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• Preface to the First Edition (1871)
• Preface to the Second Edition (1879)
• Preface to the Third Edition By Harriet Jevons
• Errata
• Chapter I: Introduction
• Mathematical Character of the Science.
• Confusion Between Mathematical and Exact Sciences.
• Capability of Exact Measurement.
• Measurement of Feeling and Motives.
• Logical Method of Economics.
• Relation of Economics to Ethics.
• Chapter II: Theory of Pleasure and Pain
• Pleasure and Pain As Quantities.
• Pain the Negative of Pleasure.
• Anticipated Feeling.
• Uncertainty of Future Events.
• Chapter III: Theory of Utility
• Definition of Terms.
• The Laws of Human Want.
• Utility Is Not an Intrinsic Quality.
• Law of the Variation of Utility.
• Total Utility and Degree of Utility.
• Variation of the Final Degree of Utility.
• Disutility and Discommodity.
• Distribution of Commodity In Different Uses.
• Theory of Dimensions of Economic Quantities.
• Actual, Prospective, and Potential Utility.
• Distribution of a Commodity In Time.
• Chapter IV: Theory of Exchange
• Importance of Exchange In Economics.
• Ambiguity of the Term Value.
• Value Expresses Ratio of Exchange.
• Popular Use of the Term Value.
• Dimension of Value.
• Definition of Market.
• Definition of Trading Body.
• The Law of Indifference.
• The Theory of Exchange.
• Symbolic Statement of the Theory.
• Analogy to the Theory of the Lever.
• Impediments to Exchange.
• Illustrations of the Theory of Exchange.
• Problems In the Theory of Exchange.
• Complex Cases of the Theory.
• Competition In Exchange.
• Failure of the Equations of Exchange.
• Negative and Zero Value.
• Equivalence of Commodities.
• Acquired Utility of Commodities.
• The Gain By Exchange.
• Numerical Determination of the Laws of Utility.
• Opinions As to the Variation of Price.
• Variation of the Price of Corn.
• The Origin of Value.
• Chapter V: Theory of Labour
• Definition of Labour.
• Quantitative Notions of Labour.
• Symbolic Statement of the Theory.
• Dimensions of Labour.
• Balance Between Need and Labour.
• Distribution of Labour.
• Relation of the Theories of Labour and Exchange.
• Relations of Economic Quantities.
• Various Cases of the Theory.
• Joint Production.
• Over-production.
• Limits to the Intensity of Labour.
• Chapter VI: Theory of Rent
• Accepted Opinions Concerning Rent.
• Symbolic Statement of the Theory.
• Illustrations of the Theory.
• Chapter VII: Theory of Capital
• The Function of Capital.
• Capital Is Concerned With Time.
• Quantitative Notions Concerning Capital.
• Expression For Amount of Investment.
• Dimensions of Capital, Credit and Debit.
• Effect of the Duration of Work.
• Illustrations of the Investment of Capital.
• Fixed and Circulating Capital.
• Free and Invested Capital.
• Uniformity of the Rate of Interest.
• General Expression For the Rate of Interest.
• Dimension of Interest.
• Peacock On the Dimensions of Interest.
• Tendency of Profits to a Minimum.
• Advantage of Capital to Industry.
• Are Articles In the Consumers' Hands Capital?
• Chapter VIII: Concluding Remarks
• The Doctrine of Population.
• Relation of Wages and Profit.
• Professor Hearn's Views.
• The Noxious Influence of Authority.
• Appendix I
• Appendix Ii

Capability of Exact Measurement.

Many will object, no doubt, that the notions which we treat in this science are incapable of any measurement. We cannot weigh, nor gauge, nor test the feelings of the mind; there is no unit of labour, or suffering, or enjoyment. It might thus seem as if a mathematical theory of Economics would be necessarily deprived for ever of numerical data.

I answer, in the first place, that nothing is less warranted in science than an uninquiring and unhoping spirit. In matters of this kind, those who despair are almost invariably those who have never tried to succeed. A man might be despondent had he spent a lifetime on a difficult task without a gleam of encouragement; but the popular opinions on the extension of mathematical theory tend to deter any man from attempting tasks which, however difficult, ought, some day, to be achieved.

If we trace the history of other sciences, we gather no lessons of discouragement. In the case of almost everything which is now exactly measured, we can go back to the age when the vaguest notions prevailed. Previous to the time of Pascal, who would have thought of measuring doubt and belief? Who could have conceived that the investigation of petty games of chance would have led to the creation of perhaps the most sublime branch of mathematical science—the theory of probabilities? There are sciences which, even within the memory of men now living, have become exactly quantitative. While Quesnay and Baudeau and Le Trosne and Condillac were founding Political Economy in France, and Adam Smith in England, electricity was a vague phenomenon, which was known, indeed, to be capable of becoming greater or less, but was not measured nor calculated: it is within the last forty or fifty years that a mathematical theory of electricity, founded on exact data, has been established. We now enjoy precise quantitative notions concerning heat, and can measure the temperature of a body to less than part of a degree Centigrade. Compare this precision with that of the earliest makers of thermometers, the Academicians del Cimento, who used to graduate their instruments by placing them in the sun's rays to obtain a point of fixed temperature.1

De Morgan excellently said,1 "As to some magnitudes, the clear idea of measurement comes soon: in the case of length, for example. But let us take a more difficult one, and trace the steps by which we acquire and fix the idea: say weight. What weight is, we need not know.... We know it as a magnitude before we give it a name: any child can discover the more that there is in a bullet, and the less that there is in a cork of twice its size. Had it not been for the simple contrivance of the balance, which we are well assured (how, it matters not here) enables us to poise equal weights against one another, that is, to detect equality and inequality, and thence to ascertain how many times the greater contains the less, we might not to this day have had much clearer ideas on the subject of weight, as a magnitude, than we have on those of talent, prudence, or self-denial, looked at in the same light. All who are ever so little of geometers will remember the time when their notions of an angle, as a magnitude, were as vague as, perhaps more so than, those of a moral quality; and they will also remember the steps by which this vagueness became clearness and precision."

Now there can be no doubt that pleasure, pain, labour, utility, value, wealth, money, capital, etc., are all notions admitting of quantity; nay, the whole of our actions in industry and trade certainly depend upon comparing quantities of advantage or disadvantage. Even the theories of moralists have recognised the quantitative character of the subject. Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is thoroughly mathematical in the character of the method. He tells us1 to estimate the tendency of an action thus: "Sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one side, and those of all the pains on the other. The balance, if it be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of that individual person; if on the side of pain, the bad tendency of it upon the whole." The mathematical character of Bentham's treatment of moral science is also well exemplified in his remarkable tract entitled, "A Table of the Springs of Action," printed in 1817, as in p. 3, and elsewhere.

"But where," the reader will perhaps ask, "are your numerical data for estimating pleasures and pains in Political Economy?" I answer, that my numerical data are more abundant and precise than those possessed by any other science, but that we have not yet known how to employ them. The very abundance of our data is perplexing. There is not a clerk nor book-keeper in the country who is not engaged in recording numerical facts for the economist. The private-account books, the great ledgers of merchants and bankers and public offices, the share lists, price lists, bank returns, monetary intelligence, Custom-house and other Government returns, are all full of the kind of numerical data required to render 5Economics an exact mathematical science. Thousands of folio volumes of statistical, parliamentary, or other publications await the labour of the investigator. It is partly the very extent and complexity of the information which deters us from its proper use. But it is chiefly a want of method and completeness in this vast mass of information which prevents our employing it in the scientific investigation of the natural laws of Economics.

I hesitate to say that men will ever have the means of measuring directly the feelings of the human heart. A unit of pleasure or of pain is difficult even to conceive; but it is the amount of these feelings which is continually prompting us to buying and selling, borrowing and lending, labouring and resting, producing and consuming; and it is from the quantitative effects of the feelings that we must estimate their comparative amounts. We can no more know nor measure gravity in its own nature than we can measure a feeling; but, just as we measure gravity by its effects in the motion of a pendulum, so we may estimate the equality or inequality of feelings by the decisions of the human mind. The will is our pendulum, and its oscillations are minutely registered in the price lists of the markets. I know not when we shall have a perfect system of statistics, but the want of it is the only insuperable obstacle in the way of making Economics an exact science. In the absence of complete statistics, the science will not be less mathematical, though it will be immensely less useful than if it were, comparatively speaking, exact. A correct theory is the first step towards improvement, by showing what we need and what we might accomplish.

[[1]]See Principles of Science, chap. xiii., on "The Exact Measurement of Phenomena," 3d ed., p. 270.

[[1]]Formal Logic, p. 175.

[[1]]Chapter iv., on the "Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, How to be measured," sec. v. 5.