6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST interest was contained in this article of Sraffa. These critical pieces, razor-edged, forceful and rigorous, show, however, the careful scholarship and intense intellect of Sraffa. There is no nourish, no cavalier dismissal, no touch of drama in them. He respected his adversaries and he chose the best among them, studied them thoroughly not to be carried away by impressionistic prejudice. Those who have worked along with Sraffa would remember how difficult it was to slip away with a weak criticism of Marshall or of any other neo.-classi" cist! Sraffa's obituary (1924) of Maffeo Pentoleoni, who did most to popularise Marshallian economics in Italy, is an example in fairness and balance, apart from being a reflection of the very deep appreciation Sraffa could have for his opponent's personal and intellectual qualities. The article itself is an excellent pen-portrait that belies the expectation that Sraffa's prose could only be arid. The impression that Sraffa however v. as only an adept destroyer is totally wrong. We have only to turn to his masterly 11-volume edition of Ricardo's works. The Index (volume \\) is a piece of outstanding research in itself. It is a monumental work of scholarship, not only for its tireless and meticulous collection and editing of materials, itself a stupendous task, but also for the commentaries that reflect his genius. Sraffa had a passion for old books. He was a skillful collector of old books, rare editions and his library today contains many valuable volumes. He also loved literary detection; one of the research pieces he published, jointly with Keynes, is on the identification of authorship-of An Abstract of a Treatise on Human Nature, wrongly attributed to Adam Smith but which is proved by the authors to have been written by Hume himself. It is quite evident from Sraffa's account of the search for Ricardo's papers that he was enthralled by his discoveries. However, it is not only the collation of Ricardo's writings that is important. Sraffa's commentaries, interpreting Ricardo's writings, and consisting of meticulously* constructed and closely structured arguments, give us a neater picture of the underlying structure of theory that Ricardo was attempting to elucidate. It is now possible to see, thanks to Srafta's labours, the differences between the later neo-classical theoretical developments and the earlier classical political economy, as alternative streams. Such an elucidation and reworking was crucial in order to revive the surplus approach, long dominated over by the current neo-classical orthodoxy. Sraffa as an editor of Ricardo's writings reveals himself in another aspect of his personality—his ability to be objective, to view other scholars' works in their own context of time, place and viewpoint, without himself intruding. The Ricardo edition took the major research time of Sraffa—a thinker himself blessed with originality and independence of ideas. It is remarkable that he contained his originality in those sparse, content-loaded introductory and interpretative paragraphs and let Ricardo speak for himself. It requires a rare combination of