REVIEWS OF “MATHEMATICAL INVESTIGATIONS INTHE THEORY OF VALUE AND PRICES.”

From review by F. Y. Edgeworth. The Economic Journal, March, 1893,pp. 108-109, 112. Also reprinted in Papers Relating to PoliticalEconomy, Macmillan, 1925, Vol. Ill, pp. 36-41.

Dr. Fisher is distinguished above most writers on Economics in that hedoes not attempt to carry the reader over the whole ground, howeverfamiliar, but confines himself to those parts where he is himself a path-breaker. Or, if it is necessary to start by beaten ways, yet even these hemakes straighter, and improves them by depositing new materials.

The last remark applies especially to the first part of the Investigations,in which the author restates many of the conclusions of his predecessors.He imparts new clearness to the idea of marginal utility by introducing a‘unit of utility.’ . . .

The theory of exchange which is based upon marginal utility has re-ceived from Dr. Fisher some very happy illustrations. Observing thatmost economists employ largely the vocabulary of mechanics—equilibrium,stability, elasticity, level, friction and so forth—and profoundly impressedwith the analogy between mechanical and economic equilibrium, Dr. Fisher•has employed the principle that water seeks its level to illustrate some ofthe leading propositions of pure economics. . . .

... we may at least predict to Dr. Fisher the degree of immortalitywhich belongs to one who has deepened the foundations of the pure theoryof Economics.

From The Application of Mathematics to the Theory of Economics. Re-view by Thomas S. Fiske in Bulletin of the New York MathematicalSociety, Vol. II, No. 9, June, 1893, pp. 205, 211.

The most careful scientific analysis of these conceptions [utility andmarginal utility] that has come to the writer’s notice is contained in thefirst few pages of Dr. Fisher’s paper. . . .

The preceding ideas are developed with much skill in Dr. Fisher’s paper.Its most conspicuous feature, however, consists in the systematic repre-sentation of different questions in the equilibrium of supply and demandthrough the agency of an elaborate mechanism in the construction ofwhich the greatest ingenuity is displayed. The equilibrium is brought aboutby means of a liquid in which float a number of cisterns representing theindividual consumers and producers. These are made to fulfil the requisite