titles indicate in a general way the large problems of methodology which the corresponding portions of Smith's treatise implicitly, but not explicitly, raise. The very fact that the discussion under those titles, on the basis of Smith's own analysis, contains hardly more than a hint of the whole range of problems which the titles now suggest, serves to carry the argument that economic technology, abstracted from the rest of social science, leaves yawning hiatuses in our knowledge. JUNE 10, 1907 A. W. S. III. THE ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF LABOR IV. THE ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF CAPITAL VI. THE PROBLEMS OF ECONOMIC AND OF SOCIOLOGI- VII. THE RELATION OF ECONOMIC TECHNOLOGY TO I INTRODUCTION If one were to come upon The Wealth of Nations for the first time, with a knowledge of the general sociological way of looking at society, but with no knowledge of economic literature, there would be not the slightest difficulty nor hesitation about classifying the book as an inquiry in a special field of sociology. Under those circumstances there would be no doubt that the author of the book had a fairly well-defined view, though not in detail the modern view, of the general relations of human society, and of the subordinate place occupied objectively, if not in conventional theory, by the economic section of activities to which the book was devoted. On its first page the reader would get hints of the outlook in the mind of the author, and it would not be hard to construct from those hints a perspective which would contrast very directly with certain points in the view that afterward stole into vogue among classical economists and working capitalists. Sombart1 has made a very strong statement 1 Moderne Kapitalismus, Vol. I, pp. 196, et passim. |