Conditions of economic progress c.1

ECONOMICS is defined as the study of the production, distribution and exchange of all those goods and services which are usually exchangeable, or are actually exchanged, for money. The definition of economics has been, speaking generally, reduced to something like this scope by Marshall and by Professor Pigou, though wider definitions have been used in the past and are still used by some.

We cannot, however, make proper use of economics until we have determined its position in relation to certain other branches of knowledge.

"They are to be called wise", says Aquinas, "who put things in their right order and control them well. Now, in all things to be controlled and put in order to an end, the measure of control and order must be taken from the end in view; and the proper end of everything is something good. Hence we see in the arts that art A governs and, as it were, lords it over art B, when the proper end of art B belongs to A. Thus the art of medicine lords it over the art of the apothecary, because health, the object of medicine, is the end of all drugs that the apothecary's art compounds."