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CORCORAN SCHOOL OF HISTORICAL AND ECONOMICAL
SCIENCE.
Professor Dabney.
In this School two distinct sciences are taught. For, although economic conditions
have profoundly influenced the history of nations, and, although there is
such a thing as the history of Economics (just as, for that matter, there is a history
of Mathematics, and as there has been a decided influence of mathematical
discoveries upon History), still History and Economics are distinct subjects, and
are investigated by different methods.
HISTORY.
The study of History, like that of other great subjects, has its own peculiar
charms and advantages. It cannot equal the study of language in cultivating the
habit of minute accuracy and attention to details. Nor can it compete with
mathematical study in accustoming the student to habits of clear and rigidly consecutive
thought. But, on the other hand, there is no other subject that surpasses
History in its power to broaden and deepen both the mind and the heart.
Its charm lies in its human interest. For its theme is man—"the proper study
of mankind"—a theme that must ever be more attractive to the majority of
human beings than either the asymptotes of the hyperbola or the subjunctive
mood. But, while History deals with man, it should not be confounded with
biography, which deals with individual men. Biography is an invaluable adjunct
to History, but History deals with the life of societies, nations and states. Fully
fairly and impartially to comprehend this life in all its marvellously varied social,
political, religious, moral and intellectual manifestations, is totally beyond the
power of any human brain. Yet the earnest student, who seeks the truth and
even so vast a theme to reward him richly for his pains. But let him not yield
credence to the common delusion that History is "easy" to learn,—a mere collection
of entertaining anecdotes concerning eminent men. To understand the
life of nations—the evolution and dissolution of organized masses of men—is a
fascinating, but immensely difficult task. Such a task is, very properly, not attempted
in primary schools, children being taught the rudiments of History with
other purposes in view. Nor is it wise for the younger students at a university to
attempt the task. The greater their maturity, the greater also will be the benefit
they may derive from historical study; and they are therefore advised, as a general
rule, to defer its pursuit until they have had at least one year's training in
other university work.
Two courses in History are offered: one in General History and one in English
and American History.
B. A. COURSE.
General History.—In this course, which comprises the historical work required
for the B. A. degree, great stress is laid on the view that the career of man, as
revealed in History, is not a mere jumble of disconnected dates and facts, but a
continuous stream, having its source, and tributaries in the far-off past, its outlet
in the remote future. No attempt is made, however, to traverse in the classroom
the entire length of this stream; for, although constant efforts are made to demonstrate
the vital connection of nation with nation, of generation with generation,
and of anterior with ensuing conditions of historical development, the lectures are
confined to the more important periods, the student being required to fill the gaps
by private reading. These periods, and, therefore, the text-books studied, may
be more or less varied each year. Three lectures a week.
Text-Books—Fisher's Outlines of Universal History; Grant's Greece in the Age
of Pericles; Froude's Cæsar; Capes's Age of the Antonines; Thatcher's and Schwill's
Europe in the Middle Age; Seebohm's Era of the Protestant Revolution; Gardiner's
Thirty Years' War; Longman's Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War;
Dabney's Causes of the French Revolution; Morris's French Revolution and First
Empire.
GRADUATE COURSE.
M. A.
English and American History.—In this higher course the principles taught in
the one preceding will be applied to a more special field; and, in order that the
students may be encouraged to exercise independent thought and judgment, they
will be required to write essays on assigned topics. Moreover, it should be distinctly
understood that the text-books are by no means regarded by the professor
as infallible authorities. On the contrary, some of them contain much that is
emphatically rejected by him. And yet such books may be exceedingly useful;
for to educate a man is not to stuff him full of cut-and-dried opinions, but rather
to draw forth and develop his own judgment by presenting to his mind opinions
that oppose and even clash violently with each other. Graduates in General
History will derive most benefit from this course. It may be taken, however, by
others; and, as considerable attention will be paid to constitutional development,
students intending to study Law will find the course of advantage. Candidates
both in this course and in the preceding. Three lectures a week.
Text-Books.—Gardiner's History of England; Green's Short History of the English
People; Gardiner's Atlas of English History; Percy Greg's History of the
United States; Thwaites's Colonies; Hart's Formation of the Union; Wilson's Division
and Re-union; Curry's Southern States of the American Union.
ECONOMICS.
In its value both as a mental discipline to the student, and as a subject of practical
interest to the citizen, it is difficult to over-estimate the importance of this
science.
As a mental discipline the study of Economics combines to a certain extent
the advantages of linguistic, mathematical and historical training. One of the
most serious difficulties of the subject is the fact that many of its technical terms
are also used in loose popular significations; and a close study of Economics
teaches a man to be very careful in the exact and discriminating use of words.
The rigid reasoning, too, by which economic laws are deductively derived from a
few simple and fundamental facts in human and physical nature is as relentlessly
logical as that by which the properties of triangles or circles are deduced from
the axioms of Geometry. And, finally, the historical investigation of economic
phenomena with a view to the verification, modification or refutation of the laws
deductively ascertained, or to the inductive discovery of other laws, is attended
with the advantages of other historical study, as above set forth, and sheds a flood
of light upon many questions in social, political, or even religious history.
B. A. COURSE.
Like Mathematics, Economics is treated as Pure and Applied. In the first
term of the session the whole field of Pure or Deductive Economics, an abstract
science which deliberately and properly ignores, for the sake of clearness and
simplicity, many important phases of social life, is traversed in outline; and a
few brief practical applications are made to special topics. In the second term a
thorough deductive, as well as inductive and historical, investigation of the
principles of Money and Credit is undertaken; while a few lectures are devoted
to the consideration of protective tariffs. The third term is devoted to a discussion
of the periodical commercial panics and crises of the nineteenth century, and
to the history of the vast changes in production, transportation and industrial
organization that have taken place throughout the world in recent years.
Text-Books.—Walker's Political Economy, (Advanced Course); Horace White's
Money and Banking; selected pamphlets from the Sound Currency series published
by the N. Y. Reform Club, viz: Nipher's The Appreciation of Gold, Warner's The
Currency Famine of 1893, Watkins's Cotton and the Currency, White's Coin's Financial
Fool, and the Report of the Monetary Commission of the Indianapolis Convention
of 1897; Philpott's Tariff Chats; Porter Sherman's Tariff Primer; Hyndman's
Commercial Crises of the Nineteenth Century; Wells's Recent Economic Changes.
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