[105] See Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, p. 343, l. 2; p. 344, l. 27.
[106] 320 C f.
[107] Considerations of space as well as circumstances attending the immediate preparation of this discussion for the press have precluded any but the most general and casual reference to the recent literature of the subject. Much of this literature only imperfectly distinguishes the logical and psychological points of view, so that critical reference to it, unaccompanied by detailed restatement and analysis of the positions criticised, would be useless.
[108] In order to avoid complicating the problems, we have here employed the common notion that the physical world, physical object, and property may be taken for granted as possible adequate contents of judgment, and that the problem is only as to the objectivity of economic and ethical contents. Of course we may, in the end, come to believe that the "physical" object is itself an economic construct, in the large sense of "economic;" that is, an instrument of an effective or successful experience. Thus in terms of the illustration used above, in the attitude of entertaining in a general way the plan of building a house of some sort or other, one may have before him various building materials the ascertained qualities of which are, it may be, socially recognized as in a general way fitting them for such a use. There is doubtless so much of real foundation for the common notion here referred to. But along with the definition of the plan in ethical and economic judgment, along with the determination actually to build a house, and a house of a certain specific kind, must go further determination of the means in their physical aspects, a determination which all the while reacts into the process of determination of the end. See below, p. 246, note 3.
[109] In the moral life, as elsewhere, the distinction of deduction and induction is one of degree. There is but one type or method of inference, though some inferences may approach more closely than do others the limit of pure "subsumption."
[110] See III below.
[111] It is no part of the present view that the ends which enter into economic conflict are incapable of becoming organic and intrinsically interrelated members of the provisional system of life. On the contrary, the very essence of our contention is that adjustment established between two such conflicting ends in economic judgment is in itself ethical and a member of the provisional system of the individual's ends of life, and will stand as such, subject to modification through changes elsewhere in the system, so long as the economic conditions in view of which it was determined remained unchanged. The "mutual exclusiveness" of the ends in ethical deliberation is simply the correlate of a relative fixity in certain of the conditions of life. A man's command over the means of obtaining such things as books and fuel varies much and often suddenly in a society like ours from time to time; but, on the other hand, his physical condition, his intelligence, his powers of sympathy, and his spiritual capacity for social service commonly do not. Hence there can be and is a certain more or less definite and permanent comprehensive scheme of conduct morally obligatory upon him so far as the exercise of these latter faculties is concerned, but so far as his conduct depends upon the variable conditions mentioned, it cannot be prescribed in general terms, nor will any provisional ideal of moral selfhood admit any such prescriptions as integral elements into itself. The moral self is an ideal construct based upon these fixed conditions of life—conditions so fixed that the spiritual furtherance or deterioration likely to result from certain modes of conduct involving and affecting them can be estimated directly and with relative ease by the "ethical" method of judgment. Implied in such a construct is, of course, a reference to certain relatively permanent social and also physical conditions. In so far as society and physical nature, and for that matter the individual's own nature, are variable, these are the subjects of "scientific" or "factual" judgments incidental to the determination of problems by the "economic" method—problems, that is, for which no general answer, through reference to a more or less definite and stable working concept of the self, can be given. Thus our knowledge of the physical universe is largely, if not chiefly, incidental to and conditioned by our economic experience. Again, our economic judgments are in every case determinative of the self in situations in which, as presented by (perhaps even momentarily) variable conditions, physical, social, or personal, the ethical method is inapplicable. In a socialistic state, in which economic conditions might be more stable than in our present one, many problems in consumption which now are economic in one sense would be ethical because admitting of solution by reference to the type of self presupposed in the established state program of production and distribution. Even now it is not easy to specify an economic situation the solution of which is absolutely indifferent ethically. There is a possibility of intemperance even in so "æsthetic" an indulgence as Turkish rugs.
[112] Accordingly there can be no distinction of ends, some as ethical, others as economic, but from an ethical standpoint indifferent, and yet others as amenable neither to ethical nor to economic judgment. The type of situation and the corresponding mode of judgment employed determines whether an end shall be for the time being ethical, economic, or of neither sort conspicuously.
[113] The right of Prudence to rank among the virtues cannot, on our present view, be questioned. Economic judgment, though it must be valuation of means, is essentially choice of ends—and, as would appear, choice of a sort peculiarly difficult by reason of the usually slight intrinsic relation between the ends involved and also by reason of the absence of effective points of view for comparison. Culture, as Emerson remarks, "sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants." And again, "The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy.... [The true prudence] takes the laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good" (Essay on Prudence).
[114] Here again we purposely use inaccurate language. Strictly, the ends here spoken of as competing are such, we must say, only because they are as yet in a measure indeterminate, wanting in "clearness," and are not yet understood in their true economic character; likewise the means are wanting in that final shade or degree of physical and mechanical determinateness which they are presently to possess as means to a finally determinate economic end. Thus economic judgment, by which is to be understood determination of an end of action by the economic method and in accordance with economic principles, involves in general physical re-determination of the means. The means which at the outset of the present economic judgment-process appear as physically available indifferently for either of the tentative ends under consideration are only in a general way the same means for knowledge as they will be when the economic problem has been solved. They are, so far as now determinate, the outcome of former physical judgment-processes incidental to the definition of economic ends in former situations like the present.