Professor EILEEN POWER (Professor of Economic
History in the University of London) : ' The Middle Ages-II, Economic Ideals and Realities '
The modern world owes a great debt to the Middle Ages for the preservation of economic and social standards of life in countless small communities, monasteries and manors, towns and guilds, which wore threatened with extinction at the break-up of the Roman world. The conduct of business affairs, including the management of property, trade, the fixing of prices and wages, was regulated by a moral law dictated by the Church. With the rise of nationalism and capitalism religion and business parted company. The present dislocation of capitalistic society gives the attempt for a modern re-statement of the mediaeval ideal of the control of economic appetites a very practical interest.