on Dante, stood somewhat outside of the economic profession—one of the reasons why his work, particularly excellent on the pedagogical side, did not leave a more discernible mark. Is it believable that his most original piece of work An Essay on the Co-ordination of the Laws of Distribution (1894, London School Reprint, 1932) went almost unnoticed, that two copies only were sold, and that even today Professor Stigler is the only economist I know to rate it at its true value? His Common Sense of Political Econ- omy…(1910; new ed. together with Selected Papers and Reviews, introduction by Professor Lionel Robbins, 2 vols., 1933) contains several original points and is far more than a popularization of then established doctrines. Particularly in matters of foundations and of critical elucidation of concepts (for example, in connection with the theory of dimensions which he did much to advance in an article, ‘On Certain Passages in Jevons’ Theory of Political Economy’ in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, April 1889), his ideas were much ahead of his time. The general complexion of his system is Jevonian— he was in fact the only Jevonian theorist of note—but he shook off so many old things that still stuck to Jevons’ exposition and added so many corrections and developments— partly under Austrian influence—that he may be said to have worked out something that, though of course a revision of the marginal utility system, was his own. Wicksteed was independent of Marshall rather than an opponent. Equally independent and still less of an opponent was Professor Bowley at the London School of Economics, the first part of whose career falls within the period under survey and who then developed what may be termed his scientific style, which anticipated the statement of scope in the constitution (section I) of the later Econometric Society: ‘The advancement of economic theory in its relation to statistics and mathematics.’ This program that Bowley was to carry out in a long series of publications was then novel and defined a distinctive position. But it attracted little notice at the time, the less so because Bowley did nothing to promote it by way of methodological declarations of policy. Another ‘independent,’ this one more of an opponent, was a vital teacher, also at the London School, and at that time better known both to the profession and to students, Cannan. 4 There were others whom we ought to, but cannot afford to, mention. Also, there was opposition, and not only from those who kept to older forms of thought. There were, of course, ‘heretics’ like Hobson. 5 More important, there were anti-theorists, like Sidney Webb, 4 The readers of this book know Edwin Cannan (1861–1935) already from his History of the Theories of Production and Distribution…from 1776 to 1848 (1893) to which reference has been made repeatedly in Part III. This work, his editions of Adam Smith, his History of Local Rates in England (1896) constitute his main scholarly achievements. But nobody can peruse his lively short tracts on money and monetary policy without pleasure and profit. This of course entirely fails to do justice to the teacher and the man, his common sense, his lovable outspokenness, the strength of his convictions—virtues that, from standpoints other than our own, more than compensate for lack of analytic refinement. 5 John A.Hobson (1858–1940), who had the good fortune to establish himself as an archheretic in the heyday of Marshallian supremacy and to survive into a time in which this had become a badge of honor, was in many respects a very interesting man—vital, versatile, and aggressive. He was an The general economics of the period 799 educated man—in the sense of having had a classical education—and an emotional radical, a combination that is responsible for much of the English social-science literature of that time. In economics he was self-taught in a wilful way that made him both able to see aspects that trained economists refused to see and unable to see others that trained economists took for granted. He could never understand why the professionals did not take to his message and, like whom anything like analytic refinement moved to scorn. 6 But there was no opposition from anyone of comparable stature as an analyst: much more than Ricardo had ever done, Marshall actually commanded the scene. The great master who was also a masterful man—to some he looked pontifical—made almost the whole of the rising generation of English economists his pupils and followers. [(b) Marshall and His School.] Marshall created a genuine school, the members of which thought in terms of a well- defined scientific organon and supplemented this bond by strong personal cohesion. Professor Pigou, his successor in the Cambridge chair; Professor Robertson, who succeeded Pigou; and Lord Keynes—to mention only a few of the most familiar names— were formed by his teaching and started from his teaching, however far they may have traveled beyond it. After 1930, Keynes himself and most of what may be termed the third generation did indeed renounce allegiance. But so far as purely scientific analysis is concerned, this means less than it seems to mean. And though some of them grew to dislike Marshall, not only his modes of thought but also his personal aura, his stamp is still upon them all. 7 That school was—in a sense still is—a national one and very alive to its specifically English character. I have compared Marshall’s success with A. Smith’s. In fact, the former was still more spontaneous and immediate than was the latter: the Principles were received with a universal clapping of hands, and the newspapers, which at first were rather cold to the Wealth, vied with one another in complimentary full-dress reviews of the Principles. But one qualification imposes itself: abroad, Marshall’s work never succeeded as had so many of his type, was by no means averse to the comfortable explanation that his Marshallian opponents were actuated by an inquisitional propensity to crush dissent, if not by class interest: the possibility that, owing to his inadequate training, many of his propositions, especially his criticisms, might be provably wrong and due to nothing but failure to understand never entered his head, however often it was pointed out to him. Belated recognition came in Keynesian times mainly on account of his doctrine of underconsumption, which will be noticed below in ch. 8. From the long list of his books and pamphlets, it will suffice to mention: The Physiology of Industry (with A.F.Mummery; 1889); The Evolution of Modern Capitalism (1894; perhaps his best performance); The Industrial System (1909); Gold, Prices, and Wages… (1913); The Economics of Unemployment (1922). But nobody who wishes to understand the man and, incidentally, the economist’s comedy—or tragedy—of errors should miss his delightful Confessions of an Economic Heretic (1938). 6 In 1906 or 1907 Sidney Webb gave a course of lectures on method at the London School, one of which I attended. If it be safe to generalize from this lecture and its tone, he must have presented in that course just about what a German Kathedersozialist would have done. The lecturer said nothing about Marshall and his teaching. The implications were, however, strongly anti-Marshallian. The History of economic analysis 800 difference was not primarily political: Marshall was largely in sympathy with the aims of the Fabians (as they were at that time); the difference was primarily one of scientific method. 7 This is not true of Professor Hicks, whose basis is much more Walrasian than Marshallian. This fact is more significant than is the spectacular breaking away of the Keynesians. A.Smith’s. The reason is not far to seek. Marshall’s message—however much he liked the idea of being ‘read by businessmen’—was after all a message to the economics profession. And the economists of all countries who were open to economic theory at all had by 1890 evolved or accepted systems that, however inferior in technique, were substantially like Marshall’s in fundamental ideas. First and last, Marshall was, and felt himself to be, the great English economist of the period. But this does not alter the fact that Marshall’s great work is the classical achievement of the period, that is, the work that embodies, more perfectly than any other, the classical situation that emerged around 1900. I believe that Lord Keynes meant to express a similar evaluation when he listed the publication of the Principles as the first of the three events in 1890 from which the ‘modern age of British economics’ is to be dated. 8 Although we shall have to move within its orbit throughout this Part, it will be convenient to assemble here the main points about Marshall’s work as a whole. The portrait of Alfred Marshall (1842–1924), the man, the academic man, the teacher, the thinker, has been painted with unsurpassable brilliance by Lord Keynes (‘Alfred Marshall,’ Economic Journal, September 1924, reprinted in Essays in Biography, 1933) and so has been the portrait of the tutelary deity of his life, Mrs. Marshall, whose memory can never be separated from his (‘Mary Paley Marshall (1850–1944),’ Economic Journal, June 1944). Two other references are strongly recommended to the reader’s attention: the Memorials of Alfred Marshall (ed. by A.C.Pigou, 1925), and the article on ‘The Place of Marshall’s Principles in Economic Theory’ by another leading Marshallian, Mr. G.F.Shove (Economic Journal, December 1942). An extensive and presumably complete list of Marshall’s writings was published by Keynes in the Economic Journal, December 1924; it is reprinted in the Memorials. But the bulk of Marshall’s published work is in the Principles of Economics (1st ed., 1890, described as Volume I until the 6th ed., 1910; in what follows, references are to the 4th, 1898); in Industry and Trade (1919); and Money Credit and Commerce (1923). The three volumes are all essential: nobody knows Marshall who knows only the Principles. They are supplemented by a posthumous volume of Official Papers (1926). For the rest, it must suffice to mention his Pure Theory of Foreign Trade and his Pure Theory of Domestic Values (privately printed, 1879, London School Reprint, 1st ed., 1930); his and Mrs. Marshall’s Economics of Industry (1879), a most important stepping stone to the Principles; and, finally, the highly revealing address on ‘The Old Generation of Economists and the New’ (1896) published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, January 1897. Marshall and A.Smith have more in common than similarity of success and of position in the history of economics. Neglecting a number of time- 8 Economic Journal, December 1940, p. 409. The other two events were the foundation of the Royal Economic Society (British Economic Association) and the completion of Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy. [Keynes was mistaken as to the date of the last event. Palgrave’s Dictionary was completed in 1893 and published in 1894. The introduction by Palgrave is dated Christmas, 1893.] The general economics of the period 801 . chief of the department of education of the Canton de Vaud and, in 1870, founded a chair of political economy at the faculty of law of the University of Lausanne which he offered The general economics. engine of analysis, we shall now proceed with our survey of men and groups in order to get a provisional idea of the lay of the land in the general economics of that period. As in Chapter 4 of Part. Journal of Economics, January 1897. Marshall and A.Smith have more in common than similarity of success and of position in the history of economics. Neglecting a number of time- 8 Economic