considerable period
of time, the inductive science of Economics cannot approach
exactitude.

But a study which cannot claim this exactness may yet be a science,
and may have its value. A hypothesis which best explains the generally
apparent relation between certain known phenomena is not the less
science because it is liable to be succeeded by other hypotheses which
with equal relative accuracy explain a wider range of similar
phenomena. It is true that in studies where we know that there exists
a number of unascertained factors we shall expect a more fundamental
displacement of earlier and more speculative hypotheses than in
studies where we know, or think we know, that most of the phenomena
with which we are concerned are equally within our ken: but the
earlier scientific treatment, so far as it goes, is equally necessary
and equally scientific.

In modern industrial changes many different factors, material and
moral, are discernibly related to one another in many complex ways.
According as one or other of the leading factors is taken for a
scientific objective the study assumes a widely different character.

For example, since the end of Industry is wealth for consumption it
would be possible to group the industrial phenomena accordingly as
they served more fully and directly to satisfy human wants, or as they
affected quantitatively or qualitatively the standard of consumption,
and to consider the reflex actions of changed consumption upon modes
of industrial activity. Or again, considering Industry to consist
essentially of organised productive human effort, those factors most
closely related to changes in nature, conditions, and intensity of
work might form the centre of scientific interest; and we might group
our facts and forces according to their bearing upon this. These
points of view would give us different objective scientific studies.

Or, once more, taking a purely subjective standpoint, we might search
out the intellectual expression of these industrial changes in the
changing thought and feeling of the age, tracing the educative
influences of industrial development upon (1) the deliberate judgments
of the business world and of economic thinkers as reflected in
economic writings; (2) politics, literature, and art through the
changes of social environment, and the direct stimulation of new ideas
and sentiments. The deeper and more important human bearings of the
changes in industrial environment might