FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30  
31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   >>   >|  
s on science; but the science on which the canonist doctrine rested was theology. Theology, or rather that branch of it which we may call Christian ethics, laid down certain principles of right and wrong in the economic sphere; and it was the work of the canonists to apply them to specific transactions and to pronounce judgment as to their permissibility.'[2] The conception of economic laws, in the modern sense, was quite foreign to the mediaeval treatment of the subject. It was only in the middle of the fourteenth century that anything approaching a scientific examination of the phenomena of economic life appeared, and that was only in relation to a particular subject, namely, the doctrine of money.[3] [Footnote 1: Rambaud, _Histoire des Doctrines Economiques_, p. 39. 'It is evident that a household is a mean between the individual and the city or Kingdom, since just as the individual is part of the household, so is the household part of the city or Kingdom, and therefore, just as prudence commonly so called which governs the individual is distinct from political prudence, so must domestic prudence (oeconomica) be distinct from both. Riches are related to domestic prudence, not as its last end, but as its instrument. On the other hand, the end of political prudence is a good life in general as regards the conduct of the household. In _Ethics_ i. the philosopher speaks of riches as the end of political prudence, by way of example, and in accordance with the opinion of many.' Aquinas, _Summa II_. ii. 50. 3, and see _Sent. III_. xxxiii. 3 and 4. 'Practica quidem scientia est, quae recte vivendi modum ac disciplinae formam secundum virtutum institutionem disponit. Et haec dividitur in tres, scilicet: primo ethicam, id est moralem; et secundo oeconomicam, id est dispensativam; et tertio politicam, id est civilem' (Vincent de Beauvais, _Speculum_, VII. i. 2).] [Footnote 2: _Op. cit._, vol. i. part. ii. p. 379.] [Footnote 3: Rambaud, _op. cit._, p. 83; Ingram, _op. cit._, p. 36. So marked was the contrast between the mediaeval and modern conceptions of economics that the appearance of this one treatise has been said by one high authority to have been the signal of the dawn of the Renaissance (Espinas, _Histoire des Doctrines Economiques_, p. 110).] To say that the mediaeval method of approaching economic problems was fundamentally different from the modern, is not in any sense to be taken as indicating disapproval of
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30  
31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

prudence

 

economic

 

household

 

modern

 

individual

 

political

 
Footnote
 

mediaeval

 
Kingdom
 
domestic

distinct

 
approaching
 
Rambaud
 

subject

 
Economiques
 

Histoire

 
doctrine
 

science

 
Doctrines
 

scilicet


ethicam

 
virtutum
 

Practica

 

quidem

 

scientia

 

xxxiii

 

institutionem

 

disponit

 

secundum

 

formam


vivendi

 

disciplinae

 

dividitur

 
signal
 
Renaissance
 

authority

 

treatise

 

Espinas

 

indicating

 

disapproval


fundamentally

 

method

 
problems
 

appearance

 
economics
 
Vincent
 

Beauvais

 
Speculum
 
civilem
 

politicam