Note 854 — Chapter I · : THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL AND THE CONFLICT OF METHODS

Cf. Marshall, Principles, Book I, chap. 6, § 4, and especially Menger, Untersuchungen, pp. 15-17: “We may be said to have historical knowledge of a particular phenomenon when we have traced its individual genesis, i.e. when we have succeeded in representing to ourselves the concrete circumstances among which it came into being, with their proper qualifications, etc. We may be said to have a theoretical knowledge of some concrete phenomenon when we are enabled to envisage it as a particular instance of a certain law or regularity of sequence or coexistence, i.e. when we are able to give an account of the raison d’être and the nature of its existence as an exemplification of some general law.”