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. 143 The enumeration of postulates proposed by Bagehot was unfortu-nately never completed.Enumerations of the kind referred to will,however, be found in Senior, Political Economy, p.26; Cairnes, Logi-cal Method, Lecture 2, §2, and Lecture 3, §1; Cossa, Introduction tothe Study of Political Economy, Theoretical Part, Chapter 6, §2;Sidgwick, Principles of Political Economy, 3rd edition, Introduc-tion, Chapter 3, §4.Compare also the postulates formulated byWagner, as given in the note on page 241.It may be useful to quotefrom Senior and Cairnes.Senior says, We have already stated thatthe general facts on which the science of political economy rests arecomprised in a few general propositions, the result of observation orconsciousness.The propositions to which we then alluded are these:1.That every man desires to obtain additional wealth with as littlesacrifice as possible.2.That the population of the world, or, in otherwords, the number of persons inhabiting it, is limited only by moralor physical evil, or by fear of a deficiency of those articles of wealthwhich the habits of the individuals of each class of its inhabit.antslead them to require.3.That the powers of labour, and of the otherinstruments which produce wealth, may be indefinitely increased byusing their products as the means of further production.4.That, ag-ricultural skill remaining the same, additional labour employed on 212/John Neville Keynesthe land within a given district produces in general a less proportion-ate return, or, in other words, that though, with every increase of thelabour bestowed, the aggregate return is increased, the increase ofthe return is not in proportion to the increase of the labour. Cairnesindicates the following as the ultimate premisses of economic sci-ence, first, the general desire for physical well-being, and for wealthas the means of obtaining it ; next, the intellectual power of judgingof the efficacy of means to an end, along with the inclination to reachour ends by the easiest and shortest means ; thirdly, those propensi-ties which, in conjunction with the physiological conditions of thehuman frame, determine the laws of population ; and lastly, thephysical qualities of the soil and of those other natural agents onwhich the labour and ingenuity of man are employed. It is clear thatsuch enumerations as these cannot lav claim to completeness.Somepostulate is, for example, essential in re lard to the nature of thesocial customs and legal institutions relating to property.Some pos-tulate is also requisite in regard to the variation of utility with amountof commodity; for it would not be possible from Senior s or Cairnes spremisses alone to deduce laws of demand.Even the principle of freecompetition is not clearly enunciated.This principle is indeed so com-plex, and involves so many different subsidiary assumptions in dif-ferent connexions, that it would be difficult to analyse once for all itsfull content in the various economic reasonings in which it plays apart.A well-arranged enumeration of postulates is given by Mr W.E.Johnsonin his article on the Method of Political Economy in Mr Palgrave sDictionary of Political Economy.Mr Johnson does not profess thatany complete enumeration of premisses is possible.Agreeing, how-ever, with the view taken in the text, he considers that there are somehalf dozen premisses which may be regarded as typical and whichare almost universally applied. Of these six data, two belong to eachof the divisions, physical, psychological, and social.(1) The two physi-cal or natural laws presupposed are the law of Diminishing Returns,which arises from the necessity of having recourse to inferior agentsof production, or to their use under less advantageous circumstances;and the law of Increasing Returns, which results from the increasedpossibilities of industrial organization under extension of supply.Butthese laws represent tendencies ascertained by ordinary observation,which work in opposite directions.Hence more exact knowledge as The Scope and Method of Political Economy/213to the magnitude of the forces in particular circumstances has to besupplied by further detailed observation.(2) The two psychologicaldata are general expressions of the nature of Demand and of Supply,so far as these depend on the characters of individuals.The law ofdemand is to the effect that the utility afforded by any increment ofany kind of desired object diminishes with increase of the amountpossessed: the law of supply is to the effect that every one tries toprocure material well-being with the least possible sacrifice.Theseassumptions are common to almost all economic reasonings of a de-ductive type, though they are not always explicitly formulated.Here,as in the case of the physical presuppositions, further detailed obser-vation is required to determine the precise degree in which these psy-chological forces act under any circumstances.In particular, the lawof supply requires to be made more definite by an estimate of theinfluences of habit, inertia, ignorance, or custom
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