All this, of course, is intended to convey no dispraise of the work done, nor in any way to disparage the theories which the passing generation of economists have elaborated, or the really great and admirable body of knowledge which they have brought under the hand of the science; but only to indicate the direction in which the inquiry in its later phases--not always with full consciousness--is shifting as regards its categories and its point of view. The discipline of life in a modern community, particularly the industrial life, strongly reenforced by the modern sciences, has divested our knowledge of non-human phenomena of that fullness of self-directing life that was once imputed to them, and has reduced this knowledge to terms of opaque causal sequence. It has thereby narrowed the range of discretionary, teleological action to the human agent alone; and so it is compelling our knowledge of human conduct, in so far as it is distinguished from the non-human, to fall into teleological terms. Foot-pounds, calories, geometrically progressive procreation, and doses of capital, have not been supplanted by the equally uncouth denominations of habits, propensities, aptitudes, and conventions, nor does there seem to be any probability that they will be; but the discussion which continues to run in terms of the former class of concepts is in an increasing degree seeking support in concepts of the latter class. FOOTNOTES: [1] Reprinted by permission from _The Quarterly Journal of Economics_. Vol. XIV, Feb., 1900. [2] So, _e.g._, Roscher, Comte, the early socialists, J. S. Mill, and later Spencer, Schaeffle, Wagner. [3] "Let us not confound the statement that _human_ interests are at one with the statement that _class_ interests are at one. The latter I believe to be as false as the former is true.... But accepting the major premises of the syllogism, that the interests of human beings are fundamentally the same, how as to the minor?--how as to the assumption that people know their interests in the sense in which they are identical with the interests of others, and that they spontaneously follow them _in this sense_?"--Cairnes, Essays in Political Economy (London, 1873), p. 245. This question cannot consistently be asked by an adherent of the stricter hedonism. [4] Bastiat, quoted by Cairnes, _Essays_, p. 319. [5] It may be remarked, by the way, that the use of the differential calculus and similar mathematical expedients in the discussion of marginal utility and the like, proceeds on this psychological ground, and that the theoretical results so arrived at are valid to the full extent only if this hedonistic psychology is accepted. [6] See, _e.g._, Cairnes, _Character and Logical Method_ (New York), p. 71. [7] _Character and Logical Method_, p. 62. [8] _Essays in Political Economy_, pp. 260-264. [9] See especially _Essays_, pp. 263, 264.