PREFACE

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the more distant future, and is ruminatingmatters which need a slow course of evolutionto determine them. He is more free to beleisurely and philosophical. And here emergesmore clearly what is in truth his central thesisthroughout,—the profound conviction that theEconomic Problem, as one may call it for short,the problem of want and poverty and theeconomic struggle between classes and nations,is nothing but a frightful muddle, a transitoryand an unnecessary muddle. For the WesternWorld already has the resources and the tech-nique, if we could create the organisation to usethem, capable of reducing the Economic Prob-lem, which now absorbs our moral and materialenergies, to a position of secondary importance.

Thus the author of these essays, for all hiscroakings, still hopes and believes that the dayis not far off when the Economic Problem willtake the back seat where it belongs, and that thearena of the heart and head will be occupied, orre-occupied, by our real problems—the prob-lems of life and of human relations, of creationand behaviour and religion. And it happensthat there is a subtle reason drawn from econo-mic analysis why, in this case, faith may work.For if we consistently act on the optimistic hypo-thesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised;whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis