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