I am but a pioneer, starting with very imperfect instruments.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 437 to 439 (in French)
May 19th, 1850

The first volume of the Economic Harmonies was published in February 1850. In this letter, Frédéric Bastiat acknowledges the cool reception it is getting. It is certainly with pain that he is making such an acknowledgment but he tries and cheer up by the fact that, “in case they are worth it”, time will help them reach fame thanks to some economists of his readers, who will keep on developing the ideas that can be found in there.

 This is the point of today’s quote in which Frédéric Bastiat reminds us that economic science is new (less than hundred years old if we consider The Wealth of Nations as a starting point), has therefore not been explored much and is still very much misunderstood. He mentions Roger de Fontenay in his letter, to whom he would write two months later about knowledge being built upon the knowledge of our ancestors.