SOURCE: "Theorizing of the Middle Period: A Treatise on Money," in Biography of an Idea: John Maynard Keynes and the "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," Transaction Publishers, 1995, pp. 67-83.

In the following excerpt on A Treatise on Money, Felix discusses the genesis of the work the weaknesses in its argument, and its contemporary critical reception.

In Keynes's lifetime of inexorable success, his Treatise on Money, his only work to go beyond one volume, was the grand exception. In it all of his strengths and weaknesses were given space in which to play themselves out to the greatest extent: his gift for exquisitely refined syllogizing and fluent management of contradictions, practical intimacy with business and finance, mathematical and verbal artistry, a generalist's taste for history and other disciplines, skill in shaping of the material to fit the theory, and his faith in his intuition. A genius had...