increase our native intelligence. We cannot, in short, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

Such books as I am discussing no doubt have their principal value as "contributors to learning"-that is, as building material to be used in the erection of statelier edifices of truth. But have they a value for the general reader? Can one who is neither expert nor philosopher find mental sustenance in them?

The first point that strikes one, in an attempt to answer this question, is the fact that the books now under consideration are all exceedingly "well written". Mr. Dennis has written about world trade a book which is not merely interesting but exciting. Mr. Toynbee has composed a treatise on the international doings of 1924 which is far more than a dull compilation or survey; if after reading his book, one is unprepared to pass judgment on questions that have perplexed foreign statesmen, one may at least begin to understand the nature of their perplexities. Like a creditably large number of the historical and political fact-books of recent years, this volume has the literary qualities of clearness and insight. Mr. Tawney, in tracing the development of thought on social and economic questions through its transformation from mediæval to modern thought, makes us understand, as a consequence of his scholarly analysis, the kinship of minds in all ages and the limitations of intelligence in dealing with social problems. Tolerance that most precious of the purely humanistic virtues cannot be obtained in any other way so well as by acquaintance with actual facts as elaborated by trained minds; it is essentially the fruit of scholarship. So is a true appreciation of the nature of the difficulties which confront men in all ages. A due appreciation of limitations not a mere blind choosing of the golden mean-is a humanistic value.

For these and similar reasons, these modern books of history, finance, and statecraft, should be ranked, I think, among the books that teach the new humanities. Despite their technicality, despite their chariness of conclusion, their refusal to prophesy or to tell fortunes, and despite the fact that few if any can interpret their whole content, I believe that they have a cultural value by no means small. I wish many readers for

the book of Mr. Tawney, that of Mr. Toynbee, and that of Mr. Dennis quite on the old-fashioned ground that such books deserve to be read.

What is more, every well-concatenated body of facts inevitably suggests its own interpretation to every thoughtful reader in proportion to that reader's range of thought and degree of insight. The most obvious bearing that the three books I am discussing seem to have in common, is their bearing upon the idea of human progress. Modestly and without overinterpretation to discuss this idea in the light of some of the facts presented in the books themselves must be my objective for the remainder of this article.

Those are grave and wise words which Mr. Toynbee has written near the close of his work on Religion and the Rise of Capitalism:

A reasonable estimate of economic organization must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralyzed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic. . . . Compromise between the Church of Christ and the idolatry of wealth, which is the practical religion of capitalist societies, as it was between the Church and the State idolatry of the Roman Empire.

This utterance derives its force not from its a priori plausibility but from the whole historical discussion which has preceded it-a discussion conducted with the skill of an historian trained to impartiality. Medieval thought assumed as a matter of course that economic conduct, like every other sort of conduct, fell within the sphere of religion and ethics. This assumption was maintained with comparative ease so long as economic transactions remained simple. Usury, profiteering, monopoly, these were simply sins against one's neighbor. Long after economic conditions had so far changed as to make such ethical teaching seem inadequate or impossible of practical application, the same ideals continued to be preached, and as ideals were regarded with respect a fact, as Mr. Tawney points out, that is not wholly deprived of significance by the sordidness of actual conduct as compared with the ideals.

Doubtless men's religious and ethical ideas are very largely determined by the economic conditions under which they live.

If the Middle Ages had not been a time of comparatively simple business relations, if life society had been organized on some other basis than that of feudalism and agriculture, ethical teaching might have shown more disposition to compromise with Mammon. Mr. Tawney does not suggest that our mediæval forebears possessed superior virtue or ethical insight. In a later age religion began to tolerate business transactions which before it had condemned. The logic of facts required some allowance to be made for new forms of business activity. The culmination of the change came with the rise of a school of economists who made a virtually complete, though artificial, division between ethics and economics. Mediæval thinkers said that to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market was not pleasing to God; the Manchester economists said that precisely this was pleasing to God.

Have we really made progress since mediæval times in this difficult matter of the application of ethics to economics? Not, perhaps, so much as we think! Historic study should warn us against the fallacy of taking our own standards as absolute and of judging the standards of other ages relatively to it.

The fact that ethical standards may vary with economic conditions finds a rather striking illustration in the fact pointed out by Mr. Dennis, in his book, The Romance of World Trade, that in Great Britain and in pre-war Germany combinations of capital which in this country were adjudged to be criminal were brought under no sort of legal or ethical condemnation. The difference is explained by the fact that neither Great Britain nor Germany is a self-supporting country; Great Britain in a very large degree and Germany in only a somewhat less degree depend upon importation and hence upon foreign trade for their sustenance. Consequently both the British and the German subject might reasonably be willing to get a little the worst of it in the home market provided he believed, as he had reason to believe, that the "trust" or cartel was really instrumental in building up foreign trade.

The main preoccupation of Mr. Dennis, however, is rather conspicuously not with the ethics of business, but, as his title implies, with the romance of world trade. Certainly his book

is one that opens our eyes and fulfills the requirement laid down by Mr. Henry Holt for a good book; it enables us to live in a larger world. No other volume published in recent years is perhaps quite so successful in making one realize the vast extent and complexity of trade relations.

So closely bound together is the whole world in a network of commercial ties that an apparently trifling change of fashion in one part of the globe may bring the most unexpected results in another. "The bobbed hair craze in America deprived of their jobs 16,000 women hair-net makers in Chefoo, China." Trade is paradoxical. Since the United States is the largest producer of cotton of all the countries in the world it would seem illogical to conceive of this country as an importer of cotton. Nevertheless, the United States imports large quantities of cotton from Egypt. And for what purpose? Why, to make imitation silk. Consequently the term "silk stocking" as a designation of fastidious luxury must soon disappear from the language; everyone wears silk stockings! One cannot help wondering what economic change will befall the expression "kid-glove".

Above all, trade is "metaphysical". By the use of this term Mr. Dennis expresses his conviction that economic causes are not, after all, exactly first causes. Set out to study supply and demand and you find yourself studying human nature. Back of the demand lie, among other things, fancies, prejudices, old customs, the oddest twists of mentality. Kipling in William the Conqueror impressed us with the strangeness of the fact that natives of India in famine times preferred starvation to a diet of any other cereal but rice. Yet it requires a somewhat close approach to starvation to make a European eat American corn. And sweet potatoes! Does the reader happen to remember how in Weems's story book about Marion and his men, the British officers expressed surprise that men living on such miserable fare could successfully oppose trained British troops? Well, Marion and his men lived mainly on sweet potatoes and the prejudice still survives.

By means of judiciously employed statistics, by ingenious metaphors and analogies, by piquant illustrations, Mr. Dennis

builds up in the minds of his readers a realistic conception of world trade and communicates to them much of the interest which he himself feels in this subject with which his experience so well qualifies him to deal. Our life is all one, and it is all compact of dreams and needs, facts and fancies, ideals and prejudices. No tremor of fear, no act of self-denial, no idle desire, but has its effect somewhere else than in the mind of the individual-an economic effect, for economics is a matter not only of figures but of human life and character.

This thought of the intimacy with which so many phases of human conduct are bound together even in so matter-offact a sphere as that of business is rather impressive and perhaps liberating. It may help to relieve one of the easy fallacy that different spheres of life may be partitioned off in watertight compartments, which is akin to the supposition that ethics has nothing to do with economics, or, in plain terms, that "business is business".

But what light does Mr. Dennis's discussion throw on progress? Certainly there has been progress in extent, in variety, and in power. The very impressiveness of this advance leads one to inquire whether, and to what extent, such progress may be regarded as real and satisfying. Without attempting to answer this difficult question one may remark that one cannot wholly share Mr. Dennis's optimism with regard to the future of our natural resources, and that the exploit of the gentleman, who Mr. Dennis tells us, succeeded in selling a piano to a woman who was almost totally deaf seems at once not highly commendable and a little too typical of a certain type of business efficiency in this present age.

When one considers the complexity and the obscurity of many of the questions treated in Mr. Toynbee's volume, his treatment seems quite astonishingly competent. Here, for example, one will find almost the first account of post-war Russia that has any pretensions to accuracy and adequacy. Though much remains obscure, we can with Mr. Toynbee's help begin to envision the Russian situation. The impartiality which he brings to the study of European affairs is not the apparent impartiality which results from indifference