Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Adolphe Landry’s Manuel d’économique (1909)

Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s review assesses Landry’s economics textbook through its pedagogical breadth, methodological positions, and treatment of major theoretical problems. His judgment is broadly favorable: the combination of international scholarship, theoretical exposition, and empirical material prepares students to read specialized research independently. Yet praise consistently gives way to precise reservations about conceptual clarity and the relationship between economics and social life.

Wir haben ein sehr umfassendes Lehrbuch vor uns, das ebenso den Stand der theoretischen Forschung, als auch ein reiches Tatsachenmaterial in klarer, vielleicht etwas weitläufiger Weise zur Darstellung bringt.

English translation: We have before us a very comprehensive textbook which presents both the state of theoretical research and a rich body of factual material in a clear, perhaps somewhat prolix manner.

The qualification about expansiveness establishes the review’s measured tone. Schullern particularly values the discussions connecting economics with psychology and law, while wishing that Landry had more firmly insisted on legislation’s practical responsibility toward economic and social relations. He also recommends integrating the history of economic literature with economic history. His account of Landry’s comparison of national traditions distinguishes German strength in collecting material from the Austrian school’s deductive, psychologically grounded search for laws. Questioning Landry’s ordering of private, national, and human interests, Schullern suggests that the broader collective purposes of economics deserve priority.

Methodology receives the review’s most sustained scrutiny. Landry distinguishes knowledge of facts, induction, deduction, and mathematical reasoning, treating the last as a form of deduction. Schullern endorses his rejection of mathematics as an exclusive route to otherwise inaccessible economic truths.

Ich meine, die Mathematik bietet ein vorzügliches Mittel für die Darstellung allgemeiner Gesetze (S. 56, 20), sie kann aber zu gefährlichen Irrtümern, zum mindesten zu unzulässigen Generalisationen führen, wenn sie der Forschungsmethode im eigentlichen Sinne zugrunde gelegt wird; ich glaube mich hier im Wesen in Uebereinstimmung mit dem Autor zu finden.

English translation: I hold that mathematics offers an excellent means for the presentation of general laws (pp. 56, 20), but that it can lead to dangerous errors, or at the very least to inadmissible generalizations, if it is made the foundation of the method of research in the proper sense; I believe I find myself here in essential agreement with the author.

The crucial distinction is between representing general laws and discovering them: mathematical formulation is useful, but its elevation into a governing research method risks unwarranted generalization. This position accompanies approval of Landry’s criticism of methodological exclusiveness. Schullern’s concern with conceptual precision also prompts him to reject the definition of needs as unclear or misleading. Conversely, he singles out the contrast between homo oeconomicus and actual people, whose family commitments, imperfect foresight, undervaluation of future benefits, and inconsistent responses to risk complicate the abstract model.

The review then follows the textbook’s four-book structure: psychological foundations, production, exchange, and income distribution. In production, Schullern welcomes the emphasis on agriculture’s continuing importance for economic development. In exchange, he identifies Landry’s departure from Austrian value theory:

Mit der Wertlehre der österreichischen Schule und mit ihren Unterscheidungen innerhalb des Wertbegriffes ist unser Verfasser nicht einverstanden (S. 488—492); er kehrt zum klassischen Wertbegriffe zurück.

English translation: Our author does not agree with the value theory of the Austrian School and with its distinctions within the concept of value (pp. 488—492); he returns to the classical concept of value.

This observation locates Landry’s theoretical allegiance without turning the review into a full adjudication of competing value theories. The fourth book, which also covers population, is represented through discussions of absolute ground rent, the wage-fund theory, Böhm-Bawerk’s qualified adherence to it, and Malthus.

Two appendices extend the textbook into questions of social organization and policy. The first considers private property socially and presents movement toward socialism as dependent on human will rather than the compulsory force of circumstances; the second addresses foreign trade and trade policy. Schullern’s review thus presents Landry’s manual as a substantial instrument of economic education while making methodological pluralism, conceptual clarity, and economics’ wider social responsibilities the standards of his appraisal.