ABSTRACT
In two articles written in the 1930s, Talcott Parsons described how the themes of wants and their adjustment to activities, so central to Marshall’s theory of economic progress, were reflections of the Protestant virtues of thrift, sobriety, temperance, self-awareness and control, etc., which would lead not only to the growth of output but to the gentrification of those involved. Parsons put this ‘narrow-mindedness, hardly compatible with the ideal of scientific objectivity’ (1932:220) down to evangelical bias, a vestige of Marshall’s fundamentalist childhood (Chasse 1984:382). Fifty years later, J.D.Chasse advanced the view that Marshall’s analysis of wants and activities is better understood in terms of the contemporary intellectual ideas of utilitarianism, Hegelianism and German historicism. Whilst it is true that Marshall incorporated into his system ideas which can be attributed to a number of philosophical schools, my belief is that his habits of thought and behaviour as well as his moral outlook, were essentially evangelical, and that when he claimed that the two great influences on a man’s character were his everyday work and his religious ideals, he was in no way excluding himself (Marshall 1961: vol. 1,1).
