vitalizing force. Economic thought is the social expression of desire as tradition is the social expression of imitation. These two forces control current events and the differing interpretations of the past and the present depend upon the relative emphasis given them.

Professor Giddings has shown that the stimuli arousing activity are of two orders. The original stimuli come from the immediate environment; the secondary stimuli are the products of past social life kept alive in the present. These products of past social life have, however, only one way of being continued and that is through the constant repetition that creates tradition. The original stimuli also are of no importance unless they awake response and this response is desire.

Changing the viewpoint from stimuli to that of response to stimuli, makes desire and tradition the sole forces that determine present action. In this contrast tradition includes all of the products of past responses that have been continued through imitation reinforced by repetition. These traditions blend and as they blend they become the basis of history, institutions and ideals. Desire operating under favorable conditions creates mobility of men and goods. This mobility concentrates men in productive regions who bring with them the traditions of the localities they leave. The mixing of population forces a blending of traditions. Opposing elements are suppressed while similarities are emphasized and around them the old traditions cluster in new forms. These blended traditions are elevated into morality, broadened into ideals and projected as standards of future action.

Each new mingling of population due to an increase of resources makes a breach between economic conditions and inherited social traditions. Before an equilibrium is re-established a transformation of tradition takes place, giving higher ideals and better institutions. The breach between economic thought and social idealism is thus steadily widened and the opposition between them is more pronounced. In its lower forms tradition is the result of conflict and reflects the opposition arising when men contest for the meager results of isolated localities. It is usually expressed in race feelings and hatreds. In its higher forms, however, tradition is an expression of likeness. A consciousness of opposition and fear is replaced by a consciousness of kind.

2A Theory of Social Causation, a paper read before the American Economic Association at the New Orleans meeting.

Each element in a composite population has its own traditions which blend with other traditions only when the common points are emphasized and the antagonisms are suppressed. The oft-repeated stories of the old life are retold so as to interest larger audiences. To each group of hearers the newly-told story can have a meaning only when it incorporates some of the tradition with which it is familiar. Writers and orators instinctively suppress points of discord and blend and elevate what appeals to all. Tradition is thereby transformed into idealism and becomes a standard far above that realized by individual men.

Government in England, for example, is plainly a group of traditions. Transferred to America it becomes political institutions, transferred again to cosmopolitan France it appears as political ideals, while in centralized Germany it is further transformed into social democracy. Each step has resulted from the discarding of local antagonisms and the emphasis of generalized truth.

Because of the simple conditions under which the Republican party arose it could concentrate its attention on three evils, Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, but in recent years to meet the conditions of a more composite population it has been forced to elevate its standards and to generalize its principles until it appeals to the classes, sections and races it formerly antagonized. The narrow tradition of the primitive American is thus transformed into a broad liberalism and the American Government becomes capable of handling race problems that our forefathers left untouched.

A labor leader who undertakes to organize unskilled laborers race consciousness built up on race antagonism. When his thought is translated into the language of his hearers, words are used which express the hatreds surviving as race traditions. The employer is associated with the foreign misrule and the pent-up feelings which in their old homes went out against their race oppressors, are turned upon him. A class consciousness is thus developed that submerges the race antagonisms of earlier epochs and prepares the way for a broader citizenship. Race responses are replaced by class responses and these by social co-operative responses, which in turn are elevated into a democratic cosmopolitanism. Every transformation of tradition gives to its standards a greater coercive force. The result is idealism which by covering the future as a social projection gains a universality akin to religion.

Social mobility arises from the pressure of increasing desire; social stability from the growth of tradition. Social projection is the union of the two to be realized only in the distant future. With these forces at work there can be a steady transformation of tradition from a crude form of ancestor worship to an attractive social Utopia where all ideals become realities.

I give below some of the stages through which thought passes during this transformation. In a rough way they indicate the line of progress though no claim is made to strict accuracy:

Imitation,

Tradition,

Ancestor worship,

Hero worship,

Primitive poetry,

Precedents,

Codes,
Morality,

Biography,
History,

Romanticism,

Literary lore,

Individualism,

Idealism,

Social democracy,

Social projection.

Social democracy fixes the attention on the present and hence tends to emphasize the distribution of wealth. Social projection pictures an improving future and concentrates interest more on the accumulation of the wealth and the bettering of industrial processes than on its distribution and consumption.

I hope it has now been made clear that the traditional interpretation, the historical interpretation, the social interpretation and the idealistic interpretation of current events are practically the same. They differ from one another only in the degree that the idealistic transformation of thought has taken place. They all strive to influence the present and to improve human conduct through the study of past examples. The blending of traditions accomplishes this result and hence tradition and history pass over into idealism by easy stages. Economic practice becomes tradition and tradition is restated until it is transformed into institutions, ideals and social principles. All this helps to make good conduct, but it is not a safe basis for prediction.

We cannot accept this traditional interpretation because tradition has been transformed by its growth. Still less can we accept an "economic" interpretation of current events, because other

than economic causes have helped to shape the present. The "all economic" or material interpretation of the present is defective because it neglects the effect of heredity and tradition on human conduct. The traditional or idealistic interpretation is likewise defective because it neglects the changes in economic conditions that make present sequences in events different from those of the past. Through the economic interpretation of the past the similarities and differences in present and past conditions are brought to light and the limitations to social prediction become manifest.

Nor is economic interpretation the method of economists as opposed to that of historians and of sociologists. Economists are bound as tightly as other thinkers by the chains of tradition. The rapid development of the Ricardian tradition is evidence of this. Nor is the new thought exclusively the work of economists. Von Ihering's "Evolution of the Aryan" stands the tests of economic interpretation better than does the work of Karl Marx. The theory of exploitation is the transformation of a class tradition into a form of idealism. This is of social importance, but not an economic law.

I give below some of the canons of economic interpretation so that the validity of social creeds may be more easily measured. Economic interpretation tests these as science tests the miraculous in nature.

I. Like economic causes produce like social effects.

2.

Progress depends on the increase of resources.

3. An economic interpretation of past events must precede an historical interpretation of present events.

4. Economic interpretation must precede social prediction.

5. Social causes have economic antecedents.

6. A study of economic epochs should precede a study of nations and races.

7. Traditions blend which in their union strengthen and elevate each other.

8. The greatness of men is due not to their moments of inspiration, but to the conflicting disciplines to which they have been subjected.

Much of the present confusion of thought would be obviated if it were kept in mind that progress depends on an increase of resources. In the study of an epoch or nation it must first be deter

mined whether resources are decaying or improving. The decline of Rome was inevitable as soon as Italian resources fell off. Rome could extend its rule by conquest and make individuals and even armies wealthy by plunder, but this burden on the conquered races helped their decline, which in turn further weakened the Roman State.

It was the long, steady pressure of decaying resources that crushed Rome as it has crushed other nations similarly situated. Immorality and extravagance hurt to-day, but they have little permanent influence if the creation of wealth has gone on unimpeded. Each age brings up new men under the discipline of work and their descendants give tone to the succeeding age. Should they drop out through wrong-doing, their places are filled by a new generation of workers as new blades of grass come in the place of those cut. Give rain and we have grass; give work and we have men.

We need not go beyond the domain of geography to seek the error in the social and historical lore that is made the basis of current prediction. The region occupied by the Western civilizations of the Old World is divided into two parts by the Alps and the chains of mountains that extend eastward. Asia Minor, North Africa and the south slope of Europe are thus one geographical unit. The north of Europe forms a similar geographic unit. The Gulf Stream gives up its moisture to the Northern Plain. The westerly winds in the central basin are dry, bringing little moisture from the ocean beyond. Droughts are common and the source of great misery. The vast northern plain suffers from an excess of rain and from a lack of sun. Its crops, like the cereals can stand plenty of rain, while root crops prevail in the central basin where heat and sun are abundant though rain is deficient. I need not go into details to show that these two regions stand in marked contrast and that scarcely a physical feature which is important in the one prevails in the other. If economic forces count, these two regions should produce radically different civilizations, institutions and social traditions.

The German differed essentially from the Roman when the two civilizations came in contact. But as the Southern civilization proved superior the traditions, institutions and culture of the South were impressed on the North and so thoroughly has this work been done that the imposed institutions and social traditions now seem a second nature. We have so completely exchanged ancestors