upon to formulate and expound the political, social, and, above all, the economic principles of the world around them. Though it is not possible to give any exact account of an academic atmosphere, purposely kept vague, it is certain that its canons of respectability and its sympathy with the culture of the upper classes predispose it to the intellectual support of the current social-economic system. While this disposition does not imply any lack of philanthropy, it has been distinctly favourable to an economics that prides itself on detachment from sentimental values.
But the main bent of post-War economics, as science and art, has been in the direction of a conscious definite abandonment of Iaisser-faire individualism, the “free” competition upon which it relied, and a purely quantitative estimate of economic costs and utilities. Everywhere governments have been compelled “by force of circumstances” to intervene in the operation of economic processes and to protect producers and consumers from the cruel consequences of commercial and industrial disasters attributable, not to the folly and incapacity of the sufferers, but to circumstances for which nobody in particular appeared to be responsible. Though these disturbances are by no means new, the magnitude of the irrationality, injustice, and inhumanity which they display has led most thoughtful men and women to abandon the notion that economic processes can best be left to work out their own salvation or damnation, and that
