The Cambridge Didactic Style

SINCE this essay concerns Englishmen, it may be appropriate to start with an understatement: Alfred Xlarshall and J. N. Keynes exerted considerable influence on the development of modern economic thought. These gentlemen shared nation, university, and classroom. It is my hypothesis that they also shared a common motive and method in the transmission of their ideas in written form. I shall argue that this common technique is significant, for it influenced the rate at which their ideas were understood and accepted by the profession. Both Marshall and Keynes strongly felt the need to be understood by their contemporaries. Marshall was always a little afraid of being above the head of the average businessman.2 This resulted partly from his belief that there was a high degree of relationship between economic knowledge and human welfare.3 Further, Marshall gives the impression that "the tardy growth of economic science" and therefore of human well-being was due partly to economists' expressing their ideas in a very technical form that required great effort to comprehend.4 Keynes shared this sense of urgency in presenting many of his contributions. This