All four of austerity's Italian economists shared this intellectually elitist position, not to mention a tendency toward selfadulation. It was a set of conceits expressed through Ricci's religious metaphor, by which the "contemplation" of "the divine science" of economics is "the privilege of the few" and "does not always appear as beautiful, true and good to the profane public" (Ricci 1926, 72).

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1112