ABSTRACT
By the time The Higher Learning was published, in 1918, Thorstein Veblen had already been lured, by the exigencies of international politics, out of his self-imposed aloofness towards reformers and reforms. Veblen found in the instinct of idle curiosity a kind of biological platform for a skepticism which looked to many of his contemporaries as not merely idle but irresponsible. Immanuel Kant wrote his great book On Perpetual Peace during the wars unleashed by the French Revolution, wars towards which he retained detachment. Veblen's book, The Nature of Peace and the Terms of its Perpetuation, published in April, 1917, urged American entrance into the war in order to compel a peace in accordance with lasting peace aims. The curious mixture of reformist zeal with conservatism is indicated by the fact that Veblen opposed Wilson's introduction of a graduated income tax, and came out against the President's deficit spending and his creation of the Federal Reserve Board.
