IV PREFACE. 



remained in the background. Political economy, 

 as it gradually emerges from its semi-scientific 

 stage, tends more and more to become a science 

 devoted to the study of the needs of men and 

 of the means for satisfying them with the least 

 possible waste of energy, that is : a sort of 

 physiology of society. But few economists, as 

 yet, have recognised that this is the proper 

 domain of economics, and have attempted to 

 treat their science from this point of view. The 

 main subject of social economy, i.e., the economy 

 / of energy required for the satisfaction of human 

 needs,. \s consequently the last subject which one 

 expects to find treated in a concrete form in 

 economical treatises. 



The following pages are a contribution to a 

 portion of this vast subject. They contain a 

 discussion of the advantages which civilised 

 societies could derive from a recombination of 

 industrial pursuits with intensive agriculture^ and 

 of brain work with manual work. 



The importance of such a combination has 

 not escaped the attention of a number of 

 students of social science. It was eagerly dis- 

 cussed jsome fifty years ago under the names of 

 " harmonised labour," "integral education," and 

 so on. It was pointed out at that time that 

 the . greatest sum total of well-being can be 

 yjA' obtained when a variety of agricultural, industrial 

 and intellectual pursuits are combined in each 

 community ; and that man shows his best when 

 he is in a position to~~lipply liis usually-varied 



