We are still in the dark as to how the physiocrats, men of great knowledge and wide experience, could formulate theories in defiance of obvious facts; and we know hardly anything of the sources of their theories and the aim end of their teaching.

It is with those questions that the present book is dealing. It traces physiocratic teaching back to its sources; it elucidates Tableau Qeconomique and show the meaning of the work of Quesnay, whom Adam Smith revered as profound thinker.