Such a man, they say, is an abstraction.

He does not exist in reality; and if economics is to have any scientific value it must deal with man as a whole, in all his living complexity.

As applied to the orthodox economists this criticism has an element of truth in it; but when the socialists attempt to act on their own loudly boasted principles, and deal with human nature as a whole instead of only one of its elements, they do nothing but travesty the error which they set out with denouncing.

The one-motived economic man who cares only for personal gain is, no doubt, an abstraction, like the lines and points of Euclid.

Still the motive ascribed to him is one which has a real existence and produces real effects.