IN the present volume I propose to make the attempt to reconstruct the science and art of Political Economy on a new foundation, namely on the basis of Modern Evolution -a reconstruction which will involve a new principle and method, a new image or symbol to express and sum up in a shorthand way, as a mathematical formula might do, the mode of action and interplay of the several factors, a new division and arrangement of these factors, with arguments and illustrations corresponding to them, and a new line of treatment generally; in a word I am to endeavour if possible to supplant the old and crude Ptolemaic Economy of the orthodox systems by what I believe to be a more scientific, harmonious, and developed Copernican one. But as the orthodox Economy, although the despair of the public who for a long time have lost all interest in it as being quite useless for all practical purposes, is never-theless believed by its professors to be a closed and sealed body of scientific doctrine; and as its latest schools would seem to encourage and lend countenance to this belief by industriously striving to correct the mistaken notions of the earlier Economists rather than to make any attempt at reconstituting its principles and methods on a fresh basis; and as, further, it is unusual for a science in the orderly quiet course of its development to find itself thus suddenly confronted by any change in its ordinary working theory and principles;

I feel it incumbent on me at the outset, and in justice to the reader, to state definitely the reasons which have impelled me to this attempt at a total reversal of its method, principles, and practical policy. These reasons may for all practical purposes be reduced to two. The first is that the science of Political Economy has not kept in line with the other sciences in reconstituting itself on the lines of Modern Evolution; the second is that it has narrowed itself to an illegitimate academic specialism. As for the first of these reasons, namely that the science is not founded on Evolution, its justification can only appear in the body of this work at those points where the absence of that principle will especially make itself felt; but the second reason calls for some word of explanation here, for it will, I apprehend, seem strange to many to be told that objection can be taken to a science on the ground that it is cultivated as a pure specialism. For if there is one word more potent than another with which to conjure if one wishes to secure the interest of the public in any undertaking at the present time, it is this magic word, specialism; and to announce at the outset that it is the work of a ' specialist' is always sufficient to insure it a respectful hearing.

Specialism, in fact, is the order of the day in all lines of work whatever, and is demanded by the public as a hall-mark from all those who lay claim to have done any effective work in any province of thought or action.

The Carnegie Institute at Washington, for example, which has recently been established for the liberal endowment of all studies that can in any way minister to the advancement of human knowledge, expressly rules out in the published preamble of its policy, the work of all but specialists, in a sentence of condemnation which serving as it does as a warning to all and sundry that none but specialists 'need apply,' might well in its emphatic brevity be inscribed as a legend over its portals; - "No investigator working singlehanded can at present approach the largest problems in the broadest way thoroughly and systematically," - a sentence which would have ignominiously excluded and disinherited all the great original spirits of all ages and nations - Plato, Aristotle, Newton, Descartes, Bacon, Goethe, Rousseau, Comte, Herbert Spencer, and Darwin, in thought and speculation; musicians like Beethoven and Wagner; the great innovators in Art like Turner, the pre-Raphaelites, and Whistler; religious reformers like Buddha, Jesus, and Mahomet; warriors and statesmen like Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon; and would have delivered the world over to a race of critics, commentators, grammarians, pedants, professors, schoolmasters, and the body of miscellaneous specialists generally; all of whom, be it observed, would be found, if searched, to have the image and superscription of one or other of these great ones, or of others like them, concealed in their bosoms as objects of their adoration and homage.

For it cannot be too often repeated that the intellectual progress of the world always proceeds from the realm of new general ideas surrounding and envisaging the special operations going on in different parts of the field; as the progress of a fighting army on the march does from the general plan of campaign of the Commander; never from the narrower developments, extensions, corrections, or applications of such ideas, however important or necessary, which can operate only within the ranks or interstices of these special operations themselves; as is proved by the fact that in the retrospect it is only the solitary single peaks that are visible along the centuries, never the vast multitude of specialist workers who must have argued, refuted, supplemented, adapted, modified, or commented on them, and most of whom have long since been swallowed up in the night. And who were these great men, we may ask, but the men who of all others worked ' single-handed,' hatching their great schemes in the recesses of their own souls, and not like navvies, private soldiers, or the coral-reef builders, in batches, battalions, or swarms?