developmental sequence tapers off into advice and admonition proceeding on the assumption that the stage now reached is, or at least should be, final. The attention in the later pages diverges from the process of growth and its conditioning circumstances, to the desirability of maintaining the good results attained and to the ways and means of holding fast that which is good in the outcome already achieved. The question to which an answer is sought in discussing the present phase of the development is not a question as to what is taking place as respects the institution of business enterprise, but rather a question as to what form should be given to an optimistic policy of fostering business enterprise and turning it to account for the common good. At this point, as elsewhere, though perhaps in a less degree than elsewhere, the existing form of the institution is accepted as a finality. All this is disappointing in view of the fact that at no other point do modern economic institutions bear less of an air of finality than in the forms and conventions of business organisations and relations. As Professor Schmoller remarks (p. 455), the scope and character of business undertakings necessarily conform to the circumstances of the time, not to any logical scheme of development from small to great or from simple to complex. So also, one might be tempted to say, the expediency and the chance of ultimate survival of business enterprise is itself an open question, to be answered by a scrutiny of the forces that make for its survival or alteration, not by advice as to the best method of sustaining and controlling it. * * * * * What has here been said in criticism of Professor Schmoller's work, particularly as regards his departure from the path of scientific research in dealing with present-day phenomena, may, of course, have to be qualified, if not entirely set aside, when his work is completed with the promised genetic survey of modern institutions to be set forth in the concluding fourth book. Perhaps it may even be said that there is fair hope, on general grounds, of such a consummation; but the present volume does not afford ground for a confident expectation of this kind. It is perhaps needless, perhaps gratuitous, to add that the strictures offered indicate, after all, but relatively slight shortcomings in a work of the first magnitude. FOOTNOTES: [1] Reprinted by permission from _The Quarterly Journal of Economics_, Vol. XVI, Nov., 1901. [2] _Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre_. Erster Teil. Leipzig, 1900. [3] _E.g._, K. Buecher's _Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft_, and _Arbeit und Rythmus_; R. Hildebrand's _Recht und Sitte_; Knapp's _Grundherrschaft und Rittergut_; Ehrenberg's _Zeitalter der Fugger_; R. Mucke's various works.