The economists are reluctant to pass a judgment upon the prevailing order. The relevant facts are too scanty and the standards too inexact to warrant an appraisal of the virtues and the vices of “capitalism.” They distrust the eulogies of apologists because they do not square with the known facts. They are not convinced by the reformers, because they fear that they know as little about their own schemes as they do about current arrangements. They insist that a general judgment must be a progressive affair. The system will change through gradual modification; the larger problem will be solved by attention to an endless succession of minor problems. Each of these must be met with the facts and with an ideal of what our society should be. They have too little faith in the rationality of the collect to believe that problems can be faced in battalions or that a new order can emerge as a work of creation. They have little fear for “the future of the nation,” if only problems can be intelligently handled as they emerge. Their attitude towards the present system is one, neither of acceptance nor of rejection, but of doubt and of honest inquiry. Their faith is neither in the existing order nor in a hand-me-down substitute, but in a conscious direction of the process of change. * * * * * This tedious narrative has failed entirely in its purpose, if it has not revealed the strength and the weakness of economic opinion in America. Its merits stand out boldly in the preceding paragraphs; its defects are too striking to be concealed. The reader has already been informed; but the writer must inform himself. The essay, therefore, will close with an explicit statement of some three of the more obvious characteristics. First, its most striking characteristic is its volume. In quantity it contains enough verbal and intellectual ammunition to justify or to wreck a dozen contradictory economic orders. If, in an orderly way, opinion became judgment and judgment ripened into the society of to-morrow, it would stand condemned. For little of it has a practical consequence and our ways of expression are very wasteful. But it also affords a harmless outlet for the dangerous emotions aroused by the wear and tear of everyday work in a humdrum universe. And, if it is true that we are, all of us, Simians by lineage, this is by far the most important function it serves.