Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/84

 and thinker so much better equipped than myself in many lines of knowledge and capacities of thinking. For, entering the sphere of sociology through the portals of economic theory, I found my mind enlarged and enriched by a closer recognition of the various social studies that contribute to an understanding of the term “human welfare” which I had somewhat hastily imported into my presentment of economic value.

In other words, my growing repudiation of the efforts of economists to make of their study an exact quantitative science, with values expressed in purely monetary terms, was fortified by a clearer, fuller conception of the humanist interpretation to which I had been moving.

Another man whose writings and conversations had an influence on my thinking at this time was Graham Wallas. I first knew him at Oxford in the late seventies, but we did not come into close relations until I came to London in the late eighties. His Fabian Essay and his Life of Francis Place were early indications of his later important contribution to the art of politics. He ranks as the most original exponent of the psychology of modern politics both in its individual and social aspects, exhibiting more clearly than any other writer the interactions of rational and irrational elements in the play of political life. Human Nature in Politics and The Great Society exhibit an independence of mind and