220 HISTORY OF ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 



finds a 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 witn the foreign misrule, and the pent-up 

 feelings which in their old homes went out against their race oppress- 

 ors 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 cooperative 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, Biography, 



Tradition, History, 



Ancestor worship, Romanticism, 



Hero worship, Literary lore, 



Primitive poetry, Individualism, 



Precedents, Idealism, 



Codes, Social democracy, 



Morality, 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 pro- 

 cesses than on its distribution and consumption. 



I hope it has now been made clear that the traditional inter- 

 pretation, 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 



