In more than one respect Mr. Clark's position among economists recalls the great figures in the science a hundred years ago. There is the same rigid grasp of the principles, the "essentials," out of which the broad theorems of the system follow in due sequence and correlation; and like the leaders of the classical era, while Mr. Clark is always a theoretician, never to be diverted into an inconsistent makeshift, he is moved by an alert and sympathetic interest in current practical problems. While his aim is a theoretical one, it is always with a view to the theory of current affairs; and his speculations are animated with a large sympathy and an aggressive interest in the amelioration of the lot of man. His relation to the ancient adepts of the science, however, is something more substantial than a resemblance only. He is, by spiritual consanguinity, a representative of that classical school of thought that dominated the science through the better part of the nineteenth century. This is peculiarly true of Mr. Clark, as contrasted with many of those contemporaries who have fought for the marginal-utility doctrines. Unlike these spokesmen of the Austrian wing, he has had the insight and courage to see the continuity between the classical position and his own, even where he advocates drastic changes in the classical body of doctrines. And although his system of theory embodies substantially all that the consensus of theorists approves in the Austrian contributions to the science, yet he has arrived at his position on these heads not under the guidance of the Austrian school, but, avowedly, by an unbroken development out of the position given by the older generation of economists.[3] Again, in the matter of the psychological postulates of the science, he accepts a hedonism as simple, unaffected, and uncritical as that of Jevons or of James Mill. In this respect his work is as true to the canons of the classical school as the best work of the theoreticians of the Austrian observance. There is the like unhesitating appeal to the calculus of pleasure and pain as the indefeasible ground of action and solvent of perplexities, and there is the like readiness to reduce all phenomena to terms of a "normal," or "natural," scheme of life constructed on the basis of this hedonistic calculus. Even in the ready recourse to "conjectural history," to use Steuart's phrase, Mr. Clark's work is at one with both the early classical and the late (Jevons-Austrian) marginal-utility school. It has the virtues of both, coupled with the graver shortcomings of both. But, as his view exceeds theirs in breadth and generosity, so his system of theory is a more competent expression of current economic science than what is offered by the spokesmen of the Jevons-Austrian wing. It is as such, as a competent and consistent system of current economic theory, that it is here intended to discuss Mr. Clark's work, not as a body of doctrines peculiar to Mr.