all social phenomena will fall under its dominion . . . . this system is arbitrary and even demoralizing to the other sciences. . . . . You give to the words wealth, product, and value new significations, or you create a false political economy." And Chevalier showed at the same time how "political economy in disregarding its proper limits has already become unpopular and has fallen under suspicion." All of which was very true.
After all this, however, Ferrara assigns to political economy, "The investigation of the sentiments of the heart, the faculties of the mind and the movements of the body which urge man to change voluntarily the form of the external world. It examines whether these changes constitute a creation from nothing, and shows how the mutations of today become a support for those of tomorrow, and are themselves based on those of today. It then applies these laws to the social mechanism."[1] From this passage it is easy to understand how the whole tree of knowledge in ancient philosophy, instead of being represented by a hierarchy of the sciences, was represented by only one, namely, political economy.
Now, there was a time in Italy during which almost all economic science was comprehended under the school of Ferrara. "Francesco Ferrara," writes one of his admirers, "ruled almost alone during the first three quarters of this century in the history of Italian economy, and combated scornfully the successive invasions of foreign doctrines which entered triumphantly into our country, brought in by some of our economists, to dethrone and to destroy our national theories."[2] Wherefore, a young Italian sociologist, Nitti, felt called upon to ask whether it really was a great good that Italy had not welcomed the innovating theories of the English reformers, the wise criticisms of Hildebrand, the ingenious
