Economy is, as it were, the Æsthetic of practical life; Morality its Logic.
The economically useful.
If this has not been clearly seen by philosophers; if the correct place in the system of the spirit has not been given to the economic activity, if it has been left to wander about in the prolegomena to treatises on political economy, often vague and but little developed, this is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the useful or economic has been confused, sometimes with the concept of the technical, sometimes with that of the egoistical.
Distinction between the useful and the technical.
Technique is certainly not a special activity of the spirit. Technique is knowledge; or rather, it is knowledge itself in general which takes this name when it serves as basis, as we have seen it does, for practical action. Knowledge which is not followed, or is supposed not to be easily followed by practical action, is called "pure": the same knowledge, if effectively followed by action, is called "applied"; if it is supposed that it can be easily followed by a particular action, it is called "applicable" or "technical." This word, then, indicates a situation in which knowledge is, or may easily be, not a special form of knowledge. So true is this, that it would be altogether impossible to establish whether a given order of knowledge were, intrinsically, pure or applied. All knowledge, however abstract and philosophical it may be believed to be, may be a guide to practical acts; a theoretical error in the ultimate principles of morality may be reflected and always in some way is reflected in practical life. One can only speak roughly and unscientifically of certain truths as pure and of others as applied.
The same knowledge that is called technical may also be called useful. But the word "useful" in conformity with the criticism of judgements of value made above, is to be understood as used here in a verbal or metaphorical sense. When we say that water is useful for putting out fire, the word "useful" is used in a non-scientific sense. Water thrown on the fire is the cause of its going out: this is the knowledge that serves for basis to the action, let us say, of firemen. There is a link, not of nature, but of simple succession, between the useful action of the person who extinguishes the conflagration and that knowledge. The technique of the effects of the water is the theoretical activity which precedes; the only useful thing is the action of the man who extinguishes the fire.
Distinction of the useful from the egoistic.
Some economists identify utility, that is to say, merely economic action or will, with the egoistic, that is to say, with what is profitable to the individual, in so far as individual, without regard to and indeed in complete opposition to the moral law. The egoistic is the immoral. In this case Economics would be a very strange science, standing not beside but opposite Ethics, like the devil facing God, or at least like the advocatus diaboli in the processes of canonization. Such a conception is altogether inadmissible: the science of immorality is implied in that of morality, as the science of the false is implied in Logic, science of the true, and a science of unsuccessful expression in Æsthetic, science of successful expression. If, then, Economics were the scientific treatment of egoism, it would be a chapter of Ethics, or Ethics itself; because every moral determination implies, at the same time, a negation of its contrary.
Further, conscience tells us that to conduct oneself economically is not to conduct oneself egoistically; that even the most morally scrupulous man must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he does not wish to act at hazard and consequently in a manner quite the reverse of moral. If utility were egoism, how could it be the duty of the altruist to behave like an egoist?
Economic will and moral will.