Menger’s short review commends W. Neurath’s introductory economics textbook for combining accessible exposition with intellectual coherence. It moves from a diagnosis of German economic teaching literature to an assessment of Neurath’s achievement and its prospects for classroom use. The opening distinguishes the abundance of compact manuals from the scarcity of original, scientifically sound introductions comparable to those of Cossa, Block, and Ellis.
Eine solche Arbeit zu unternehmen und in wissenschaftlicher und zugleich gemeinfasslicher Weise durchzuführen, ist eben nur Wenigen gegeben.
English translation: To undertake such a work and to carry it through in a manner at once scientific and generally intelligible is given to but few.
Accessibility here is a demanding scholarly achievement, not merely a matter of compression. Menger welcomes Neurath’s attempt to fill this gap and invokes the deserved success of his earlier, more extensive Grundzüge der Volkswirthschaftslehre as evidence of both expository talent and originality. Writing a shorter textbook for school use constitutes a further, difficult task.
The review’s central criterion is the unity of economic reasoning:
Was den Arbeiten Neurath's unsere Sympathie sichert, ist der Umstand, dass er in seinen volkswirthschaftlichen Schriften einerseits wirklich Volkswirthschaftslehre und nicht, wie so mancher Andere, alles Uebrige, nur nicht diese vorträgt, und andererseits, dass uns hier Leistungen entgegentreten, welche nicht das Ergebniss geistlosen Eklekticismus, sondern eines einheitlichen Denkens und des Bestrebens sind, den inneren Zusammenhang der volkswirthschaftlichen Lehren klarzustellen.
English translation: What secures our sympathy for Neurath's works is the circumstance that in his economic writings he on the one hand really expounds economics and not, as so many others do, everything else but this, and on the other hand that we here encounter achievements which are not the result of a spiritless eclecticism, but of a unified thinking and of the endeavour to make clear the inner connection of the economic doctrines.
Menger thus joins two standards: a textbook must address economics itself, and its doctrines must emerge as an interconnected whole rather than an unthinking compilation. His praise concerns disciplinary focus and systematic exposition; the review does not examine particular economic theories. It closes with a conditional forecast: continued care could secure the Elemente a success comparable to the Grundzüge, especially as a lecture outline at technical institutions and commercial academies. The review’s significance lies in this compact statement of what economic instruction should preserve when made introductory: scientific substance, independent thought, and the intelligible connections among its teachings.
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