Epistemological Problems of Economics

1. The Meaning of Neutrality With Regard to Value Judgments

The fact that the science of economics had its origin in economic policy explains why most economists use expressions in the presentation of the theory that involve judgments and standards of value accepted by all mankind, or certainly by almost all men. If, for example, one is discussing the effects of tariffs, one usually employs, or at least one used to employ, terms that call a situation in which a given amount of capital and labor was able to produce a definite quantity of material economic goods “better” than a situation in which the same amount could produce only a smaller quantity.

The use of such expressions can hardly be said to imperil seriously the scientific character of the investigation, which precludes all standards and judgments of value. Whoever is of the opinion that economic policy ought to be differently oriented, i.e., in such a way that men become not richer in material goods, but poorer, can learn from the doctrine of free trade all that he needs to know in order to enter upon the path that leads to the goal he aspires to reach. If he himself were to undertake to develop the theory, he would, provided his reasoning were correct, arrive at the same results as other theorists, except that in his presentation he would use different expressions in a few incidental remarks and digressions that are unimportant from the point of view of what is essential in the theory. The objectivity of bacteriology as a branch of biology is not in the least vitiated by the fact that the researchers in this field regard their task as a struggle against the viruses responsible for conditions harmful to the human organism. Their theories are completely objective even though their presentation may be interlaced with terms like “harmful” and “useful”, “favorable,” and “unfavorable,” and the like, implying judgments of value. They neither raise nor answer questions concerning the value of life and health; and their findings are independent of the individual researchers’ valuation of these endowments. Whether one wishes to destroy rather than preserve human life, or whether, like the doctor, one seeks to cure and not to kill, he will, in either case, be able to draw from the results of their research all that he needs to know to accomplish his purpose.

One can be of the opinion that the “unfavorable” effects of tariffs, as set forth by the theory of free trade, are more than counterbalanced by other effects that warrant paying the price of the former. In that case one has the task, if one wishes to be scientific, of first of all pointing out and demonstrating these other effects as exactly and as clearly as possible. It then becomes the concern of politics to make the decision. In this connection it is by no means undesirable for the economist to take part in the discussion of policy. No one is better qualified to explain the matter at issue clearly and completely to those who have to make the decision. Of course, in doing so the economist is always under the obligation to make clear where the scientific explanation of causal relationships ends and where a clash of values requires to be resolved.

What is impermissible, however, is the obliteration of the boundary between scientific explanation and political value judgment. Although themselves guilty of this very failing, there are those who continually reproach economics for its alleged political bias because in writings on this subject one often employs terms that do not call into question generally accepted standards of value. Precisely these critics know only too well that they would be unable to attain their political goals if they were to admit that their proposals do not prove acceptable when gauged by such standards. The protectionists are well aware of the fact that they would have no hope of achieving their objectives if those called upon to decide the issue were to realize that protectionism lowers the productivity of labor as regards material goods. Because they know this, and because they want to set up protective tariffs notwithstanding, they go to great lengths to try to prove that Protective tariffs are to be regarded as advantageous even “from the economic point of view.” And because they fail lamentably in these endeavors, they charge economics with political bias.

2. Science and Technology: Economics and Liberalism

Whether science seeks knowledge for its own sake or in order thereby to obtain information for the sake of action, or whether it aims at both ends at the same time, it is in any case permissible to make practical use of the results of scientific investigation. Man thinks not only for the sake of thinking, but also in order to act. There would be no need to repeat these truisms were it not for the fact that antiliberal, partisan propaganda in the guise of science day after day vehemently seeks to deny them.

The fact that economics, as a science, is neutral with regard to judgments of value and that it can express neither approval nor disapproval does not prevent us from trying to learn from economics how we must arrange our action in order to achieve the ends at which we aim. The ends can be diverse. Caligula, who wished that the whole Roman people had but one head so that he might decapitate them at a single stroke, had different ends in mind from those of other mortals. However, such exceptional cases are rare; and their tendency to be self-destructive (Caligula, indeed, would hardly have long survived the fulfillment of his wish) makes an exhaustive concern with their ideals unnecessary. No matter how much their wishes, desires, and valuations may differ in details, men aim, for biological reasons, at the same basic ends. Regardless of world view, religion, nationality, race, class, position, education, personal abilities, age, health, or sex, they aspire above all to be able to pass their lives under the most favorable physiological conditions possible. They want to eat and drink; they seek clothing, shelter, and various other things in addition. Moreover, they are of the opinion that more food, clothing, and the like, is better than less.

Every individual desires life, health, and well-being for himself and for his friends and close relations. At the same time, the life, health, and well-being of others may be indifferent to him. Filled with the atavistic instincts of a beast of prey, he may even believe that others stand in his way, that they are depriving him of foraging grounds, and that the satisfaction of his wants must involve the killing and robbing of his fellow men. But the technology based on the cognition’s of the science of human action shows him that this is not so. Work performed under the division of labor is more productive than the isolated labor of the individual. Even when superior men combine with those less favored in every respect and inferior to them in capacity for work and intellectual and physical abilities, both sides gain, as is demonstrated by Ricardo’s law of association (usually called the law of comparative costs). Consequently, every individual is better able to attain his ends by the social cooperation of labor than by isolated work.

Social cooperation, however, can be based only on the foundation of private ownership of the means of production. Socialism—the public ownership of the means of production—would make impossible any economic calculation and is therefore impracticable. The absurdity of syndicalism is undisputed. As for interventionist encroachments, they prove—when judged from the point of view of those who advocate them—senseless and contrary to purpose, because they not only do not bring about the results desired by their supporters, but involve consequences that they themselves must deprecate.

Therefore, when one reaches the conclusion, strictly by adherence to the canons of scientific procedure, that private ownership of the means of production is the only practicable form of social organization, this is neither an apology for capitalism nor an improper attempt to lend the authority of science to the support of liberalism. To the man who adopts the scientific method in reflecting upon the problems of human action, liberalism must appear as the only policy that can lead to lasting well-being for himself, his friends, and his loved ones, and, indeed, for all others as well. Only one who does not want to achieve such ends as life, health, and prosperity for himself, his friends, and those he loves, only one who prefers sickness, misery, and suffering may reject the reasoning of liberalism on the ground that it is not neutral with regard to value judgments.

The defenders of the prevailing etatist and interventionist system completely misunderstand this. They think that the acceptance of liberalism, on the assumptions mentioned, presupposes a definite world view.1  Liberalism has nothing to do with world views, metaphysics, or value judgments.

We can imagine beings similar to men who would want to extinguish their humanity and, by putting an end to all thought and action, to attain to the unthinking, passive, vegetative existence of plants. It is doubtful whether there are or have ever been such men. Even St. Aegidius, the most radical advocate of asceticism, was not altogether consistent in his zeal for austerity when he recommended the birds and the fish as a model for man. To be entirely consistent, together with the Sermon on the Mount, he would have had to extol the lilies of the field as the embodiments of the ideal of complete abandonment of all concern for the improvement of one’s lot.

We have nothing to say to men of this kind, consistent ascetics who by their self-denying passivity give themselves up to death, just as they would have nothing to say to us. If one wishes to call their doctrine a world view, then one must not forget to add that it is not a human world view, since it must lead to the extinction of mankind. Our science sees men only as acting men, not as plants having the appearance of men. Acting man aims at ends, i.e., he wants to overcome dissatisfaction as far as possible. Our science shows that aiming at ends is necessary to existence and that human ends, whatever they may be, are better attained by the social cooperation of the division of labor than in isolation. (It is worthy of note that no historical experience has been found in conflict with this proposition.) Once one has appreciated this fact, one realizes that no standard of value of any kind is contained in the system of economic or sociological theory or in the teachings of liberalism, which constitute the practical application of this theory to action in society. All objections to the effect that economics, sociology, and liberalism are predicated on a definite world view prove untenable once it is recognized that the science of action is concerned only with acting men and that it can say nothing about plant-like beings living with no thought of tomorrow, whom we can scarcely consider as human.

3. The Universalist Critique of Methodological Individualism

The reproach of individualism is commonly leveled against economics on the basis of an alleged irreconcilable conflict between the interests of society and those of the individual. Classical and subjectivist economics, it is said, give an undue priority to the interests of the individual over those of society and generally contend, in conscious denial of the facts, that a harmony of interests prevails between them. It would be the task of genuine science to show that the whole is superior to the parts and that the individual has to subordinate himself to, and conduct himself for, the benefit of society and to sacrifice his selfish private interests to the common good.

In the eyes of those who hold this point of view society must appear as a means designed by Providence to attain ends that are hidden from us. The individual must bow to the will of Providence and must sacrifice his own interests so that its will may be done. His greatest duty is obedience. He must subordinate himself to the leaders and live just as they command.

But who, one must ask, is to be the leader? For many want to lead, and, of course, in different directions and toward different goals. The collectivists, who never cease to pour scorn and derision on the liberal theory of the harmony of interests, pass over in silence the fact that there are various forms of collectivism and that their interests are in irreconcilable conflict. They laud the Middle Ages and its culture of community and solidarity, and with romantic sentimentality they wax ecstatic over the communal associations “in which the individual was included, and in which he was kept warm and protected like fruit in its rind.”2  But they forget that papacy and empire, for example, opposed each other for hundreds of years and that every individual could find himself at any time in the position of having to choose between them. Were the inhabitants of Milan also “kept warm and protected like fruit in its rind” when they had to hand over their city to Frederick Barbarossa? Are there not various factions fighting today on German soil with bitter anger, each of which claims to represent the only true collectivism? And do not the Marxian socialists, the national socialists, the church, and many other parties approach every individual with the demand: join us, for you belong in our ranks, and fight to the death the “false” forms of collectivism? A collectivist social philosophy that did not designate a definite form of collectivism as true and either treat all others as subordinate to it or condemn them as false would be meaningless and vain. It must always tell the individual: Here you have an unquestionably given goal, because an inner voice has revealed it to me; to it you must sacrifice everything else, yourself above all. Fight to victory or death under the banner of this ideal, and concern yourself with nothing else.

Collectivism, in fact, can be stated in no other way than as partisan dogma in which the commitment to a definite ideal and the condemnation of all others are equally necessary. Loyola did not preach just any faith, but that of the Church of Rome. Lagarde did not advocate nationalism, but what he regarded as German nationalism. Church, nation, state in abstracto are concepts of nominalistic science. The collectivists idolize only the one true church, only the “great” nation?the “chosen” people who have been entrusted by Providence with a special mission?only the true state; everything else they condemn.

For that reason all collectivist doctrines are harbingers of irreconcilable hatred and war to the death.

The theory of the division of labor—the starting point of sociology—demonstrates that there is no irreconcilable conflict, as collectivist metaphysics maintains, between the interests of society and those of the individual. In isolation the individual cannot attain his ends, whatever they may be, or at least not to the same extent as by social cooperation. The sacrifices be makes for the maintenance of social cooperation arc therefore only temporary: renunciation of a momentary benefit for the sake of an advantage that endures throughout the continued existence and evolution of the division of labor. Society comes into being and develops not by virtue of a moral law imposed on mankind by mysterious powers bent on forcing the individual, against his interests, into subordination to the social whole, but through the action of individuals cooperating in the attainment of ends that they severally aim at, in order to take advantage of the higher productivity brought about by the division of labor. The sum and substance of the “individualistic” and “atomistic” theory of society is that every individual benefits from the existence of society and that no one would be better off as a freebooting individual in an imaginary state of isolation, searching for food on his own and engaging in the war of all against all, than as a member of society, though a thousand times more constrained and circumscribed.

The collectivists contend that “individualism” sees in society only the sum total of individuals, whereas society is really something specific.3  However, science is not at all concerned with determining what society is, but with the effect of labor performed under conditions of social cooperation. And its first statement is that the productivity of social cooperation surpasses in every respect the sum total of the production of isolated individuals.

For the purposes of science we must start from the action of the individual because this is the only thing of which we can have direct cognition. The idea of a society that could operate or manifest itself apart from the action of individuals is absurd. Everything social must in some way be recognizable in the action of the individual. What would the mystical totality of the universalists be if it were not alive in every individual? Every form of society is operative in the actions of individuals aiming at definite ends. What would a German national character be that did not find expression in the Germanism of individuals? What would a church be that did not express the faith of individuals? That one is a member of a market society, a party comrade, a citizen, or a member of any other association must be shown through his action.

Spann, the most prominent present-day champion of universalism, strongly emphasizes that universalist sociology deals with spiritual facts that cannot be drawn from experience because they “possess, by virtue of their a priori character, a pre-empirical, supra-empirical existence.”4

In the first place, this is not accurately expressed. Only the laws of human action can be derived a priori; but it is experience alone that can establish whether or not the categorial prerequisites of action are also present in the concrete case. (Here we may pass over the fact that every experience presupposes something given a priori.) One can infer from the a priori theory of action that the division of labor is not practicable without some way by which men can communicate with one another. But only experience can show whether the division of labor and language exist in fact. And experience alone can tell us that different linguistic systems are to be found in the world and that from this fact particular consequences must follow—consequences which, a priori, are at best recognized as possible, but certainly not as having been established as existing. It cannot be deduced a priori that between the totality constituted by humanity or the totality constituted by a world state, on the one hand, and the individual, on the other, stand the totalities constituted by people, race, state, and linguistic community; this can be ascertained only through experience.

However, what Spann has in mind when he declares the a priori method to be the only one appropriate for sociology as he conceives it is not at all a priori reasoning, but intuitive insight into a whole. Again and again science is reproached for its inability to grasp the whole of life, becoming, and being. In its hands the living whole becomes a dead patchwork; the brilliance and color of creation pale, and the infinite variety and beauty of the universe wither into a rational pattern. A new science must arise which would teach us to grasp the whole in its entirety. Only knowledge of this kind deserves the name of true science. Everything else is merely rational explanation and as such is untrue because it is unable to approach the splendor of creation.

4. The Experience of a Whole and Scientific Cognition

Science, which is dependent both on discursive reasoning and on experience, does not present us with a unified picture of the world. It reduces phenomena to a number of concepts and propositions that we must accept as ultimate, without being able to establish a connection between them. It proves incapable of closing the gap that exists between the system of the sciences of human thought and action and the system of the sciences of physical nature. It does not know how to find a bridge between sentience and motion or between consciousness and matter. What life and death are eludes its grasp.

But what reason and the experience of the natural sciences have denied us is given to us by personal experience, though in a different manner from that of science. We are unable to fathom life through reason, nor can we experience it through science. Reason and science deal only with isolated fragments detached from the living whole and thereby killed. They never refer to life as it is lived and never to life as a whole. But we experience life in living, and in living our life we live life as such: we experience the unity and indissoluble congenerousness of all life. We are unable to grasp the whole by reasoning, but we can experience it in living.

This personal experience of wholeness, unity, and infinity is the loftiest peak of human existence. It is the awakening to a higher humanity. It alone transforms everyday living into true living. It is not vouchsafed to us daily or at all places. The occasions on which we are brought closer to the world spirit must await a propitious hour. Such moments occur only seldom, but they are a thousand fold rewarding, and reflection upon them illumines the passing days, weeks, months, and years.

What we experience in these moments of exaltation fills our deepest and most personal thoughts and feelings. They are so private and personal that we are unable to communicate them to anyone else. They are so deep within us that they cannot make a clear impression on our own consciousness. Whoever in the presence of his beloved or in the contemplation of an aspect of nature or in the stirring of his own strength has experienced the power of the infinite finds it impossible to tell either himself or others what it is that moves him and how it moves him. The whole remains ineffable because reason and language are unable to enter here.

Art is nothing more than a faltering and inadequate attempt to express what has been thus experienced and to give some form to its content. The work of art captures not the experience, but only what its creator has been able to express of the experience. Missing are the content, the color, and the vitality of the experience, which come entirely from within. Of course, the work of art can kindle a new personal experience if one allows oneself to be affected by it. However, the experience that the work of art evokes is not adequate to what its creator wanted to express. The artist gives the work tone, melody, color, words, and form, but not personal experience. Yet we derive more from it than the mere sensation of tone, melody, color, words, and form: we experience it. And this personal experience is another and a new experience of a different kind. The same is true of all forms of mysticism and metaphysics. We grasp the words, but we ourselves must add the meaning, the personal experience. For our means of expression and of thought do not touch life in its fullness and wholeness. As the ancient Brahmin sages said, it is that “which words and thoughts seek without finding.”5

That is why there can be no progress or evolution in metaphysics, mysticism, and art. The accuracy with which a work renders the likeness of the external world can be enhanced, but not what is essential, not what is artistic in it. The most primitive work of art also can express the strongest experience, and it speaks to us, if only we let it, and leads us into depths that science can never make accessible.

Again and again those who want to obliterate the boundary between scientific knowledge and mystical intuition in personal experience reproach science for stopping at the surface of things and not penetrating into the depths. One has to recognize that science is not metaphysics, and certainly not mysticism; it can never bring us the illumination and the satisfaction experienced by one enraptured in ecstasy. Science is sobriety and clarity of conception, not intoxicated vision.

It is true, as Bergson has seen with unsurpassed clarity, that between reality and the knowledge that science can convey to us there is an unbridgeable gulf.6  Science cannot grasp life directly. What it captures in its system of concepts is always of a different character from the living whole.7  One may therefore, if one wishes, even call it dead, because what is not life is death. But if one thinks that one has thereby pronounced an unfavorable judgment on science, one is mistaken. One can call science dead, but one cannot say that it is not useful. It is indispensable in a double sense: first, as the sole means that can lead us to whatever measure of knowledge we can attain at all; and then, as the only foundation for an action that brings us closer to the ends at which we aim. Whether we see the greatest value in wisdom or in action, in neither case may we scorn science. It alone shows us the way both to knowledge and to action. Without it our existence would be only vegetative.

5. The Errors of the Universalist Doctrine

Thus every argument of the universalist critique directed against the methodological individualism of sociology, and of economics in particular, proves unwarranted. Science cannot proceed otherwise than discursively. its starting points must have as much certainty as human knowledge is capable of, and it must go on from there, making logical deductions step by step. It can begin as an aprioristic science with propositions necessary to thought that find their support and warrant in apodictic evidence; or as an empirical science it can start with experience. But never can it take as its starting point the vision of a whole.

One would misunderstand the nature and function of cartography if one were to demand that maps show mountains and forests in all their beauty and grandeur. The most exquisite description of the loveliness of the countryside could not in the least compensate us for the map. It would not be able to show us the path that leads to the goals we want to reach. It is not for botany to discuss the beauty and the charm of flowers; it may not take its starting point from forests and meadows, but from the individual plants, and it studies plants from the standpoint of vegetable physiology and plant biology by basing its knowledge on that of the cell.

When universalism opposes the thesis that “natural laws of mechanistic causality” underlie social phenomena, we can agree in so far as there is a fundamental difference between the observation of nature and the comprehension of meaning that is characteristic of the sciences of human action. The view of behaviorism is just as untenable as the epistemological position taken by Schumpeter in his first book.8  All mechanistic analogies are misleading.

However, we can no more do without the category of causality in our scientific thinking than in everyday thinking; it is the only category that cannot be thought away.9  Indeed, a mode of reasoning that did not involve reference to causality could not arrive at the concepts of God and the whole. That science means, above all, conceptual thinking will not, of course, be disputed. But thinking must always be causal and rational.

Human reasoning does not have the power to exhaust completely the content of the universe. In the sciences of human action it goes as far as conceptual thinking can go. Beyond this point nothing more can be done than to determine what the irrational facts are by means of the specific understanding of the moral sciences.

The error of universalism, as well as of other doctrines that attempt to deal with the methodological and logical uncertainties of the moral sciences, consists in the failure to see that understanding—i.e., insight into form and quality—is not the sole or the preeminent method of the moral sciences, but on the contrary, that it must be logically and temporally preceded by conception, i.e., the intellectual comprehension of meaning.

6. “Objective” Meaning

The metaphysical systems of the philosophy of history presume to be able to detect behind the appearance of things their “true” and “real” essence, which is hidden to the profane eye. They imagine themselves capable of discovering the final purpose of all mundane activity. They want to grasp the “objective meaning” of events, which, they maintain, is different from their subjective meaning, i.e., the meaning intended by the actor himself. In this respect all systems of religion and all philosophies of history proceed according to the same principles. Notwithstanding the bitterness with which they fight one another, Marxian socialism, German national socialism, and the non-German movements related to it, which have taken a variety of forms, are all in agreement on logical method; and it is worth noting that they can all be traced back to the same metaphysical foundation, namely, the Hegelian dialectic.

The science of human action knows of no way that could lead reasoning men to knowledge of the hidden plans of God or Nature. It is unable to give any answer to the question of the “meaning of the whole” that could be logically established in the manner in which the findings of scientific thought must be in order to be acknowledged at least as provisional truths. It deliberately abstains from intruding into the depths of metaphysics.10  It suffers lightly the reproach of its opponents that it stops at the “surface” of things.

It is not to be denied that the loftiest theme that human thought can set for itself is reflection on ultimate questions. Whether such reflection can accomplish anything is doubtful. Many of the most eminent minds of the past were of the opinion that thought and cognition overstep their domain of effectiveness when they apply themselves to such tasks. In any case, it is certain that differences of a fundamental nature exist between metaphysical speculations and scientific investigation?differences that may not be ignored without peril. It is the function of science to think out to their ultimate conclusions the a priori prerequisites of knowledge in their purity, to develop thereby a comprehensive theoretical system, and, with the aid of the results so obtained, to extract from the data of experience all that they can teach.

On the other hand, it is no part of the task of science to examine ultimate questions or to prescribe values and determine their order of rank. Nevertheless, one may call the fulfillment of these tasks higher, nobler, and more important than that of the simpler task of science, which is to develop a theoretical system of cause-and-effect relationships enabling us to arrange our action in such a way that we can attain the goals we aim at. One may hold poets, prophets, or promulgators of new values in higher esteem than scientists. But in no case is one free to confound these two fundamentally different functions. For example, one may not attempt, in compliance with Novalis’ invitation, to “poetize” the science of finance.11

Metaphysics and science perform different functions. They cannot, therefore, adopt the same procedures, nor are they alike in their goals. They can work side by side without enmity because they need not dispute each other’s domain as long as they do not misconstrue their own character. A conflict arises only when one or the other attempts to overstep the boundary between them. Positivism thought that, in place of uncertain speculations and poetry masquerading as philosophy, it would be able, through the application of the methods of science to the problems dealt with by metaphysics, to adopt a procedure guaranteeing the certainty of scientific demonstration to the treatment of the ultimate objects of knowledge. What it failed to see was that from the moment it undertook to treat of metaphysical problems, it itself also necessarily engaged in metaphysics. Precisely because it did not see this, its own metaphysics, notwithstanding its professions of scorn for everything metaphysical, was naive in the extreme.

On the other hand, securely established conclusions of scientific thought are again and again attacked on metaphysical grounds. Now, of course, nothing that is scientifically established can be brought against the assumption that things could present themselves to a mind other than human differently from the way in which we see and experience them, so that the science of this other mind would possess a different content from ours. Our own thinking is utterly powerless to discover anything whatever about what such a superhuman or divine being would think. But within the cosmos in which our action is effective and in which our thinking paves the way for action, the findings of our scientific reasoning are so securely established as to render meaningless the statement that, in a broader setting or in a deeper sense, they would have to lose their validity and yield to some other cognition.

Since we must concern ourselves here not with empirical science, but with the apriorism of the science of human action, we need not consider the encroachments of metaphysics upon the domain of the former. It is obvious that the attempts to use metaphysical arguments to refute what follows from a priori ratiocination are tantamount to replacing discursive reasoning by the arbitrariness of intuitive flights of fancy. No metaphysics is in any way able to undermine the concept of action. Consequently, metaphysics can detract nothing from whatever is necessarily deduced from that concept. When we seek to comprehend categorially the prerequisites of human action, one may criticize and correct our procedure, if it goes wrong, by resort to scientific reasoning. However, whatever firmly withstands the logical scrutiny of our reason can in no way be refuted by the assertions of metaphysics. It is no more permissible to deny recognition to any of the propositions of economics—for example, the theory of value and of price formation—by referring to the fact that one has a different “world view” or that one’s “interests” give one a different—e.g., the “proletarian”—standpoint than it would be to use the statements of metaphysics to argue down the binomial theorem. No vision of totality, no universalism, and no “sociologism” can allow us to “understand” things differently from the way in which they must present themselves to our sober reasoning. If I am unable to show through arithmetical reasoning that arithmetic is contradictory in saying three times three equals nine, I am not warranted in asserting that in a “higher” or “deeper” sense another answer has to be true.

The conclusions that must be drawn from the findings of economics do not meet the approval of those whose immediate, momentary interests make it appear desirable that other teachings be recognized as correct. Inasmuch as they are at a loss to discover any error in the logical structure of economics, they call upon supramundane powers for help.

• 1E.g., Vleugel’s “Probleme der Wertlehre,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, LXVIII, 227f. Liberalism has no thought of denying the existence of servilism and its world view. All that liberalism endeavors to demonstrate is that the realization of the goals of servilism would necessarily bring about consequences of whose inevitability its advocates are in ignorance and which, even in their own eyes, must appear as too high a price to have to pay for the attainment of their ideal.
• 2Sombart, Der proletarische Sozializmus (10th ed.; Jena, 1924), I, 31.
• 3Spann, article “Soziologie,” Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (4th edition), VII, 655,
• 4Ibid.
• 5Cf. Deussen, Vedânta, Platon und Kant (Vienna, 1917), p. 67.
• 6Cf. Bergson, L’évolution créatrice (7th ed.; Paris, 1911), pp. I ff.
• 7This has never been denied, not even by the empiricism of the natural sciences, Erasmus Darwin wrote: “Following life, in creatures we dissect,/ We lose it, in the moment we detect.” Quoted by J. S. Mill in his System der deductiven und inductiven Logik, trans. by von Gomperz (Leipzig, 1872), 11, p. 163.
• 8Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalökonomie (Leipzig, 1908).
• 9Cf. Schopenhauer, Die Welt as Wille und Vorstellung (Collected Works, edited by Frauenstädt, 2nd ed.; Leipzig, 1916), II, 531.
• 10Sulzbach, Die Grundlagen der politischen Parteibildung (Tübingen, 192 1), pp. v f.
• 11Quoted by Freyer in Die Bewertung der Wirtschaft im philosophischen Denken des 19. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1921), p. 49.