A third builds a magnificent temple to political economy, places in it the laws of economy as so many gods and goddesses, and when you feel like prostrating yourself, he stops you: "this is nothing but a mirage," says he. Forthwith he raises a cloud of incense to another goddess, and all disappears in a fog.

The most distinguished and the most sympathetic of this last sub-division seems to be Gustave Rümelin, chancellor of the University of Tubingen. In a volume of several essays, entitled, Reden und Aufsaetze (Discourses and Dissertations) which appeared last year (1875), we find an essay of considerable length intended to solve the question, What is a social law? In a series of considerations, the author attempts to prove that there are three kinds of forces-physical, organic and psychical forces. Social phenomena are the result of psychical forces. There are two kinds of psychical laws-psychological and social laws. Psychology studies the faculties of the soul in an individual type, like the attributes of a species; the social sciences study the same faculties in their collective section, that is, the faculties of a mass of men (massenwirkung) and they strictly confine their attention to the effects, changes or modifications that result from this common action. A social law would then be the expression of the elementary form of the collective action of the psychical faculties. We omit the philosophical discussion of the author, to present the passage in which he treats of political economy.

"Are there," asks the author, “any social laws that point out the constant elementary form of the collective action of the psychical faculties? The group of social sciences is, as is well known, still young and incomplete; on more than one side even their scientific title is questioned. One of these sciences has advanced more than its sisters, and the legitimacy of its scientific pretensions has been universally admitted. It rests upon settled propositions, which are not questioned by each new investigator; it does not confine itself to theory, but lays down laws, and is already able to make quite a wide use of the process of deduction. It treats of political economy. It owes, as I think (says Rümelin), its great and rapid success not only to the practical interest that attaches to the object of its researches, but still more to the excellence of the methods followed. The founders of the science have isolated as much as possible the object of their study; starting with an elementary psychological fact, they have followed it to all its conse

quences. Political economy sets out expressly or impliedly from this postulate, that man has by nature a marked tendency to procure the means of satisfying his needs as abundantly and as cheaply as possible, and further, that the same kind of goods is desirable at the same time for many men, and that some of these goods (food for example) are necessary for all. Whether the desire of obtaining good indicates the action of an elementary psychical faculty or a complex faculty, need not be examined into so long as the fact it self is not disputed. Now, science, in observing the action of this desire in human society regularly organized, in which one cannot take away by fraud or violence the goods of another, but where one can acquire them with the consent of the owner; and taking into account certain empirical facts, like the difference between the spontaneous products of nature and those that result from human nature, or between products limited in quantity and those that can be increased at will;-by means of these elementary data, the science finds a whole series of fundamental propositions concerning value, prices, wages, labor, capital, rent, money, credit, and out of them it constructs a well-adjusted system. Yes, political economy seems to me completely in the right when it gives the name of laws to its fundamental propositions concerning the variations of prices and wages, concerning competition and the circulation of money; for these laws respond perfectly to the definition, in presenting the constant elementary forms of the collective action of the psychical faculties."

Economical laws could not have a better advocate; but Rümelin builds only to tear down, for he thus continues:

"But this precision and this force of scientific development rest upon an abstraction, upon the intentional isolation of the object. In fact, even in his economic life, man is not moved by none but interested motives; other faculties and psychical faculties come in; there are moral, politic and religious motives. The law of prices did not exist under the regime of the community of goods among the early Christians, and all during the middle ages it was believed that the absence of wants and voluntary poverty were a ladder by which to rise to heaven. According as the economist departs from this abstraction, and seeks to bring into his system the effects of the other psychical faculties, he loses the advantages peculiar to his method. He is compelled to borrow propositions from other social

sciences, and even from sciences that do not yet exist. Thence he is enabled to form propositions for himself; thus he may be attractive, original, full of wit, but his system ceases to be solidly built, it gets into disorder and falls to pieces."

Must we not then admit that if abstraction is an evil, it is a necessary evil?

Science seeks as far as possible for the permanent, the absolute, always true; but in the reality of phenomena presenting a combination of permanent elements and changeable forms, especially in life, the contingent and the absolute intermingle. The empiric takes facts as he finds them, classifies them according to external signs. and so only half knows them; the empiric is the man of half-truths, The man endowed with the scientific spirit, on the other hand, feels the need of thorough examination; he wishes to know the substance, the law, "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Now, if there are really two economic schools-we admit only tendencies-one of these schools is guided by the scientific spirit, the other by a sentimental empiricism, well meant, no doubt, but powerless.

The scientific school, seeking principles, is compelled to penetrate deeply into the subject; the principle once found, it knows how, in applying it, to take circumstances into account. The empiric school dispenses with principles, and subsitutes sentiments, or rather a vague sensibility that frequently uses the words "ideal" and "ethical," but which proposes only a backward progress. In fact, under the pretext of marching with history, an economist-and not one of the least celebrated-proposes to set apart the soil in collective ownership, because the soil is held in common in all barbarous countries; another, still under the pretext of marching with history, advises us to return to guilds of arts and trades; others cry up each his social panacea; all invoke the aid of the State.

We have now reached the distinction between the two schools, at least that which is most insisted on in practice: one, the scientific school, called also the liberal school, demands liberty, and gives responsibility as its sanction; the other, the empiric school, called also the authoritative school, wishes that the state, which according to it is the moral principle, par excellence, should conduct everything, direct everything, decide everything. The utility of the frequent intervention of the state, seems to be the sole absolute principle which this school recognizes. Shall we meet here, too, in the domain of

economy, that eternal opposition-an opposition apparent or real— between liberty and authority, reason and faith? This we propose to examine in a second study. MAURICE BLOCK.

II. ART MUSEUMS.1

HAVE this evening the honor of addressing you upon a subject in which I believe you are now deeply interested, as, through the liberality of some of your worthy citizens, you are about to have established in your midst a museum of industrial art founded on the plan of that at South Kensington in London. I congratulate you most sincerely upon the use that you are thus about to make of your great Centennial building, and upon the manner in which you are going to commemorate permanently your liberty; for the formation of a collection of art examples in your midst cannot fail to be of inestimable value to your manufactures and commerce. Knowing that I have been acquainted with the South Kensington Museum from its first formation to the present time, and also feeling that I had exceptional opportunities for judging of the influence which it has exerted upon English taste, my excellent friend, Mr. Philip F. Cunliffe-Owen, the director of that institution, asked me to set before you its rise and progress, believing that you would be interested in its history at this particular time when you are founding a museum of your own. Up to the year 1851, we had no art museum, and but few-I think only four-Schools of Design." In that year it became. patent to us, and to all men, that we were behind almost every other nation in our knowledge of art as applied to industries; and with the view of bringing our lamentable state before the government for consideration, Mr. Redgrave, R. A., a gentleman who had been for some time a head master of the Central School of Design, was requested to report to the Royal Commission of the Exhibition of 1851, on industrial art and on our position as manufacturers of art objects as compared with that of other nations.

The second of Dr. Dresser's three lectures, delivered under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art.

This report was in every way excellent. It told us plainly of our utter ignorance of art principles; it placed us at the very bottom of the list of European nations; and it also brought before the country for consideration those principles which should, in Mr. Redgrave's opinion, govern the application of art to each particular industry. Although it was written as far back as the year 1851, and although we English have made since then such progress in art manufactures as but few nations have succeeded in making in the same time—a progress which I believe to be due to the influence of our South Kensington Museum and our schools of art—yet Mr. Redgrave's excellent report may be read at the present time with much profit by all who are interested in the advancement of art manufactures.

The result of this report was the foundation of the South Kensington Muscum, for the government then granted a small sum for the purchase of oriental objects at the International Exhibition; and I should like you to notice this fact, for it is interesting, that it was oriental objects which all perceived to be the most fitting examples for our consideration, and it was these which we chiefly bought with our first parliamentary grant.

Up to this time the Central School of Design was located in Somerset House, in the Strand; but now, the building becoming necessary for the purposes of excise and customs, the school was moved to Marlborough House, in Pall Mall-the present residence of the Prince of Wales. A small museum, consisting of the purchases from the Exhibition, and of objects loaned by private gentlemen, was opened in a suite of rooms in this palace, where the head school of design was now located; and a more extended system of art instruction was established throughout the country, the whole being under the direction of the Board of Trade. This new branch of the Board of Trade was termed "The Department of Practical Art," the old term of " School of Design" being abolished; and the museum constituted one portion of this department of practical art.

The museum, as first opened, occupied about six ordinary-sized living-rooms, and all but one of these-the entrance chamberwere filled with objects which it was desirable that our manufacturers should copy. But this ante-chamber constituted what ultimately became known as "The Chamber of Horrors." It presented to the visitor examples of bad art-of objects which