Introduction

Decline of intellectual powers

It was stated in the introduction to this book, and it will be shown in the remaining chapters, that there was a marked decline in the quality of Walras's work during his final phase of theoretical activity. During that phase he tried to revise the Eléments into a written pledges system of markets. The reader should have some understanding of the reasons for the poor performance that is going to be described in the following pages. Why did it happen? A large part of the answer to that question is surely to be found in the state of his health. For all of his adult life, Walras was inconvenienced by headaches, “cerebral congestions,” pain in the neck and spine, and an “affliction of the nerves” (Walras to William Stanley Jevons, February 26–27, 1877, in 1965, 1, letter 376, p. 532). In 1887, he wrote about “suffering as usual from nervous fatigue and cerebral excitation” (Walras to Rawson William Rawson, April 10, 1887, in 1965, 2, letter 796, p. 207), and explained that “all my nights are passed in crises of obsessiveness and neuralgia” (Walras to Luigi Bodio, April 19, 1887, in 1965, 2, letter 796, p. 207).