Complete with extensive bibliography, this copiously annotated study probes the roots of contemporary economic thought, focusing on the interaction between economic and ethical thought and on conditions responsible for the emergence of orderly economic systems.Spengler examines the basis of economic thought among the ancients, then looks specifically at Mesopotamia, India, China, and Greece. His final chapter is a historical consideration of political economy and ethics from Aristotle to the present.In Mesopotamia, the system of weights and measures and regulatory codes reinforced customary practice. In India the economy was regulated by the state, but China, except for a few laws regulating consumption, remained economically free. The Greeks, with a theory of natural order, contributed the idea of economic justice; only Greece freed itself from mythopoetic elements dominant in earlier economic thought."