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its past atid present effects on human happiness. In the seventh edition (I have not been able to consult intermediate ones) these words are added to the last: with an inquiry into our pros- pects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions.
This clearly shows that even Malthus wrote for a purpose, and that a humanitarian one. The same might be proved for many of the earlier works on political economy. A modern writer, Mr. William Cunningham, makes the following frank con- fession :
" Economic science is wholly practical, it has no raison d'etre except as directing conduct towards a given end : it studies the means leading towards that end not merely for the sake of knowledge, but in the hope of guiding men so that they may pursue that end in the most appropriate way : it is not content to describe the principles that have actuated human conduct, but desires to look at these principles in the light of after events, and thus to put forward the means that are best adapted for attaining the end in view." x
Is there any good reason why sociology may not have a pur- pose as well as economics ? The character which chiefly dis- tinguishes it from the physical sciences, viz., greater complexity of the phenomena to be studied, scarcely differs in these two sciences. I am myself inclined to regard Mr. Cunningham's language as somewhat too strong. I should say that economics should be studied from both points of view, first for the purpose of learning the laws of industrial activity, and secondly with a view to directing conduct to a given end. In other words, I would concede to that science, as to mathematics, physics, and chemistry, both a pure and an applied stage. But I make the same claim and no more for sociology. That science should also be studied first for the sake of information relating to the laws of human association and cooperative action, and finally
1 Politics and Economics: An Essay on the Nature of the Principles of Political Economy, together with a Survey of Recent Legislation, by WILLIAM CUNNING- HAM, London, 1885, p. 12.
