Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/93

 Brailsford, and Ivor Brown than in all the more formal volumes of contemporary prose. It is not merely that these able, well-equipped writers have embarked, as editors and writers, upon a distinctively journalistic career — one or two of them have not — but because the article or essay furnishes a better vehicle for their variety and versatility of interests in the life in which they live and move and have their being, are in other words, a better expression for their humanism.

But, it may be said, do not your own pretensions as a reformer in economic theory transcend the fragmentation you here approve? If you do not lay claim to a complete system of humanist economics, you do pretend to put a logically defensible order on to the several heresies you have evoked. Psychology, with the secret defensive weapons rightly imputed to it, obliges me to hesitate here between a defence and an admission. The chief attraction of modern psychology, with its inhibitions and sublimations, lies in the humour of its revelations. It pleases us to discover underneath the parade of public spirit, disinterested regard for truth, justice, and the good of others, the secret play of some natural urge towards self-importance, acquisition, or other private satisfaction. But in its endeavour to spread its net over a wide field of inquiry, is there not some risk of neglecting the finest and most profitable fruits of humorous revelation, oneself. Psychology should make every man his own humorist, for the