NOTES AND ABSTRACTS
411
of social change depends thus upon the utilitarian choices of individuals, and these choices are in their last analysis economic choices. In other words, the economic law greatest utility with least sacrifice is the generic law of human activity, both that which is directed to preserve the status and that which aims at social evolution."
IV. Economics, as the Science of Utility, the Master Science of Psychical Activities. "The separation of phenomena by our consciousness, in its primary judgment, into the two classes, physical and psychical, compels a corresponding division of the sciences." All classification must be relative to the forms and modes of human thought.
The multitude of the special sciences, for example, which deals with the physical world have been gradually brought into a system under three general or master sci- ences, physics, chemistry, and biology." "The aim of psychical science must be to choose such general points of view that the relations between them are naturally understood. This necessitates master sciences which have a body of fundamental principles form- ing the framework of all the special sciences. This does not imply a division of the field among master sciences, but rather the assumption of characteristic standpoints. Economics is the science which deals with the fundamental principles of psychical activity, and is therefore inherently the master science of society.
The following simple yet sufficiently comprehensive classification of the sciences is proposed :
( Physics
A.
Biology
^ General sciences or master scien-
Ices, the principles of which apply to many special sciences. ! A group of chemical sciences, I for example.
(Certain special sciences may be composite and belong, in part, to J two or more master sciences. Psychology,
Master science of mind as knowing. Economics,
Master science of mind as utilizing. Science of utility. Science of practical life. Includes:
Esthetics, i. e., the science of motive sen- sations,
Economics, in the narrow sense of the science of adjustment of environment to subject, and Ethics, the science of adjustment of subject
to environment.
V. Sociology, one of the Special Economic Sciences. The leading tendency of sociology has been (l) " the assumption of the physical standpoint, and (2) the assump- tion <>f 'groups' of a vaguely conceived society as the primary fact to which the individual appears as secondary."
The contrary i> true for economics. "The economic individual initiates action, he uses society or the social group as his means and he achieves an end for himself an end fore-ordained by himself. . . . Social institutions and groups" persist or change according as they have utility fitness, that is. not in the physical sense, but fitness as seen bv tin- individual. Individ ire the primary fact, and society exists by
them and for them, while to the tin- primaiv fact is society which makes
the individual and whose ends the indr ves."
inut be a master science inasmuch as it simplv studies man with reference to his association with other men. "If there were only one man in the world there would be no place for a science it all the fundamental concepts
of economics would still remain. "Goods, utility, value, labor, capital, wealth, wants, consumption, production, dynamics. These are facts in the economic 1 life of every man, not only as a member of society, but as a solitary individual."
Physical Sciences.
Studying phenomena from ,-. f the standpoint of matter (un- 4 ( conscious) and in motion (for- tuitous or non-teleological).
I
/?. Psychical Sciences.
idying phenomena from the standpoint of mind (con- scious) and its activities (teleo- logical).
'
