ABSTRACT
Neither in classical antiquity nor yet in the Middle Ages did there arise any finished systems of politico-economic thought. In those epochs, when the mind was directed towards the heroic and the suprasensual, the economic sphere of activity was regarded with little esteem—as always in periods with an organised economy. Only when, as to-day, the individual is left so exclusively to his own devices, and only when the forces of free competition are stimulated to an extreme, is civilised life crudely dominated by economic considerations to an extent which seems self-evident to us to-day.
