POLISH LITERATURE. 181 POLITICAL ECONOMY. (Mayence, 1873), a short survey; Xitsch- manii, (Jescltichte dcr politiichen Littcratur (2d ed., Leipzig, 1888). The best work is in Russian ■ in the second volume of Pypin and Spasovitch, History of Slaric Literatures (2d ed.. Saint Petersburg, 1879-80) under the title. History of Polish Literature. It exists in a German trans- lation bv Pech, Geseliichte der slatcischen Litter- aturen "(Leipzig, 1880-84). POLISH MUSIC. See Sl.monic Music. POLISH SUCCESSION, W.R of the. See SUCCES.SIOX Waks. POLISHING MATERIALS. See Abbasr-es. POLITIAN, or POLITIANUS. A celebrated Italian huniaiiist. See Poliziaxo. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, American Academy of. A learned society or- ganized in Philadelphia, December 14, 1889, and incorporated Feliruary 14. 1891. Its membership has grown rapidly and is now more tlian two thousand, distributed through the United States and more than .30 foreign countries. Its general advisory committee is composed of representa- tives of the faculties of the leading American and of several foreign universities: the president and secretary are connected with the University of Pennsylvania, where the annual meeting is held in April. Its object is the promotion of political and social science, by accumulating a li- brary, by offering prizes for specified contribu- tions to science, by publishing papers and re- ports, and by establishing lecture courses. Its publications are The Annals of the American Academy, a bi-monthly magazine on current po- litical problems, which began July, 1890, with several supplements every year containing trans- lations of foreign works, and a special series of pamphlets, containing* the principal papers sub- mitted to the Academv'. of which several hun- dred numbers have been issued. POLITICAL ECONOMY. The term eeonom,- ics. derived from the Greek words ohoc (house- hold) and vofio^ (law or regulation), was used by Xenophon and in the spurious treatise at- tributed to Aristotle, to signify the art of pru- dent and systematic household management, with particular reference to familj- income and ex- penditures, and to the labor and satisfaction of the wants of the members of the household. Political economics, or political economy, as the words imply, originally signified the art of directing the industry, the consumption, the in- comes and ex]ienditures of the State and its sub- jects with frugality and care; and in this sense was first used in the Traite de I'Economie Poli- tiijue, published byJIonchr^tien de Vatteville in 1615. The use of the word in this significance soon became general. It was not until the nine- teenth century that political economy came to be commonly conceived as a neutral science, di- vorced froiji the art of statesmanship. Economics then became the science of wealth, the study of those things which possess exchange value. Tliis view Ijecame dominant about 182.5, the abstract and theoretical treatment then in favor being di- vided into three or four topics: the production, consumption, and distribution of wealth (J. B. Say), or the production, distribution, and ex- change of wealth (,T. S. Jlill). most subsequent writers including exchange and a minority fol- lowing Mill in excluding consumption. Some writers (e.g. Senior, .J. S. Jlill) proposed to limit the term political economj' to this com- parativel.v narrow science of wealth; while oth- ers proposed to substitute for the term the titles Chrematistics (Sismondi), Catallaciics (Whately), meaning the science of exchanges. A sharp reaction set in about 1850 against the attempt to increase the precision of the science by narrowing its scope. The Historical School (see below) maintained that the subject of the study was not wealth, but man's relation to wealth; that it was part of a general social science, and could not profitably be divorced from ethics and politics. The first contention, well expressed in Eoscher's aphorism that political economy begins and ends in man, has met with practically universal acceptance. The other con- tentions of the Historical School are still in dis- pute, but the}' have served effectually to prevent any uniform acceptation of the term political economy. Econotnics, wrested from its old mean- ing of household management, is used or de- fended by Jevons, Marshall, Macleod, Ely, and other leading economists, but it is the brevity and not the clearness of the word which preserves it, since as now used it is aifected with all the ambiguity of the longer title. Content or Scope. The investigation of the social relations and activities connected with wealth may be divided into four stages. In the first stage we describe, classify, define, and enu- merate economic phenomena. In the second we analyze and intercpret these phenomena for the purpose of revealing cause and effect, of discov- ering uniformities and sequences or economic laws. In investigating economic uniformities we are practically forced to certain conclusions about economic progress, and the theory of eco- nomic progress determines largely our interpre- tation of approximate aims and ideals : the detennination of these ideals constitutes the third stage. In the fourth stage we discuss means to attain these aims and ideals. We may easily distinguish the stages in which one of these processes far outweighs in im- portance all the rest. Corresponding to the first stage we have Economic History, Eco- nomic Methodology, and Economic Statistics; corresponding to the second stage is Economic Theory: to the third stage, the Ethics of Po- litical Economy; and to the fourth stage Applied Political Economy, often but infelicitously called the Art of Political Economy. It should be added that Economic Theory, also called Econom- ies, Social Economics, Theory of Political Econ- omy, etc., is usually .subdivided further into the inductive theory and the deductive theory, and the latter is frequently called hypothetical, ab- stract, speculative. Pure Economics or the Pure Theory. Briefly stated, the debate over the proper scope of political economy hinges about the question whether the term political economy shall be applied to all or only to a part of these divisions. Some writers (e.g. H. von Scheel. Laveleye, and most German writers) would use the term political economy to cover all of them. The leading English economists of the present time would use the term so as to include all except ethics and applied political economy; while the fast disappearing group of which Senior is the best example attempted to con- fine the science of political economy to ab- stract or hypothetical theoiy. This question
