condition of
affairs is admitted to be intolerable, and the task before the
world is to discover some alternative. The day when economics can be
divorced from ethics has passed away; there is a world-wide endeavour
to establish in the place of the old, a new society founded on an
ethical basis.[7] There are two, and only two, possible ways to
the attainment of this ideal--the way of socialism and the way of
Christianity. There can be no doubt the socialist movement derives a
great part of its popularity from its promise of a new order, based,
not on the unregulated pursuit of selfish desires, but on justice. 'To
this view of justice or equity,' writes Dr. Sidgwick, 'the socialistic
contention that labour can only receive its due reward if land and
other instruments of production are taken into public ownership,
and education of all kinds gratuitously provided by Government--has
powerfully appealed; and many who are not socialists, nor ignorant of
economic science, have been led by it to give welcome to the notion
that the ideally "fair" price of a productive service is a price at
least rendering possible the maintenance of the producers and their
families in a condition of health and industrial efficiency.' This
is not the place to enter into a discussion as to the merits
or practicability of any of the numerous schemes put forward by
socialists; it is sufficient to say that socialism is essentially
unhistorical, and that in our opinion any practical benefits which
it might bestow on society would be more than counterbalanced by the
innumerable evils which would be certain to emerge in a system based
on unsatisfactory foundations.

[Footnote 1: We must guard against the error, which is frequently
made, that, because the classical economists assumed self-interest
as the sole motive of economic action, they therefore approved of and
inculcated it.]

[Footnote 2: P. 401, and see Marshall's Preface to Price's _Industrial
Peace_, and Ashley, _op. cit._, vol. i. pt. i. p. 137.]

[Footnote 3: _Political Economy_, p. 268.]

[Footnote 4: Tit., 'Political Economy.']

[Footnote 5: Vol. iii. p. 138.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 7: See Laveleye, _Elements of Political Economy_ (Eng.
trans.), pp. 7-8. On the general conflict between the ethical and the
non-ethical schools of economists see Keynes, _Scope and Method_, pp.
20 _et seq_.]

The other road to the establishment of a society based on justice
is the way of C