these we may distinguish individual economics,
domestic economics, business economics, governmental economics (public
finance), and political (or national) economics. Any one of these
subjects may be approached and treated primarily either with regard to
its more immediate financial, material, acquisitive aspects, or to its
more far-reaching social, psychical, and welfare aspects. These
various ideas appear and reappear most confusingly in economic
literature.

The aims that different students and teachers have in the pursuit of
economics are as varied as are the conceptions of its nature. The
teaching aims are, indeed, largely determined by those conceptions.
Moreover, the teaching aims are modified by still other conditions,
such as the environment of the college and its constituency, and such
as the temperament, business experience, and scholarly training of the
teacher. We may distinguish broadly three aims: the vocational, the
civic, and the cultural.

_The vocational aim_ is the most elementary and most usual. Xenophon's
treatise on domestic "economy" was the nucleus from which have grown
all the systematic formulations of economic principles. Vocational
economics is the economics of the craftsman and of the shop. Every
practical craft and art has its economic aspect, which concerns the
right and best use of labor and valuable materials to attain a certain
artistic, mechanical, or other technical end in its particular field.
Economics is not mere technology, which has to do with the mastery of
materials and forces to attain any material end. Vocational economics,
however, modifies and determines technical practice, which, in the
last analysis, is subject to the economic rule. The economic engineer
should construct not the best bridge that is possible, mechanically
considered, but the best possible or advisable for the purpose and
with the means at hand. The economic agriculturist should not produce
the largest crop possible, but the crop that gives the largest
additional value. The rapidly growing recognition of the importance,
in all technical training, of cultivating the ability to take the
economic view has led to the development of household economics in
connection with the teaching of cooking, sewing, decorating, etc.; of
the economics of farm management to supplement the older technical
courses in natural science, crops, and animal husbandry; of the
economics of factory management in connection with mechan