In other words, economic science is
to me the objective form and realization of metaphysics; it is
metaphysics in action, metaphysics projected on the vanishing
plane of time; and whoever studies the laws of labor and exchange
is truly and specially a metaphysician.
After what I have said in the introduction, there is nothing in
this which should surprise any one. The labor of man continues
the work of God, who, in creating all beings, did but externally
realize the eternal laws of reason. Economic science is, then,
necessarily and at once a theory of ideas, a natural theology,
and a psychology. This general outline alone would have sufficed
to explain why, having to treat of economic matters, I was
obliged previously to suppose the existence of God, and by what
title I, a simple economist, aspire to solve the problem of
certainty.
But I hasten to say that I do not regard as a science the
incoherent ensemble of theories to which the name POLITICAL
ECONOMY has been officially given for almost a hundred years, and
which, in spite of the etymology of the name, is after ail but
the code, or immemorial routine, of property.
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