It is, perhaps, at least partly an unfortunate consequence of the pressure for brevity in the formulation of titles that Professor Knight begins his critical discussion of my article with the statement that though it “in terms of bulk consists of sound and valuable insights” it is “utterly misleading with respect to the main question at issue.” It may be permissible to suggest that for Professor Knight and myself the main questions at issue are not identical, as so often happens in intellectual discussion. To help clarify the question I shall attempt to state more explicitly than was done in the article itself what it was designed to accomplish.

The aim of this tentative outline was overwhelmingly positive rather than critical. It contained, in the introductory paragraphs, only sufficient statement of the historical and interdisciplinary aspects of the problem of “self-interest” to give a very broad orientation to the setting of the problem. The bulk of the article, which it may be hoped includes at least partly the “sound and valuable insights” of which Professor Kjiight speaks, was devoted to the outlining of what seems to the author, in the light of the present state of development both of economic and of sociological theory, to be the closest attainable approach, in such broad outline, to a satisfactorily usable account of the subject.