there appears to have been combined with these fine traits in his mental constitution a certain want
of practical sense, a failure to recognize and acquiesce in the necessary conditions of human life,
and a craving for "better bread than can be made of wheat." He entertained strangely exaggerated,
or rather perverted, notions of the "subjection", the capacities, and the rights of women. He
encourages a spirit of revolt on the part of working men against their perpetual condemnation, as a
class, to the lot of living by wages, without having satisfactory proof that this state of things is
capable of change, and without showing that such a lot, duly regulated by law and morality, is
inconsistent with their real happiness. He also insists on the "independence" of the working class --
which, according to him, farà da sè--in such a way as to obscure, if not to controvert, the truths that
superior rank and wealth are naturally invested with social power, and are bound in duty to exercise
it for the benefit of the community it large, and especially of its less favoured members, And he
attaches a quite undue importance to mechanical and indeed, illusory expedients, such as the
limitation of the power of bequest and the confiscation of the "unearned increment " of rent.
With respect to economic method also, he shifted his position; yet to the end occupied uncertain
ground. In the fifth of his early essays he asserted that the method a priori; is the only mode of
investigation in the social sciences, and that the method a posteriori; " is altogether inefficacious in
those sciences, as a means of arriving at any considerable body of valuable truth." When he wrote
his Logic, he had learned from Comte that the a posteriori method-in the form which he chose to call
"inverse deduction"--was the only mode of arriving at truth in general sociology; and his admission
of this at once renders the essay obsolete. But, unwilling to relinquish the a priori method of his
youth, he tries to establish a distinction of two sorts of economic inquiry, one of which, though not
the other, can be handled by that method. Sometimes he speaks of political economy as a
department "carved out of the general body of the science of society,." whilst on the other hand the
title of his systematic work implies a doubt whether political economy is a part of "social philosophy "
at all, and not rather a study preparatory and auxiliary to it. Thus, on the logical as well as the
dogmatic side, he halts between two opinions. Notwithstanding his misgivings and even disclaimers,
he yet remained, as to method, a member of the old school, and never passed into the new or
"historical " school, to which the future belongs. The question of economic method was also taken
up by the ablest of his disciples, John Elliott Cairnes (1824-75), who devoted a volume to the
subject (Logical Method of Political Economy, 1857,. 2d ed., 1875). Professor Walker has spoken of
the method advocated by Cairnes as being different from that put forward by Mill, and has even
represented the former as similar to, if not identical with, that of the German historical school. But
this is certainly an error. Cairnes, notwithstanding some apparent vacillation of view and certain
concessions more formal than real, maintains the utmost rigour of the deductive method; he
distinctly affirms that in political economy there is no room for induction at all, "the economist
starting with a knowledge of ultimate causes," and being thus, " at the outset of his enterprise, at the
position which the physicist only attains after ages of laborious research." He does not, indeed,
seem to be advanced beyond the point of view of Senior, who professed to deduce all economic
truth from four elementary propositions. Whilst Mill in his Logic represents verification as an
essential part of the proccss of demonstration of economic laws, Cairnes holds that, as they "are not
assertions respecting the character or sequence of phenomena " (though what else can a scientific
law be ?), "they can neither be established nor refuted by statistical or documentary evidence." A
proposition which affirms nothing respecting phenomena cannot be controlled by being confronted
with phenomena. Notwithstanding the unquestionable ability of his book, it appears to mark, in some
respects, a retrogression in methodology, and can for the future possess only an historical interest.
Regarded in that light, the labours of Mill and Cairnes on the method of the science, though
intrinsically unsound, had an important negative effect. They let down the old political economy from
its traditional position, and reduced its extravagant pretensions by two modifications of commonly
accepted views. First, whilst Ricardo had never doubted that in all his reasonings he was dealing
with human beings as they actually exist, they showed that the science, as he conceived it, must be
regarded as a purely hypothetic one, Its deductions are based on unreal, or at least one-sided,
assumptions, the most essential of which is that of the existence of the so-called "economic man", a
being who is influenced by two motives only, that of acquiring wealth and that of avoiding exertion;
and only so far as the premises framed on this conception correspond with fact can the conclusions
be depended on in practice. Senior in vain protested against such a view of the science, which, as
he saw, compromised its social efficacy,. whilst Torrens, who had previously combated the doctrines
of Ricardo, hailed Mill's new presentation of political economy as enabling him, whilst in one sense
rejecting those doctrines, in another sense to accept them. Secondly, beside economic science, it
had often been said, stands an economic art,--the former ascertaining truths. respecting the laws of