Marshall's approach to economics hides a kind of paradox. On one hand, the ‘father’ of neoclassical economics, who usually shunned explicit statements on the methodological issues, in an straightforward way favoured conducting economics as a positive science. His adoption of such an attitude is understandable as it was, in a way, a natural consequence of the development of the 19th century methodological reflections formulated by John Stuart Mill (1844; 1974), William Nassau Senior (1836, 1852), John Elliot Cairnes (1875) and John Neville Keynes (1891). It may be treated as signum temporis too, as the last quarter of that century was the time of professionalisation of economics, recognizing it is a science focused on researching facts, free from subjective evaluation, providing instead objective knowledge about certain aspects of social reality. The ideal of economics as a positive science facilitated it in establishing its position as an independent science and academic discipline. The fact that Marshall was such a consistent and determined advocate of conducting economics as a positive science is, however, also puzzling for at least two reasons. First of all, even a quick overview of his works allows to notice that, despite his calls for avoiding value judgments in theoretical considerations, his texts are full to the brim with moral teachings. Secondly, while in referring to the problems of economic policy, as he did in various memoranda, petitions or as a member of government committees, he referred to the theory of economics, he also frequently took into account ethical aspects, often giving pre-eminence to ethical arguments over conclusions stemming from research grounded only on the theory of economics. As an example of such an approach may be seen his questioning of his own the theoretically-conceived idea of reform of the fiscal system, i.e. taxing those industries whose production falls under the law of diminishing returns and handing them down to those industries that generate increasing returns. In his opinion, the potential benefits resulting from introducing this solution were too difficult to estimate, especially when juxtaposed with the danger of the emergence of a situation fostering corruption, embezzlement or the squandering of resources which could result from transferring some of the funds and energy of the entrepreneurs away from managing their own companies to attempts to influence those persons who would decide on the allocation of the subsidies (Marshall [1920] 1947, 472−473, 475).