Note 816 — Chapter I · : THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL AND THE CONFLICT OF METHODS

All historians, however, are not equally sceptical. Ashley in his preface to English Economic History and Theory writes as follows: “Just as the history of society, in spite of apparent retrogressions, reveals an orderly development, so there has been an orderly development in the history of what men have thought, and therefore in what they have thought concerning the economic side of life.” And Ingram, in his History of Political Economy, points out that “As we have more than once indicated, an essential part of the idea of life is that of development—in other words, of ordered change. And that such a development takes place in the constitution and working of society in all its elements is a fact which cannot be doubted.… That there exist between the several social elements such relations as make the change of one element involve or determine the change of another is equally plain; and why the name of natural laws should be denied to such constant relations of coexistence and succession it is not easy to see. These laws being universal admit of the construction of an abstract theory of economic development.” (P. 205.)