When this recognition began, it was objected by the followers of the 'classical' Political Economy that abstraction was a necessary condition of thought, and that all dangers arising from it would be avoided if we saw clearly what it was that we were doing.

Bagehot, who stood at the meeting-point of the old Economics and the new, wrote about 1876:-- 'Political Economy ...

is an abstract science, just as statics and dynamics are deductive sciences.

And in consequence, it deals with an unreal and imaginary subject, ...

not with the entire real man as we know him in fact, but with a simpler imaginary man....'[41] [41] _Economic Studies_ (Longmans, 1895), p.