Oskar Morgenstern, Francis Y. Edgeworth. † (1927)

Oskar Morgenstern’s German memorial essay combines an intellectual portrait of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, an appraisal of his economic papers, and recollections of meetings shortly before Edgeworth’s death in February 1926. Published in 1927, it places his achievement within a generation of economists whose deaths marked a substantial loss to the discipline. Edgeworth nevertheless stands apart:

Von allen diesen war Edgeworth wohl die seltsamste, die bizarrste Erscheinung, sowohl was den Menschen wie das Werk angeht.

English translation: Of all these, Edgeworth was probably the strangest, the most bizarre figure, as regards both the man and the work.

This singularity organizes Morgenstern’s assessment of both the scholar and his writings. Edgeworth’s classical education, aesthetic sensibility, and mathematical interests formed an unusual intellectual combination. His pleasure in deduction and difficult problems accompanied a dispassionate approach to economic questions. Morgenstern presents him as an exemplary pure scholar who achieved considerable, though incomplete, freedom from value judgments. His Oxford professorship and work on the Economic Journal gave institutional weight to an influence not readily measured through discipleship:

Er paßte in so vielem gar nicht in die Zeit in der er lebte, er hat auch keine Schule gemacht, ja vielleicht nicht einmal einen ausgesprochenen Schüler gehabt.

English translation: In so much he did not fit at all into the age in which he lived; nor did he found a school, indeed he perhaps did not even have a single avowed pupil.

The absence of a school does not, for Morgenstern, imply an absence of intellectual coherence. The scattered form of Edgeworth’s output instead creates a task for its interpreters:

Ein systematisches Werk hat er nicht hinterlassen, was jedoch nicht heißt, daß man aus den unzähligen Schriften und Aufsätzen sich nicht ein System rekonstruieren könnte und es ihm etwa an vereinheitlichenden Prinzipien gefehlt hätte.

English translation: He left behind no systematic work, which, however, does not mean that one could not reconstruct a system from the countless writings and essays, or that he was in any way lacking in unifying principles.

Morgenstern connects that underlying unity to mathematical discipline and a commitment to continuity. Edgeworth’s marginal analysis did not require wholesale rejection of classical economics: established results should yield only to demonstrably superior propositions. Although such conservatism could become dogmatic, Morgenstern credits it with supporting the cumulative development of English economics, in contrast to German economists’ recurrent pursuit of new foundations and methodologies. Edgeworth’s courteous but exacting criticism restrained theoretical extravagance. His elaborate symbolism nevertheless stood in tension with the ideal, shared with Marshall, of simple mathematical arguments directed at limited problems.

The essay’s central survey examines the three-volume Papers Relating to Political Economy (1925), whose publication made dispersed and often inaccessible writings available together. In the first volume, Morgenstern emphasizes increasing and diminishing returns, precise specification of assumptions, initial outlay, and factors that cannot be increased continuously. Monopoly theory receives attention for its implications for taxation. The monetary essays, chiefly concerned with index numbers, remain valuable less for results adequate to contemporary requirements than for their demonstration of the problem’s complexity.

In the second volume, taxation and urban ground rent provide resources that Morgenstern considers insufficiently used by German scholarship, particularly in tax-incidence theory. He gives special prominence to the section on mathematical economics, including discussions of probability and differential calculus. Edgeworth’s methodological importance lies in defending mathematical reasoning while engaging seriously with its limits. Morgenstern notes his consideration of Poincaré’s objection concerning the intensity of feelings and his agreement with Marshall that time presents economics with its principal difficulties. He reports Edgeworth’s doubts about the mathematical treatment of temporal phenomena without accepting them as a final verdict. The third volume’s reviews, spanning major economists across half a century, constitute an unusual history of recent economic thought.

The concluding assessment extends beyond economics to statistics and probability, fields that may have engaged Edgeworth still more deeply. Morgenstern suggests that their growing influence could eventually overshadow his reputation as an economic theorist, making the projected collection of his statistical writings especially important. Recollections of Oxford and London in late 1925 add a personal dimension: Edgeworth appears learned, kind, conversant with recent German economics, and skeptical of excessive methodological debate. Plans to collect the statistical work and reissue Mathematical Psychics remained unfinished at his death. Morgenstern thus locates his enduring significance in analytical originality, cumulative scholarship, and critical restraint—a coherent intellectual achievement distributed across many writings.