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From one of the outstanding theorists in the field of economics to-day, Professor Pigou himself, we have the statement that, if economics is to be more than "merely an amusing toy", it must be "realistic", in the sense that its "interest is concentrated upon the world known in experience", and "fruit-bearing", in the sense that its ultimate objective is to contribute to the attainment of "practical results in social improvement". Few will disagree with a general statement of this sort; yet none of us can fail to be conscious of the difficulties involved in maintaining a really close and useful relationship between our theoretical analyses and the most urgent practical problems of the economic world around us. It is with these difficulties and with the effect upon them of recent theoretical developments that this paper is primarily concerned.

In the decline of his life, a disappointed man might well ask himself what destiny would have held in store for him if at some crucial juncture of his maturity he had accepted the earnest advice of a solicitous friend or even of a keen-sighted foe. Today liberalism is confronted with a similar question. It is on the defensive in all parts of the Western world except in the United States. Even there its position is deceptive. Perhaps it survives tenuously under the artificial protective canvas of postwar inflation. Today one can hardly question this threatened eclipse of liberalism. Because of this foreboding, disturbing questions haunt the liberal. What deficiency in liberalism is leading to the abandonment of its tenets throughout Europe? Was there counsel offered and ignored in the past which might have retarded the infirmities of age?The answer to the first question has long been apparent. Yet in practice contemporary liberalism, both of the progressive and nineteenth-century varieties, has never assimilated its essential meaning. Following the French Revolution and the English Reform Act, liberalism began its long history of divorcing theory from practice. In the splendor of Victorian industrial success, this separation was not driven into the consciousness either of the intellectual leaders or of the people. But with the tension, domestic and international, of the eighties, liberals themselves, like T. H. Green and then Hobhouse, undertook the task of correcting some of the glaring discrepancies between the doctrine and the reality. In the light of the basically abstract character of liberalism, these collectivist renovations now appear like amateurish tinkering with a vastly complex apparatus.Liberal doctrine had indeed long been suffering from a negative attitude toward the state. But this was simply a diagnostic symptom of an even deeper defect: liberalism's unconscionable indifference to the material conditions of society, and its ensuing failure to put its theories to the test of the social reality.

As a by-product of the Napoleonic wars the Concert of Europe emerged as the institution responsible for the order of the Continent and even for peaceful change. With the admission of France it was a system of equilibrium founded upon a balance of political power among the five Great Powers which acted in the name of Europe as a unity. The Concert of Europe contained elements that were clearly judicial. It was not at all a mere sociological or political fact. But its juridical elements were weak, obscured by the anti-nationalist and anti-liberal tendencies of the founders. Nevertheless, the Concert of Europe enjoyed more success in solving problems peacefully than did the League of Nations, because the former's responsibility as a pouvoir minoritaire, to use Hauriou's concept, was clear and distinct. It is of course self-evident that the existence and efficiency of the Concert depended upon a community of several interests. It is equally obvious, too, that the Concert grew weaker as more material for political conflict between the Great Powers piled up, and the more their general interest gave way to particular and opposing interests. By the close of the century the Concert of the Great Powers was being slowly rent asunder through the formation of the Triple Alliance and the emergence of the Triple Entente. So it was that Europe 'stumbled', as Lloyd George has said, into the war of 1914–18.

It is one of the surprising things in contemporary political science that at a time when what is known as "the pragmatic revolt in politics" is an outstanding phenomenon, and when lavish attention is being bestowed upon the histrionic adventures of Italy into the fields of political realism, the experiments of the Spanish Directory tend to be passed over without serious investigation. Spain has been treated as though her experiment were only a futile or less meaningful, slavish imitation of the work ofIl Duce, as though the Iberian peninsula were witnessing onlyin parvothe monumental experiments of Fascism. This easy dismissal of the work of the Directory in Spain may be comforting in its simplicity, but it is a distinct over-simplification and an attempt to argue from analogy where the basic and essential elements of a similar situation are lacking. Merely the fact of dictatorship, merely the supposed association of an armed partisan force with the dictator in power, merely the fact of the abrogation of public liberties in each instance have been taken to constitute the essential elements of comparison and identification. The less dramatic character of the events in Spain has tended to obscure the far-reaching differences between the régimes centering in Rome and Madrid.

It is not within the purpose of this paper to appraise the historical significance which the Council of Trent held for the consolidation of Catholic doctrine on all the points of dogmatic and sacramental theology that had been put into question by the religious innovators. Nor shall we examine the role which its measures of canonical legislation played in the great process of spiritual and disciplinary renewal which eventually determined the position of the Catholic Church in the modern world. We propose rather to turn our attention to the great goal which the Council did not reach: the restoration of the one Respublica Christiana, of the Catholic unity which prior to the sixteenth century had been the only conceivable form of Christian religious existence. To the eye of the historian, it is true, the rift in Western Christendom appears quite obviously prepared by the developments of two centuries preceding Luther's challenge. The exile of Avignon; the great schism; the constitutional unrest of the conciliar epoch of Constance and Basel; the political realism by which Renaissance popes had sought above all to consolidate their position as Italian territorial rulers; the growth of the national states and national sovereignties; the ferment of humanistic ideologies—they all were alarming and distressing symptoms of the radical disintegration of mediaeval unity.

IT IS a painful paradox that the defeats suffered by the democratic myth abroad have coincided with the rise of a critical realism toward democratic institutions at home. No trend is more marked in contemporary American political science than that of comprehending the polity in terms of "pressure groups" competing for control. Such atomistic segregation inevitably minimizes the essential function of a firmly established ideological framework. Without it, the state is limp; allegiance is reduced to considerations of material satisfaction, changing with demand and supply; individual freedom lacks a dedication to superindividual objectives.