If we are on the whole satisfied with the new on its intrinsic merits as a present complex fact, we have therein sufficient ground for saying that it marks a stage in progress. This, in fact, is what such a proposition means. And the old then appears more or less widely discontinuous with the new—not merely that it shows, in units of measure, less of the acceptable quality or qualities which the new fact or situation is found to possess, but that it belongs for us to a qualitatively different level and order of existence. How, we wonder, could our ancestors have found life tolerable in their undrained and imperfectly heated dwellings, without the telephone, the morning's news of the world by cable, and the phonograph? How, again, could feudal homage and fealty have ever been the foundation of social order in countries where today every elector is wont to think and to act in his public relations no longer as a subject but as a citizen. And how, in still a different sphere, could the father or the mother of a happy family of children ever have found the freedom and irresponsibility of bachelorhood endurable? Shall we say that in changes like these we have to do simply with the quantitative increase of some quality, present in small measure in the earlier stages and in larger measure in the later? Or shall we evade the issue with the general admission that of course, as every schoolboy knows, there are in this world many differences of degree that somehow "amount to differences of kind"? As a matter of fact what has happened in every case like these is an actual change of standard, a new construction in the growing system of one's norms of value and behavior. Provisionally, though hopefully, a step has been taken—a real event in personal and in social history has been given place and date. From some source beyond the scope and nature of the earlier function a suggestion or an impulsion has come by which the agent has endeavored to move forward. The change wrought is a transcendence of the earlier level of experience and valuation, not a widening and clarification of vision on that level. And the standards which govern on the new level serve not so much to condemn the old as to seal its consignment to disuse and oblivion. Least of all can a judgment or appraisal of the old from the standpoint of the new be taken for a transcript of the motives which led to the transition.
We must confine ourselves more closely, however, to the sphere of material goods and their uses. And in this sphere objection to the view proposed will run in some such terms as the following: Take our ancestors, for example, and their household arrangements to which invidious reference has been made: why should we suppose that their seeming contentment was anything more (or less) than a dignified composure in which we might well imitate them—an attitude in no way precluding a definite sense of specific discomforts and embarrassments and a distinct determination to be rid of them as soon as might be? And, in fact, if they were satisfied with what they had why did they receive the new when it was offered? If, on the other hand, they were not satisfied, how is the fact intelligible except upon the assumption that they had distinct and definite wants not yet supplied, and were wishing (but patiently) for conveniences and comforts of a sort not yet existent. And this latter hypothesis, it will be urged, is precisely what the foregoing argument has sought to discredit as an account of the moving springs in the evolution of consumption.
§ 5. Any adequate discussion of the central issue thus presented would fall into two parts. In the first place, before a consumption good can come into general acceptance and currency it must have been in some way discovered, suggested or invented, and the psychology of invention is undoubtedly a matter of very great complexity and difficulty. But for the purposes of the present inquiry all this may be passed over. The other branch of a full discussion of our problem has to do with the reception of the newly invented commodity or process into wider and wider use—and this again is a social phenomenon not less complex than the other. It is this phenomenon of increasing extension and vogue, of widening propagation from person to person, that is directly of present concern for us—and in particular the individual person's attitude toward the new thing and the nature of the interest he takes in it.
It has recently been argued by a learned and acute investigator of economic origins that "invention is the mother of necessity," and not the child.[45] Such a complete reversal of all our ordinary thought about the matter seems at first sheer paradox. What, one may ask, can ever suggest an invention and what can give it welcome and currency but an existing need—which, if it happens to be for the time being latent and unconscious, needs only the presentation of its appropriate means of satisfaction to "arouse" and "awaken" it fully into action? But this paradox as to invention is at all events not more paradoxical than the view as to the reception of new commodities and the rise of new desires that has been above suggested. What it appears to imply is in principle identical with what has seemed, from our consideration of the other aspect of the general situation, to be the simple empirical fact; neither the existence of the new commodity nor our interest in it when it is presented admits of explanation as an effect on each particular occasion of a preëxisting unsatisfied desire for it. What both sides of the problem bring to view is a certain original bent or constitutive character of human nature—a predisposition, an élan vital perhaps, which we must recognize as nothing less than perfectly general and comprehensive—finding expression in inventive effort and likewise in the readiness with which the individual meets a new commodity halfway and gives it opportunity to become for him, if it can, a new necessity and the source of a new type of satisfaction.
From the point of view of "logic," as William James might have said, such a version of psychological fact may seem essentially self-contradictory. Unless, it may be argued, a novelty when presented excites some manner of desire for itself in the beholder, the beholder will make no effort towards it and thus take no step away from his existing system of life to a new system in which a new desire and a new commodity shall have a place. So much would seem clear enough but the question immediately follows: How can a thing that is new arouse desire? In so far as it is new it must ex vi termini be unknown and wanting definition in terms of remembered past experiences; and how can a thing unknown make that connection with the present character of the individual which must be deemed necessary to the arousal of desire in him? A new thing would seem, then, from this point of view, to be able to arouse desire only in so far as it is able to conceal or subordinate its aspects of novelty and appear as known and well-accredited—either this or there must be in the individual some definite instinctive mechanism ready to be set in action by the thing's presentment. And on neither of these suppositions can having to do with the new thing effect any fundamental or radical difference in the individual—it can serve at most only to "bring out" what was already "there" in him in a "latent" or "implicit" status. Whatever new developments of power or desire may be attained and organized into the individual's character through his commerce with the novelty must be new in only a superficial sense—they will be new only as occurrences, only as the striking of the hour by the clock and the resulting abrasion of the bell and hammer are new events. But the clock was made to strike; it is the nature of metal to wear away and likewise these changes in the individual are in deeper truth not new at all but only a disclosure of the agent's character, a further fulfilment along preëstablished and unalterable lines which all along was making headway in the agent's earlier quests and efforts and attainments.
There is a sense, no doubt, in which some such version of the facts as this is unanswerable, but controversial advantage is paid for, here as elsewhere in the logic of absolute idealism, at the cost of tangible meaning and practical importance. Just what does the contention come to? Let us say, for example, that one has learned to use a typewriter. What has happened is like an illiterate person's learning to read and write. Correspondence with one's friends begins to take on new meaning and to acquire new value; one begins to find a new pleasure and stimulation taking the place of the ineffectual drivings of an uneasy conscience. All this, let us say, has come from the moderate outlay for a superior mechanical instrument. And now let it be granted that it would not have come if the fortunate individual had not been "what he was." If it has come it is because the individual and the rest of the world were "of such a sort" that the revival and new growth of interest could take its rise with the provision of the new instrumentality. But what, precisely, does such a statement mean? What sort of verification does it admit of? What fruitful insight into the concrete facts of the case does it convey? Of what sort, prior to the event, does it show the individual to have been?
The truth is, of course, that he was of no sort, then and there and with reference to the purchase—he was of no sort decisively. He was neither purchaser nor rejector. He was neither a convinced "typist" nor piously confirmed in his predilection for writing "by hand." He was neither wholly weary of his correspondence nor fully cognizant of the importance of intercourse with his friends for his soul's good. He may have been dissatisfied and rebellious or he may have been comfortably persuaded that letter-writing, though an irksome labor, was even at that sufficiently worth while. The most that can be said is simply that he must have been willing and desirous to try the experiment for the sake of any good, imaginable or beyond present imagination, that might come of it. But being of "such a sort" as this could not prejudge the issue—although, undoubtedly, in willingness to raise an issue there lies always the possibility of change. All the plausibility of the dogma we are here considering comes from its hasty inclusion of this general attitude of constructively experimental inquiry and effort, this essential character of creative intelligence, as one among the concrete interests which constitute and define our particular problems in their inception. To say ex post facto that the individual must have been "of such a sort" as to do what he has in fact done is a purely verbal comment which, whatever may be its uses, can assuredly be of no use whatever in suggesting either solution or method for the next situation to arise. It may be comfortably reassuring afterwards, but it is an empty oracle beforehand.
§ 6. If then "logic" is unable to express the nature of our forward looking interest in the unexperienced and unpredictable, perhaps the empirical fact will speak for itself. We call things new; we recognize their novelty and their novelty excites our interest. But just as we are sometimes told that we can only know the new in terms of its resemblances to what we have known before, so it may be held that in the end we can desire it only on the like condition. Are we, then, to conclude that the seeming novelty of things new is an illusion, or shall we hold, on the contrary, that novelty need not be explained away and that a spontaneous constructive interest stands more or less constantly ready in us to go out to meet it and possess it?
Unquestionably, let us say the latter. Any new commodity will, of course, resemble in part or in a general way some old one. It is said that bath-tubs are sometimes used in "model tenements" as coal-bins. Old uses persist unchanged in the presence of new possibilities. But in general new possibilities invite interest and effort because our experimental and constructive bent contrives on the whole to make head against habituation and routine. We recognize the new as new. And if it be contended that novelty in its own right cannot be a ground of interest, that novelty must first get restatement as the old with certain "accidents" externally adhering, the answer is that the "accidents" interest us nevertheless. They may prove their right to stand as the very essence of some new "kind" that one may wish to let take form and character for him. Instead of the chips and shavings, they are in fact the raw material of the logical process. For if we can know the new as new, if we can know the "accident" as accidental in a commodity before us, the fact betrays an incipient interest in the quality or aspect that its novelty or contingency at least does not thwart. And is this quite all? Will it be disputed that a relation of a quality or feature to ourselves which we can know, name, and recognize—like "novelty"—must be known, as anything else is known, through an interest of which it is the appropriate terminus?[46]
And there is no difficulty in pointing to instances in which the character of novelty seems fundamental. Consider, for example, the interest one feels in spending a day with a friend or in making a new acquaintance or, say, in entering on the cares of parenthood. Or again, take the impulse toward research, artistic creation, or artistic study and appreciation. Or again, take the interest in topography and exploration. That there is in such phenomena as these a certain essentially and irreducibly forward look, a certain residual freedom of our interest and effort from dependence on the detail of prior experience down to date, probably few persons without ulterior philosophical prepossessions will dispute. If we call these phenomena instinctive we are using the term in a far more loose and general sense than it seems to have in the best usage of animal psychology. If we call them attitudes or dispositions, such a term has at least the negative merit of setting them apart from the class of instinctive acts, but it may carry with it a connotation of fixity and unconsciousness that after all surrenders the essential distinction. It will suffice to look at a single one of these instances.