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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 marvelously varied social, political,
religious, moral and intellectual manifestations, is totally beyond the
power of any human brain. Yet the earnest student, who seeks the
can learn enough of 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 sources
and tributaries in the far-off past, its outlet in the remote future. No
attempt is made, however, to traverse in the class-room 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 Caesar; 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, which will
consist of English History up to Christmas, and of American History
the rest of the session, the principles taught in the course preceding
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 for the M. A.
degree selecting History as one of their four subjects must graduate
both in this course and in the preceding. Three lectures a week.
Text Books.—Oman's History of England; Creighton's Age of Elizabeth;
McCarthy's Epoch of Reform; Gardiner's Atlas of English History; and a
number of works on special periods of American History to be announced
later.
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,
social life, is traversed in outline; and a few brief practical applications
are made to special topics. In this term, too, the principles
of Public Finance are studied. 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. A 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.—Laughlin's Elements of Political Economy; Plehn's Introduction
to Public Finance; 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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