经济学是所有科学当中最年轻的。在过去的两百年，虽然有许多新的科学从古代希腊人所熟习的学问中成长出来，可是，那不过是些在旧学问体系中已有了地位的部份知识，现在成为独立的学科而已。研究的领域，划分得更精细，而且也用些新的方法；在这领域内，有些从来未被注意的地方被发现了，而且人们开始从一些不同
于前人的观点来看事物。领域的本身并没有扩大。但是经济学却给人文科学开辟了一个新的领域，这个领域是
以前不能接近的，而且也从未想到的。从市场现象的相互依赖和因果关系中，发现了它们的规律性，这却超越
了传统学问体系的范围。经济学所传述的知识，不能当作逻辑、数学、心理学、物理学、或生物学来看。
自古以来，哲学家们一直是热心于探索上帝或自然，想在人类历史行程中实现些什么目的。他们寻求人类的归趋和演化的法则。但是，
他们这些努力完全失败了，甚至那些摆脱了一切神学倾向的思想家也是如此，因为他
们都被一个错误的方法所害。他们是把人类当作一个整体来处理，或以其他的整体概念，例如国、民族、或敎会，来处理。他们十分武断地建立了一些目的，以为这样的一些整体一定是趋向于这些目的的。但是，他们不能圆满地解答下面这个问题：是些什么因素逼得各种各样的行为人，不得不为达成他们所谓的整体的不可阻挠
的演化所要达成的目的而行为。他们曾经用一些无可奈何的说法来解答这个问题。如：神透过圣灵启示，或透过代表神的先知，或透过神化的领袖，而作的神秘干涉、预定的和谐、注定的命运、或神秘无稽的「世界精
神」或「民族精神」的运作。其他的思想家则说到，在人的冲动中有个「自然的巧妙」（cunning of
nature），驱使他不知不觉地遵照「自然」所指定的途径走。
另外有些哲学家比较实在。他们不去推测自然或上帝的意旨。他们从政治的观点来看人事。他们一心一意想建
立一些政治行为的规律，好像是作为政治的和政治家的一种技术。有些爱用思想的人，拟出一些野心勃勃的大
计划，想把社会来个彻底改革和重建。比较谦虚的人，则满意于收集历史经验的资料而加以系统化。但是所有
这些，都是充份相信在社会事件发生的过程中，没有像在我们的推理中所曾断定的和在自然现象的因果关系中
所曾发现的那样的规律和不变的现象。他们不去寻求社会合作的一些法则，因为他们以为，人是可以随自己的
意思来组织社会的。如果社会条件不符合改革者们的愿望，如果他们的理想国无法实行，那就归咎于人的道德
不够。一些社会问题被当作伦理问题来考虑。他们认为，为着建造理想的社会，需要的是优秀的君主与善良的
公民。有了善良的人，任何理想国都可以实现。
由于市场现象相互依赖这一事实的发现，上述的见解就被抛弃了。人们不免惊惶失措，但他们必须面对这一崭新的社会观。他们恍恍惚惚地知道，在善与恶、正与邪、公道与不公道以外，还有另一个看法，可以用来看人的行为。在社会事件发展的过程中，总有个规律在发生作用，如果你想成功，你就得服从这个规律来调整你的行为。假若以检査官（用些十分武断的标准和主观的价值判断来臧否事物的人）的态度来接近社会事实，那是
毫无所得的。我们必须研究人的行为与社会合作的一些法则，如同物理学家之研究自然法则。作为一门研究旣定关系的科学之对象来看的人的行为与社会合作，再也不被看作应该如何如何的事情——这是对于知识与哲学，如同对于社会行为方面，发生惊人影响的一次大革命。
可是，在一百多年当中，推理方法的这种激变所应有的效果，大大地受到拘限；因为，人们以为这些方法只涉
及人的行为全部领域的一狭小部份，也即，只涉及市场现象这一部份。古典学派的经济学家，在他们的硏究进
程中遇到了他们所不能撤除的一个障碍，这个障碍就是显而易见的价値论的矛盾。他们的价値论是有缺陷的，
因而使得他们不得不把他们的科学拘限于一个较小的范围。一直到十九世纪后期，政治经济学（political
economy）还是人的行为中「经济」方面的一门科学，也即关于财富与自利的学理。它所处理的人的行为，只
限于由那个被称为利润动机所激起的行为，而且它声明，此外的行为是其他学科所要处理的。古典学派经济学
家所传授的这一思想的转变，是由现代主观学派的经济学来完成的。主观学派的经济学，把市场价格理论变成
人的选择行为的通论。
人们有段很长的时期没有看出：从古典的价値论转到主观的价値论，决不止于是以一个较满意的市场交易论代
替一个较不满意的。这个选择通论，远超出康第隆（Cantillon）、休姆（Hume），以及由亚当斯密（Adam Smith）—直到约翰穆勒（John Stuart Mill）这些经济学家所讨论的那些经济问题的眼界以外。它决不止于讨
论人们在「经济方面」的努力——为取得财货，为改善他的物质福利而作的努力。它是人的全部行为的科学。
选择，是人的一切决定之所以决定。在作选择的时候，他不只是在一些物质的东西和一些劳务之间选择。所有
的人类价値，都在供他选择。一切目的与一切手段，现实的与理想的，崇高的与低下的，光荣的与卑鄙的，都在一个排列中让人取舍。人们所想取得的或想避免的，没有一样漏在这个排列以外。这个排列，也即独一无二
的等级偏好表。这个现代价値论，扩张了科学的眼界，也扩大了经济学研究的范围。从古典学派的政治经济学
里面挣脱出人的行为通论——行为学（praxeology）
[1]。一些经济的或交换的（catallactics）[2]问题，都纳入 一门较概括的科学里面，再也不会与这个关联分离。经济问题本身的处理，决不能避免从选择行为开始：经济
学成了一门较普遍的学科——人的行为通论或行为学——的一部份，截至现在，这一部份还是行为学当中最精
密的一部份。
1、Economics and
Praxeology
Economics is the
youngest of all sciences. In the last two hundred years, it is
true, many new sciences have emerged from the disciplines familiar
to the ancient Greeks. However, what happened here was merely that
parts of knowledge which had already found their place in the
complex of the old system of learning now became autonomous. The
field of study was more nicely subdivided and treated with new
methods; hitherto unnoticed provinces were discovered in it, and
people began to see things from aspects different from those of
their precursors. The field itself was not expanded. But economics
opened to human science a domain previously inaccessible and never
thought of. The discovery of a regularity in the sequence and
interdependence of market phenomena went beyond the limits of the
traditional system of learning. It conveyed knowledge which could
be regarded neither as logic, mathematics, psychology, physics, nor
biology.
Philosophers had long since been eager to
ascertain the ends which God or Nature was trying to realize in the
course of human history. They searched for the law of mankind's
destiny and evolution. But even those thinkers whose inquiry was
free from any theological tendency failed utterly in these
endeavors because they were committed to a faulty method. They
dealt with humanity as a whole or with other holistic concepts like
nation, race, or church. They set up quite arbitrarily the ends to
which the behavior of such wholes is bound to lead. But they could
not satisfactorily answer the question regarding what factors
compelled the various acting individuals to behave in such a way
that the goal aimed at by the whole's inexorable evolution was
attained. They had recourse to desperate shifts: miraculous
interference of the Deity either by revelation or by the delegation
of God-sent prophets and consecrated leaders, preestablished
harmony, predestination, or the operation of a mystic and fabulous
"world soul" or "national soul." Others spoke of a "cunning of
nature" which implanted in man impulses driving him unwittingly
along precisely the path Nature wanted him to take. [p.
2]
Other philosophers were more realistic. They did
not try to guess the designs of Nature or God. They looked at human
things from the viewpoint of government. They were intent upon
establishing rules of political action, a technique, as it were, of
government and statesmanship. Speculative minds drew ambitious
plans for a thorough reform and reconstruction of society. The more
modest were satisfied with a collection and systematization of the
data of historical experience. But all were fully convinced that
there was in the course of social events no such regularity and
invariance of phenomena as had already been found in the operation
of human reasoning and in the sequence of natural phenomena. They
did not search for the laws of social cooperation because they
thought that man could organize society as he pleased. If social
conditions did not fulfill the wishes of the reformers, if their
utopias proved unrealizable, the fault was seen in the moral
failure of man. Social problems were considered ethical problems.
What was needed in order to construct the ideal society, they
thought, were good princes and virtuous citizens. With righteous
men any utopia might be realized.
The discovery of the inescapable interdependence
of market phenomena overthrew this opinion. Bewildered, people had
to face a new view of society. They learned with stupefaction that
there is another aspect from which human action might be viewed
than that of good and bad, of fair and unfair, of just and unjust.
In the course of social events there prevails a regularity of
phenomena to which man must adjust his actions if he wishes to
succeed. It is futile to approach social facts with the attitude of
a censor who approves or disapproves from the point of view of
quite arbitrary standards and subjective judgments of value. One
must study the laws of human action and social cooperation as the
physicist studies the laws of nature. Human action and social
cooperation seen as the object of a science of given relations, no
longer as a normative discipline of things that ought to be—this
was a revolution of tremendous consequences for knowledge and
philosophy as well as for social action.
For more than a hundred years, however, the
effects of this radical change in the methods of reasoning were
greatly restricted because people believed that they referred only
to a narrow segment of the total field of human action, namely, to
market phenomena. The classical economists met in the pursuit of
their investigations an obstacle which they failed to remove, the
apparent antinomy of value. Their theory of value was defective,
and forced them to restrict the scope [p. 3] of their science.
Until the late nineteenth century political economy remained a
science of the "economic" aspects of human action, a theory of
wealth and selfishness. It dealt with human action only to the
extent that it is actuated by what was —very
unsatisfactorily—described as the profit motive, and it asserted
that there is in addition other human action whose treatment is the
task of other disciplines. The transformation of thought which the
classical economists had initiated was brought to its consummation
only by modern subjectivist economics, which converted the theory
of market prices into a general theory of human
choice.
For a long time men failed to realize that the
transition from the classical theory of value to the subjective
theory of value was much more than the substitution of a more
satisfactory theory of market exchange for a less satisfactory one.
The general theory of choice and preference goes far beyond the
horizon which encompassed the scope of economic problems as
circumscribed by the economists from Cantillon, Hume, and Adam
Smith down to John Stuart Mill. It is much more than merely a
theory of the "economic side" of human endeavors and of man's
striving for commodities and an improvement in his material
well-being. It is the science of every kind of human action.
Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice man
chooses not only between various material things and services. All
human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both
material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and
the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision
which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men
aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a
unique scale of gradation and preference. The modern theory of
value widens the scientific horizon and enlarges the field of
economic studies. Out of the political economy of the classical
school emerges the general theory of human action, praxeology[1].
The economic or catallactic problems[2] are embedded in a more
general science, and can no longer be severed from this connection.
No treatment of economic problems proper can avoid starting from
acts of choice; economics becomes a part, although the hitherto
best elaborated part, of a more universal science,
praxeology.
[1]。一些经济的或交换的（catallactics）[2]问题，都纳入一门较概括的科学里面，再也不会与这个关联分离。经济问题本身的处理，决不能避免从选择行为开始：经济
学成了一门较普遍的学科——人的行为通论或行为学——的一部份，截至现在，这一部份还是行为学当中最精密的一部份。
[1] The term praxeology was first used in
1890 by Espinas. Cf. his article "Les Origines de la technologies,"
Revue Philosophique, XVth year, XXX, 114-115, and his book
published in Paris in 1897, with the same title.
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