Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/114

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
94
THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL

We cannot forecast at all unless we go outside economics and take a wider view of human life. For all questions of history in the past, for all questions of duty now, for all ideals of progress in the future we must not be content to take the phenomena of wealth as if they were isolated, but to take them in their relation to Man. For all these purposes we must seek to 'restore mind to its proper rank;'[1] and even if there be no general formula which adequately describes the relations of moral phenomena to wealth, we may none the less hope to make good progress in all other sides of social study, if we use as our starting-point the vantage ground which Adam Smith has given us by isolating the conception of material wealth.

W. Cunningham

  1. Purves, All Classes Productive, 240.