The title of Dr. O’Brien’s new volume is somewhat misleading. The immense research which he has here condensed into less than two hundred pages is concerned, not with a description of the practical effects of the Reformation in breaking down the social and economic life of the Middle Ages, but ‘exclusively with the effects of the Reformation on economic thought and theory.’ He disclaims all intention of writing history, on the ground that it would involve a complete study of Europe since the middle of the sixteenth century. He confines himself to the discussion of a thesis which challenges unending controversies, setting himself ‘to prove that both capitalism and socialism alike can be shown to have had their origin in the Protestant Reformation.’

At first sight, such a discussion would appear to be purely academic. But Dr. O’Brien raises questions which go to the root of all modern social reform. Whereas the standard teaching of the economists generally explains the intolerable tyranny which we understand by modern capitalism as the natural outcome of the industrial revolution, Dr. O’Brien maintains with great ability—and he supports his argument with a fiiass of evidence from recognised authorities M Half-a-dozen countries—that it was not the industrial revolution which produced capitalism, but capitalism (as he interprets it) which produced the industrial revolution. In other words, capitalism cannot Kl regarded as the result of natural economic development; Dr. O’Brien maintains that it is the outcome of a fsflse philosophy of human life.