without being _men_ (_practical_ or _complete_). Thus an economic fact is a fact of _practical activity_. Have we attained our object in this definition? Not yet. The definition is still incomplete and to complete it we must not only cross another expanse of sea, but avoid another rock: viz. that of the conception of economic data as _egoistic_ data. This error arises as follows: if an economic fact is a practical activity, it is still necessary to say how this activity is distinguished from moral activity. But moral activity is defined as _altruistic_; then, it is inferred, economic data will be _egoistic_. Into this mistake has fallen, amongst others, our able Professor Pantaleoni, in his _Principî d'economia pura_, and in other writings. The _egoistic_ is not something merely _different_ from a moral fact; it is the _antithesis_ of it; it is the _immoral_. In this way, by making the economic principle equivalent to an egoistic fact, instead of distinguishing economics from morality, we should be subordinating the former to the latter, or rather should deny it any right to exist, recognising it as something merely negative, as a deviation from moral activity. A datum in economics is quite different. It does not form an antithesis to a moral datum; but is in the peaceable relation of condition to conditioned. It is the general condition which makes the rise of ethical activity possible. In the concrete, every action (volition) of man is either moral or immoral, since no actions are _morally indifferent_. But both the moral and the immoral are economic actions; which means that the economic action, taken by itself, is neither moral nor immoral. Strength of character, for example, is needed both by the honest man and by the cheat. It seems to me that you approach gropingly to this conception of the economic principle, as relating to practical actions, which taken in the abstract, are neither moral nor immoral; when at one point in your last essay, you exclude from economic consideration _choices_, which have an _altruistic motive_; and further on, exclude also those which are _immoral_. Now, since choices are necessarily either altruistic or egoistic, either moral or immoral, you have no way of escaping from the difficulty except the one which I suggest; to regard economics as concerned with practical activity in so far as it is (abstractly) _emptied_ of all _content, moral or immoral_.