adjust our endeavors to that heart beat, and he ends with a burst of shooting similes and a shower of fireworks. The boy descends barely touching the floor. The mother is morally certain that it is only a matter of a little while when her boy will be delivering an inaugural address at the capital. Great aunts and fourth cousins give him a sympathetic hand and back away. He is satisfied that he has sounded the depth of knowledge. He has dipped in classic lore and finds that the book of human wisdom is but a reiteration of the platitudes spoken a thousand years ago, and he centers his thoughts upon his own career. He laughs at the futility of the beaten path trod by his fathers. He longs at once to rise into the king's highway, a free lancer and to hew a royal road to success, forgetful of the Achimedian maxim that there is no royal road. Then some good Samaritan comes along, some one who has dreamed the same dreams and seen the same fair visions, whose blood was once hot with the fire of youth. The Samaritan touches the boy on the shoulder and speaks to him from the wealth of his own experience, shows him his mimicry, points to the shallowness of his conceptions, and tells him that he must learn to feel and act for himself. This he has only latent powers, and that he must enter generous conflict with broader minds. The boy gets a new conception, and if you please, goes to college. An entirely new world is opened to him and he grasps at the fleeting phantoms of his former greatness.

He is some time in getting acclimated to the new life. It is some time before he learns that the college catalogue does not tell everything and that college life is something more than proscribed courses, examinations and class days. The college, above everything else, instills in him a public spiritedness and esprit de coeur. It teaches him a larger faith in mankind, and he is willing to do and dare for it. He is no longer bound by the narrow limits of his own selfish interests, and become in part his brother's keeper. If an epitome of what his mater says to him at his time of leaving, were to be made, it would be this:

"Be, and continue poor, my son, while others around you grow

rich by fraud and disloyalty. Be without place and power, while others beg their way upward. Bear the pains of disappointed hopes, while others gain the accomplishment of theirs by flattery. Forego the gracious pressure of the hand for which others cringe and crawl; wrap yourself in your own virtue, seek a friend and your daily bread, and if you have in such a course grown gray with unbleached honor, bless God and die."

Members of the Class of 1901, Progenitors of a New Century:

It is perhaps fitting that we speak of ourselves. We have stood shoulder to shoulder for four years, and we have been most of the time on the firing line, too. We have pitched our tents on the camping ground of the enemy and we have been good messmates, willing to live and let live. Mater Tufts has offered to us the best that there is of her. She has tried to lead us into more peaceful paths and into greener valleys. She has disclosed to us some of the higher motives which should actuate our being. She has made us look in upon ourselves. Some of the tasks which she has set for us have been trying, even exacting; oftentimes we have not been able to see the why and wherefore of things. And if the class orator were to leave one thing with you it would be a desire on your part, as individual men and women of the class, to give back something of yourselves in payment. It is the honorable man who pays, if he can, an out-lawed debt. The debt you owe cannot be collected except on your voluntary wish.

Will this class join hands with the supporters of this college in some material way? We have yet to begin anew. We, in all probability cannot give anything more than a good word for possibly twenty years to come, but there should come a time when out of the fullness of the heart, out of the gratitude of loving memory we should meet our obligations.

THE ETHICAL REACTION IN ECONOMICS.*

Within recent years there has been a strongly emphasized tendency in economic thought, which, if it continues, will make the present period a landmark in the history of the science. This tendency we may designate as the ethical reaction. From the days of Aristotle down to the middle of the eighteenth century, economic ideas were embodied chiefly in ethical treatises. But the so-called classical school of the eighteenth century developed the science of economics upon entirely new lines. Instead of being a department of ethics, economics came to be viewed solely as a branch of political philosophy. During the century and a half since then, moral problems have been virtually excluded from economic considerations,-not necessarily always antagonized, but none the less ignored. The tendency at present manifesting itself, represents, accordingly, a set of ideas that finds no authoritative parallel short of one hundred and fifty years ago; before this time there is a long period when economic ideas were, like many others, decidedly degenerate. A movement therefore to re-introduce ethical elements into economic problems is clearly in the nature of a reaction.

The primary object of the political economy, as distinguished from the older ethical economy, was to foster industrial activity, not by public regulation, but by complete relief from interference. The immediate effect of this let-alone policy was a marvellous expansion of industry, such as the world had never seen. Moreover, under the impulse of this quickening of industrial energy, economic doctrine became for the first time a scientific system. In appearance at least, where morals had failed to interpret, a key to economic riddles had been found in politics, or statesmanship. Men's ideas of what ought to be, were too dissimilar, and above all, too utopian, too visionary and too revolutionary, to produce

*Abstract of essay read in Goddard Chapel, June 19, 1901, by William Hyde Price.

any scientific contributions to the study of the phenomena of wealth. On the other hand-political utility furnished at once a practical and a scientific basis for economics.

Individual self-interest-selfishness-was accepted as if it were the sole impelling motive in economic life. Selfish by nature, men were supposed to be still more selfish from circumstance. The most narrow political economist probably never thought of denying that men are subject to altruistic as well as to selfish motives. But the economists seized upon selfishness as the primary and fundamental instinct; and for purposes of convenience and precision, and especially of clearness, have analyzed this as if it were the only spring of human activity. Indeed, they concluded that the net result of the selfishness of all individuals brings an aggregate social utility greater than could be gained in any other way. Here was a motive which appealed strongly to the patriotism as well as to the selfishness of every individual.

The results have more than justified the theory. Under the spur of this incentive, more wealth has actually been created by the industry of man during the last four generations than in all previous generations taken together. We have today what socialists call,-"a plethora of wealth." The error of the classical economists was not in the selection of the means to the end they had in view, but did they have in view the proper end? It is undeniable that a reasonable amount of wealth is indispensable to a civilized community. Strangely enough, however, political parties have been based almost exclusively upon economic questions for more than a century-whereas, before that time, when economic needs were so much more pressing, political issues were far less frequently (at least much less narrowly) economic questions. But the true principle which underlies the fact is simply this: That men living in society are actuated by ethical motives far more than is commonly supposed. Till comparatively recent times, however, the ethical instinct has been sentimental rather than economic, because men lacked the material basis which they now have for social progress. As the material basis has expanded, the existence

wants have more and more easily been satisfied, providing the needed physical foundation for social development.

But the classical political economy paid too little attention to the problem of wealth distribution. At all events, whatever may have been the needs of civilized societies in the eighteenth century, society of the twentieth century certainly needs a rational distribution of the wealth already in possession, more than it needs additions to the present aggregate. The community owes

duties to its members. It is not enough that a few individuals happen to own what would satisfy the requirements of all. Society neglects its obligations if it does not cause every one of its members to have what he deserves This assertion points neither to socialism nor to any other levelling process, but aims only to emphasize the fact that the distribution of wealth involves important ethical considerations.

Classical economists assumed that wealth is distributed with justice automatically; that he who is selfish enough and energetic enough to amass wealth, earns the right to its possession. Such a doctrine was never stated in so gross and brutal a fashion, but the implication was allowed; and whatever economic theory may have been, economic practice for more than a century has followed just this selfish policy. It is not surprising, therefore, though it is hardly fair, that political economy should have earned the popular epithet of the "Gospel of Greed." A policy which was anti-social in its tendencies, was of course wrong in its inception, but the past century carried the policy to its utmost excess. This is the significance of the ethical reaction in economic science. Theory, in other words, is only adjusting itself -somewhat tardily -to the modern aspect of social conditions.