(1) What should be our conception of an economic force or an economic law, and how ought we to study economic phenomena? Some people seem to think that economic phenomena constitute a domain of arbitrary and artificial action. They think that social phenomena of every kind are subject to chance or to control. They see no sequence between incidents of this kind. They have no conception of social forces. They think economic laws are only formulae established by grouping a certain number of facts together, like a rule in grammar, and they are prepared for a list of exceptions to follow. This conception, in its grosser forms, is now banished from the science, but it still has strong hold on popular opinion. It also still colors a great many scientific discussions, those, namely, who seek to carry forward the science by following out the complicated cases produced by the combined action of economic forces in our modern industrial life, and describing them in detail. In my opinion such efforts are all mistaken. I regard economic forces as simply parallel to physical forces, arising just as spontaneously and naturally, following a sequence of cause and effect just as inevitably as physical forces--neither more nor less. The perturbations and complications which present themselves in social phenomena are strictly analogous to those which appear in physical phenomena. The social order is, to my mind, the product of social forces tending always towards an equilibrium at some ideal point, which point is continually changing under the ever-changing amount or velocity of the forces or under their new combinations. Consequently, I do not believe that the advance of economic science depends upon fuller and more minute description of complicated social phenomena as they present themselves in experience, but on a stricter analysis of them in order to get a closer and clearer knowledge of the laws by which the forces producing them operate. If this can be attained, all the complications which arise from their combined action will be easily solved. Of course we have peculiar difficulties to contend with, inasmuch as we cannot constitute experiments, and it is necessary to rely largely upon historical cases which present now one and now another force or set of forces in peculiar prominence. The facts which show the difficulty of the task, however, have nothing to do with its nature.