Among those who, in antiquity, most energetically maintained that the idea of national economy is not a merely nominal one, is _Plato_ (De Republ., IV, 420, I, 462); more recently, _Fichte_ (Der geschlossene Handelstaat, 1800), although, in general, the socialists attach as little importance to nationality as their most decided opponents. Adam Müller is a writer who deserves recognition for his advocacy of national economy, and of the state as a whole, paramount to individuals, and even generations. He gives war the credit of causing the scientific knowledge of the state to cast deeper roots, and of enlightening individuals in the most forcible way, that they are parts of one great whole. (Elemente der Staatskunst, 1809, I, 7, 113). He calls public economy, as a whole, the product of all products. What, he inquires, is the use of all wealth, if it does not guarantee itself? And this, it can do, only through the organization of the whole people, that is, through the nation (I, 202). _Adam Smith’s_ theory of labor would be correct if it considered the entire national life of a people itself as one huge piece of labor. (II, 265). And so, Müller directs his polemics against Adam Smith’s premise of a merely mercantile world-market. (II, 290). Similarly, the protective tariff theoreticians, _Ganieh_, Théorie de l’Economie politique (1822), II, 198 ff. and _Fr. List_, Nationales System der politischen Oek. (1842), I, 240 ff. _Colton_, Political Economy of the United States, 1853. _Sismondi_, Nouveaux Principes (1819), I, 197, ridicules the opinion which resolves the public interest into merely private interests: It is A’s interest to rob B; B, the weaker, is equally interested to let himself be robbed, that he may fare no worse. But the state—?! 116 National wars are really no mere operations of the will of the state! Since 1800, Ireland, and, since 1858, even British India, constitute one state with England, and yet how different are the economic tendencies of these different countries of which the individual husbandman or business man must take cognizance! 117 One might also deny the reality of a stream, considered as a whole, since its bed, no one calls a stream, and its watery contents change every moment. And yet, it is well known to scientific geography that every stream has its own individual character.