Ben Seligman was an old-fashioned socialist intellectual. The world is full of “old-fashioned intellectuals” for whom the concept of socialist fraternity has long since lost whatever value it might once have had. And it reverberates to the cries of “socialist intellectuals” who brutalize the notion of brotherhood by limiting it to this elite or that. Not so Ben.

Many of us are tolerably aware of Ben’s accomplishments in his chosen field. Determined not to be hampered by a heart that would not beat in ...