Note 1 — A FOREWORD AS TO THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
Ethel Kate Bowen-Wedgwood translation
Beginning of April, 1919.
The author in the following pages has deliberately avoided confining himself to the terms in common use in standard treatises on political economy. He knows quite well the places which a technical economist will pick out as being amateurish. But he has selected his mode of expression, partly because he desires to address himself also to persons who are not familiar with the literature of sociology and economics, but chiefly, because it is his opinion, that most of what is peculiarly technical in such writings will be shewn by a new age to be partial and defective, even in the very form of its expression.
It may also be thought, that some reference should have been made by the author to other persons, whose social ideas bear an incidental resemblance to his own. It must however be remembered, that in the whole conception here put forward,—a conception which the author believes he owes to long years of practical experience,—the essential point is not whether a particular thought has taken this or that form, but what one takes as one’s starting-ground, and the road one pursues in giving practical realisation to the impulses which underlie this conception. As may be seen from Chapter IV, the author was already doing what he could to get these ideas practically realised, at a time when ideas that look in some respect similar had as yet attracted no attention. ↑