ABSTRACT
PROFESSOR WESLEY C. MITCHELL performs with remarkable success the difficult task of interpreting the thought and writings of Thorstein Veblen, one of the few original thinkers of his age in the field of sociology and economics. 1 Every writer in this field is bound to put a good deal of his individual experience and outlook into his processes of thinking and his valuation of the human scene. Mr. Mitchell, therefore, wisely begins by emphasis upon the detached position held by a young Norwegian born and bred in a distinctively Norse settlement within the surrounding American environment. Amid the multitude of American personal and social contacts of his varied life Veblen retained and exploited this position of the onlooker who sees most of the game. It helped him to maintain that objective rôle of criticism which kept his mind aloof from the dominion of those traditional thoughts and valuations which are impediments to intellectual independence. He brought certain Viking qualities of fearless adventure and of playfulness into his treatment of the world in which he found himself.
