Chapter IV, on "The Creative Factor in Production") seem to have a close

relation to the main theme of the present discussion.

[53] It may be worth while to glance here for the sake of illustration at an ethical view of preference parallel with the economic logic above contested. "The act which is right in that it promotes one interest, is, by the same principle," writes R. B. Perry, "wrong in that it injures another interest. There is no contradiction in this fact ... simply because it is possible for the same thing to possess several relations, the question of their compatibility or incompatibility being in each case a question of empirical fact. Now ... an act ... may be doubly right in that it conduces to the fulfillment of two interests. Hence arises the conception of comparative goodness. If the fulfillment of one interest is good, the fulfillment of two is better; and the fulfillment of all interests is best.... Morality, then, is _such performance as under the circumstances, and in view of all the interests affected, conduces to most goodness_. In other words, that act is morally right which is most right." (_Present Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 334. Cf. also _The Moral Economy_). It is evident that constructive change in the underlying system (or aggregate?) of the agent's interests gets no recognition here as a matter of moral concern or as a fact of the agent's moral experience. Thus Perry understands the meaning of freedom to lie in the fact that "_interests operate_," i.e., that interests exist as a certain class of operative factors in the universe along with factors of _other_ sorts. "I can and do, within limits, _act as I will_. Action, in other words, is governed by desires and intentions." (pp. 342 ff.). The cosmical heroics of Bertrand Russell are thus not quite the last word in Ethics (p. 346). Nevertheless, the "free man," in Perry's view, apparently must get on with the interests that once for all initially defined him as a "moral constant" (p. 343).

[54] In a recent interesting discussion of "Self-interest" (T. N. Carver, _Essays in Social Justice_, 1915, Chap. III) occurs the following: "We may conclude ... that even after we eliminate from our consideration all other beings than self, there is yet a possible distinction between one's present and one's future self. It is always, of course, the present self which esteems or appreciates all interests whether they be present or future. And the present self estimates or appreciates present interests somewhat more highly than it does future interests. In this respect the present self appreciates the interests of the future self according to a law quite analogous to, if indeed it be not the same law as that according to which it appreciates the interests of others" (p. 71). This bit of "subjective analysis" (p. 60), a procedure rather scornfully condemned as "subjective quibbling" on the following page, must be counted a fortunate lapse. It could be bettered, I think, in only one point. Must the future self "of course" and "always" get license to live by meeting the standards of the present self? Has the present self no modesty, no curiosity, no "sense of humor"? If it is so stupidly hard and fast, how can a self new and qualitatively different ever get upon its feet in a man? In some men no such thing can happen--but must it be in all men impossible and impossible "of course"? And what of the other self? Carver has not applied the "methods of subjective analysis" to _change_ from self _to_ self or from interest in self _to_ interest in others. The present tense of formal logic governs fundamentally throughout the whole account.

If this essay were a volume I should try to consider, from the point of view of constructive intelligence, the explanation of interest as due to the undervaluation of future goods.

[55] Fite, _Introductory Study of Ethics_, pp. 3-8.

[56] Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, pp. 205-11.

[57] The term "egocentric predicament" (cf. R. B. Perry: _Present Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 129 ff.) has had, for a philosophic term, a remarkable literary success. But at best it conveys a partial view of the situation it purports to describe. The "egocentricity" of our experience, viewed in its relation to action, seems, rightly considered, less a "predicament" than an opportunity, a responsibility and an immunity. For in relation to _action_, it means (1) that an objective complex situation has become, in various of its aspects, a matter of my cognizance in terms significant to me. That so many of its aspects have come into relations of conflict or reenforcement significant _for me_ is _my_ opportunity for reconstructive effort if I choose to avail myself of it. Because, again, I am thus "on hand myself" (_op. cit._, p. 129) and am thus able to "report" upon the situation, I am (2) responsible, in the measure of my advantages, for the adequacy of my performance. And finally (3) I cannot be held to account for failure to reckon with such aspects of the situation as I cannot get hold of in the guise of "ideas, objects of knowledge or experiences" (_Ibid._). Our egocentricity is, then, a predicament only so long as one stubbornly insists, to no obvious positive purpose, on thinking of knowledge as a self-sufficing entitative complex, like a vision suddenly appearing full-blown out of the blue, and as inviting judgment in that isolated character on the representative adequacy which it is supposed to claim (cf. A. W. Moore, "Isolated Knowledge," _Journ. of Philos., etc._, Vol. XI). The way out of the predicament for Perry and his colleagues is to attack the traditional subjective and representative aspects of knowledge. But, this carried out, what remains of knowledge is a "cross-section of neutral entities" which _still_ retains all the original unaccountability, genetically speaking, and the original intrinsic and isolated self-sufficiency traditionally supposed to belong to knowledge. The ostensible gain achieved for knowledge is an alleged proof of its ultimate self-validation or the meaninglessness of any suspicion of its validity (because there is no uncontrolled and distorting intermediation of "consciousness" in the case). But to wage strenuous war on subjectivism and representationism and still to have on hand a problem calling for the invention _ad hoc_ of an entire new theory of mind and knowledge seems a waste of good ammunition on rather unimportant outworks. They might have been circumvented.

But what concerns us here is the ethical parallel. The egocentric predicament in this aspect purports to compel the admission by the "altruist" that since whatever he chooses to do must be his act and is obviously done because he wishes, for good and sufficient reasons of his own, to do it, therefore he is an egoist after all--perhaps in spite of himself and then again perhaps not. The ethical realism of G. E. Moore (_Principia Ethica_, 1903) breaks out of the predicament by declaring Good independent of all desire, wish or human interest and _indefinable_, and by supplying a partial list of things thus independently good. What I do, I do because it seems likely to put me in possession of objective _Good_, not because it accords with some habit or whim of mine (although my own pleasure is undoubtedly _one_ of the good things). It is noteworthy that Perry declines to follow Moore in this (_op. cit._, p. 331 ff.). Now such an ethical objectivism can give no account of the motivation, or the process, of the individual's efforts to attain, for guidance in any case, a "more adequate" apprehension of what things are good than he may already possess, just as the objectivist theory of consciousness ( = knowledge) can supply no clue as to how or whether a _more_ or a _less_ comprehensive or a qualitatively _different_ "cross-section of entities" can or should be got into one's "mind" as warrant or guidance ("stimulus") for a contemplated response that is to meet a present emergency (cf. John Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," _Psychol. Rev._, Vol. IV). Thus neither sort of deliverance out of the alleged predicament of egocentricity abates in the least the only serious inconvenience or danger threatened by subjectivism.

[58] Cf. W. Jethro Brown, _The Underlying Principles of Modern Legislation_ (3d ed., London, 1914), pp. 165-68.

[59] Bosanquet: _Principle of Individuality and Value_, pp. 13, 15, 20, 24, 27, 30.

[60] The case against the Austrian explanation of market-price in terms of marginal utility has been well summed up and re-enforced by B. M. Anderson in his monograph, _Social Value_ (Boston, 1911). Anderson finds the fatal flaw in the Austrian account to consist in the psychological particularism of the marginal utility theory. The only way, he holds, to provide an adequate foundation for a non-circular theory of price is to understand the marginal estimates people put upon goods as resultants of the entire moral, legal, institutional, scientific, aesthetical, and religious state of society at the time. This total and therefore absolute state of affairs, if I understand the argument, is to be regarded as focussed to a unique point in the estimate each man puts upon a commodity. Thus, presumably, the values which come together, summed up in the total demand and supply schedules for a commodity in the market, are "social values" and the resultant market-price is a "social price." This cross-sectional social totality of conditions is strongly suggestive of an idealistic Absolute. The individual is a mere focussing of impersonal strains and stresses in the Absolute. But the real society is a radically temporal process. The real centers of initiation in it are creatively intelligent individuals whose economic character as such expresses itself not in "absolute" marginal registrations but in price estimates.

On the priority of price to value I venture to claim the support of A. A. Young, "Some Limitations of the Value Concept," _Quart. Journ. Econ._, Vol. XXV, p. 409 (esp. pp. 417-19). Incidentally, I suspect the attempt to reconstruct ethical theory as a branch of what is called _Werttheorie_ to be a mistake and likely to result only in useless and misleading terminology.

[61] _Positive Theory of Capital_ (Eng. trans.). Bk. IV, Ch. II. The passage is unchanged in the author's latest edition (1912).

[62] It is pointed out (e.g., by Davenport in his _Economics of Enterprise_, pp. 53-54) that, mathematically, in a market where large numbers of buyers and sellers confront each other with their respective maximum and minimum valuations on the commodity this interval within which price must fall becomes indefinitely small to the point of vanishing. This is doubtless in accord with the law of probability, but it would be an obvious fallacy to see in this any manner of proof or presumption that therefore the assumptions as to the nature of the individual valuations upon which such analysis proceeds _are true_. In a large market where this interval is supposed to be a vanishing quantity is there more or less higgling and bargaining than in a small market where the interval is admittedly perceptible? And if there _is_ higgling and bargaining (_op. cit._, pp. 96-97), what is it doing that is of price-fixing importance unless there be supposed to be a critical interval for it to work in? Such a use of probability-theory is a good example of the way in which mathematics may be used to cover the false assumptions which have to be made in order to make a mathematical treatment of certain sorts of subject-matter initially plausible as description of concrete fact.

[63] As I have elsewhere argued ("Subjective and Exchange Value," _Journ. Pol. Econ._, Vol. IV, pp. 227-30). By the same token, I confess skepticism of the classical English doctrine that cost can affect price only through its effect upon quantity produced. "If all the commodities used by man," wrote Senior (quoted by Davenport, _op. cit._, p. 58), "were supplied by nature without any interference whatever of human labor, but were supplied in precisely the same amounts that they now are, there is no reason to suppose either that they would cease to be valuable or would exchange at any other than the present proportions." But is this inductive evidence or illustrative rhetoric? One wonders, indeed, whether private property would ever have developed or how long modern society would tolerate it if all wealth were the gift of nature instead of only some of it (that part, of course, which requires no use of produced capital goods for its appropriation).

[64] Certain points in this discussion have been raised in two papers, entitled, "The Present Task of Ethical Theory," _Int. Jour. of Ethics_, XX, and "Ethical Value," _Jour. of Phil., Psy., and Scientific Methods_, V, p. 517.

[65] Cf. also John Dewey, _Influence of Darwin upon Philosophy_, and Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, Ch. XVI.

[66] _International Journal of Ethics_, XXV, 1914, pp. 1-24.

[67]_ Dreams of a Spirit Seer._

[68] Cf. A. W. Moore, _Pragmatism and Its Critics_, 257-78.

[69] Croce, _Philosophy of the Practical_, pp. 312 f.

[70] G. E. Moore, _Principia Ethica_, p. 147.

[71] _Ethics_, ch. V.

[72] G. E. Moore, _Principia Ethica_, p. 149.

[73] Rashdall, _Is Conscience an Emotion?_ pp. 199 f.

[74] _Ibid._, 177.

[75] G.E. Moore, _Ethics_, Ch. III.

[76] Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, pp. 334 f.

[77] _Methods of Ethics_, p. 380.

[78] _Individualism_, 55, 61, 62.

[79] Lectures III and IV, especially 175, 176, 235-39.

[80] Pp. 111 ff., 172-75, 329 ff.

[81] Pp. 73, 186, 236, 261 f., 267, 269.

[82] 124, 182, 301.

[83] 263 ff., 123.

[84] Pp. 180, 241.

[85] P. 180.

[86] Art and religion have doubtless their important parts in embodying values, or in adding the consciousness of membership in a larger union of spirits, or of relation to a cosmic order conceived as ethical, but the limits of our discussion do not permit treatment of these factors.

[87] Cf. my paper, "Goodness, Cognition, and Beauty," _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. IX, p. 253.

[88] Cf. Thorndike, _The Original Nature of Man_; S. Freud, _Die Traumdeutung_, _Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben_, etc.; McDougall, _Social Psychology_.

[89] _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. IX, p. 256.

[90] Cf. Plato, _Republic_, IX, 571, 572, for an explicit anticipation of Freud.

[91] This "new psychology" is not so very new.

[92] Cf. Hocking, _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, for the most recent of these somnambulisms. But any idealistic system will do, from Plato to Bradley.

[93] Cf. James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_.

[94] Cf. Jane Harrison, _Ancient Art and Ritual_.

[95] Cf. my paper, "Is Belief Essential in Religion?", _International Journal of Ethics_, October, 1910.

[96] "Metaphysics," _Book Lambda_.

[97] This is accomplished usually by ignoring the differentia of the term of religion, and using it simply as an adjective of eulogy, as in the common practice the term "Christian" is made coextensive with the denotation of "good," or "social." For example, a "Christian gentleman" can differ in no discernible way from a gentleman not so qualified save by believing in certain theological propositions. But in usage, the adjective is simply tautologous. Compare R. B. Perry, _The Moral Economy_; E. S. Ames, _The Psychology of Religious Experience_; J. H. Leuba, _A Psychological Study of Religion_; H. M. Kallen, _Is Belief Essential in Religion?_

[98] The condition of England and Germany in the present civil war in Europe echoes this situation.

[99] Cf. _Republic_, Books V and VI.

[100] Cf. _Winds of Doctrine_ and _Reason in Common Sense_.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.

2. Punctuation has been normalized. As well as obvious misprints have been corrected.

3. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.

4. The word "Phoenicians" uses an "oe" ligature in the original.