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I knew what he meant. He meant literate in economics. In other words, Keynes, as he told others, though he was being too polite to say just that to me, didn't think the President had the vaguest notion of what economics is. I think he had very little notion. He had had almost no education in economics, as a matter of fact. His mind didn't think of the organization of knowledge in this pseudo-scientific structure which we call economics. It's pseudo-scientific because it is still one of the humanities. In lectures I've called people back to the name it was known by in early days when it was a part of natural philosophy. It was that division of natural philosophy which describes and deals with the ways in which people earn their living and distribute the proceeds thereof. It was regarded as a part of moral philosophy. It was taught in theological seminaries as moral philosophy. That's just about as good a description today as there can be.

I don't mean to say that Roosevelt was ignorant of the basic principles of economics, or that he had never heard of Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations. He was in full revolt against the “economic man.” He didn't like that concept at all. I've heard him poke fun at that. He'd say that he'd just talked to some economist and by talking to them you'd think that a man was nothing but an eating