Before taking up the study of any new subject it is desirable, in order to avoid wasting time and effort, to learn something about the best methods to be employed in mastering it. Some subjects, like botany and physics, are best approached through experiments carried on in the school laboratories. There the pupil learns through trial and observation to formulate the laws and principles underlying his science. This is known as the inductive method of study. The same method, as we shall see presently, may be applied to a limited extent to the study of economics. More important in our work, however, is the deductive method, which requires some ability to reason abstractly - that is, independent of experiment and observation. This method most people find difficult to master. For that very reason pupils and even business men often become discouraged and give up the study of economics. If, however, they would but remember that the chief aim of our science is not to discover laws, but rather to apply them to business, much of this discouragement can be removed. We do not need, for example, to concern ourselves with the proof that an increase in the amount of money in circulation tends to cause prices to rise. Instead, we start with the assumption that such is the case and try to explain the rise of prices at some particular time or place. In other words, the student of economics finds it necessary to go from the general to the particular, while the student of a laboratory science is chiefly concerned in studying particular phenomena from which he draws general conclusions known as laws and principles.