The Economic Synthesis

Excerpt from The Economic Synthesis: A Study of the Laws of Income
The present work, which now appears in a somewhat abridged form in English, may be said to sum up the researches of more than thirty years in the domain of economic science, and to form the complement and the theoretic crown of all my earlier writings. If, in fact, in my previous works upon Land Rent (1879), upon Capitalist Property (1889), and upon the Economic Constitution of To-day (1899), I have studied the specific laws of the individual historic phases of economic development, it has been my intention in this book to study the laws and the regular recurrences common to all the economic forms which have hitherto prevailed; to study, that is to say, the norms immanent in the economic order per se, independently of the different manifestations assumed by that order in the successive phases of history.
This simple statement suffices to show that the present book is in intimate correspondence with the acquirements of the economic thought of to-day, just as my earlier works reflected the prior phases of scientific mentality in the economic field. - If, in fact, in the past, economic research, dominated by the historical concept, loved to break up social evolution into its successive phases, and to throw the light of theory separately upon each of these, to-day, on the other hand, science aims at the attainment of a comprehensive grasp of the economic order in the totality of its integral manifestations, and endeavours to bring to light the universal and eternal substance underlying its varying developments. In other words, if, in the past, analysis and the historical method of treatment prevailed, to-day there tend to prevail synthesis and pure science.
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