Excerpt from Liberty and Law
The same work also offers an illustration of another common defect, for which Mr. Stephen in his preface apologises. This consists in the ignoring of the opinions and conclusions of other writers, and dogmatising calmly as though nothing had ever been said on the subject before. Thus, Mr. Spencer rests one of the arguments in his "Man versus The State" on the supposed validity of the wages-fund theory, which he introduces without a word to show that a theory that has been renounced by almost every economist of standing throughout the world had ever been called into question. Mr. Stephen excuses himself on the ground that to refer to other writers leads to digression, and is appealing to authority. But Mr. Stephen overlooks the fact that not referring to other writers amounts to exalting oneself to an authority, - or perhaps he did not overlook it. Moreover, it cannot be called a digression to discuss the views of other writers on the subject, for the value of any view is only in so far as it remains uncontroverted. The value of any dogmatic statement standing by itself, and unsupported by the confutation of conflicting statements, is infinitesimal.
I have endeavoured to avoid these faults.
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