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  • Book II
    Introduction


    Epigraphs to Book II

    Definitions are the basis of systematic reasoning.

    -- Aristotle

    The mixture of those things by speech which are by nature divided is the mother of all error.

    -- Hooker

    Bacon made us sensible of the emptiness of the Aristotelian philosophy; Smith, in like manner, caused us to perceive the fallaciousness of all the previous systems of political economy; but the latter no more raised the superstructure of this science, than the former created logic.... We are, however, not yet in possession of an established text-book on the science of political economy, in which the fruits of an enlarged and accurate observation are referred to general principles that can be admitted by every reflecting mind; a work in which these results are so complete and well arranged as to afford to each other mutual support, and that many everywhere and at all times be studied with advantage.

    -- J.B. Say, 1803

    We may cite as examples of such inchoate but yet incomplete discoveries the great Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith -- a work which still stands out, and will ever stand out, as that of a pioneer, and the only book on political economy which displays its genius to every kind of intelligent reader. But among the specialists and the schools, this work of genius which swayed all Europe in its day, is laid upon the shelf as an antiquated affair, superseded by the smaller and duller men who have pulled his system to pieces and are offering us the fragments as a science most of whose first principles are still under dispute.

    -- Professor (Greek) J.P. Mahaffy, "The Present Position of Egyptology," "Nineteenth Century," August, 1894.




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    Henry George
    The Science of Political Economy
    Book II, The Nature of Wealth

    Introduction

    01

    Since political economy is the science which treats of the nature of wealth and the laws of its production and distribution, our first step is to fix the meaning that in this science properly attaches to its primary term.

    02

    I shall in the first place show the need for an exhaustive inquiry, by showing the confusion that from the time of Adam Smith has attached to this term, and the utter incoherency with regard to it into which the scholastic economy has now fallen.

    03

    I shall next try to ascertain the causes of this confusion. This will lead to a consideration of economic development, and in the absence in our literature of any intelligent history of political economy, I shall attempt briefly to trace its course, from the time of Adam Smith and his predecessors, the French economists called Physiocrats, to its virtual abandonment in the teachings of the English and American colleges and universities at the present time.

    04

    Having seen that the only point as to wealth on which the scholastic economists now agree is that it has value, and that their confusions as to wealth proceed largely from confusions as to value, I shall then try to determine the proper meaning of the term value. That fixed, we shall be in a position to fix the real meaning and relations of the term wealth, and shall proceed to do so.

    05

    Although in this book it will be seen that I am giving many chapters to a subject which preceding systematic writers have passed over in a few lines, even where, as is the case with many of them, they have not utterly ignored it, I am sure that the reader will ultimately find in the ease and certainty with which subsequent inquiries may be conducted an ample reward for the care thus taken in the beginning.

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