PROF. SODDY is an eminent chemist and physicist, and it is consistent with his own investigations that he should seek for the “natural fundamental basis of the economic system under which we perish” (NATURE, April 14, p. 497). If the natural basis of the system be such as to cause us to perish, the object of a re-examination is, perhaps, to alter Nature and reconstruct de novo. Or, does Prof. Soddy mean that there are natural economic laws of which we are, as yet, not aware, and for which we should search? We know, however, that nineteenth-century economists enunciated natural laws of economics such as competition (survival of the fit) and supply and demand (action and reaction). These laws, nevertheless, were not “natural” to economics; they were adapted from Nature, as then expounded, and applied artificially by the governments in certain countries.