Abstract
“THE lever which lifted political and religious boulders will snap when used to move economic mountains” expresses a pessimistic outlook which does not appear to be shared by Prof. Tawney. Nor does he believe that our present social and economic maladjustments are the inevitable results of original sin. “It is more contemptible to be intimidated by distrust of human nature than to be duped by believing in it.” His book is an interesting examination of political and economic equality as an ideal, and involves an analysis of the causes, social and psychological, which have resulted in our present degree of inequality. The chapter on “Equality and Culture” is a good tract for the times, and reiterates the useful truth that, if the Kingdom of Heaven is not eating and drinking, “neither is civilisation the multiplication of motor-cars and cinemas, and of any other of the innumerable devices by which men accumulate means of ever-increasing intricacy to the attainment of ends which are not worth attaining”.
Equality.
(Halley Stewart Lectures, 1929.) By R. H. Tawney. Pp. 303. (London: George Alien and Unwin, Ltd., 1931.) 7s. 6d. net.
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Miscellany. Nature 128, 964 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128964a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128964a0