Introduction, Chapter 2, Footnote #06
The art not contained in the science
I have already explained, in the preceding section, why I do not hold with one of my reviewers that ``the art of political economy considered as a study of what ought to be is contained in the science''. It is of course true that the examination of the effects of any kind of governmental interference, either on Production or on Distribution and Exchange, may be treated as a problem of Economic Science: but in the case of Distribution and Exchange, as I have before said, it is clearly not enough for practical purposes to determine what kind of effects on incomes and prices will be produced by any measure: we have further to consider whether these effects are desirable or the reverse. On this latter point very different views are explicitly or implicitly maintained by thinkers, statesmen, reformers, philanthropists of different schools: a careful, thorough and impartial examination of these different views appeared to me, when I wrote my book, to be a great desideratum: and it is this desideratum which I have mainly endeavoured to supply in that part of my third book which deals with Distribution.