Sec. 16. There is another suggestion of ethical and economic continuity that may be briefly indicated. If our view of this relation is correct, a problem, by becoming economic, may lose something in dramatic interest and grandiosity but gains in precision and complexity. In the economic phase an issue becomes sensibly crucial. It is in this phase that are chiefly developed those qualities of clear-headedness, temperateness of thought and action, and well-founded self-reliance that are the foundation of all genuine personal morality and social effectiveness. And one may question therefore the ethical consequences of such measures as old age, sickness, and industrial accident insurance or insurance against unemployment. In proportion as these measures are effective they amount to a constant virtual addition to the individual's income from year to year without corresponding effort and forethought on his part. They may accordingly be condemned as systematic pauperization--the "endowment of the unfit." There is evidently a fundamental problem here at issue, apart from all administrative difficulties. Clearly this type of criticism assumes a permanent incapacity in "human nature" or in most actual beings therewith endowed, to recognize as seriously important other interests than those upon which hinge physical life and death. The ordinary man, it is believed, is held back from moral Quixotism as from material extravagance by the fear of starvation alone; and it is assumed that there are no other interests in the "normal" man that can or ever will be so wholesomely effective to these ends. And two remarks in answer appear not without a measure of pertinence. First, if what is alleged be true (and there is evidence in Malthus' _Essay_ and elsewhere to support it) it seems less a proof of original sin and "inperfectibility" than a reproach to a social order whose collective tenor and institutions leave the mass untouched and unawakened above the level of animal reproduction and whose inequalities of opportunity prevent awakened life from growing strong. And second, the democratic society of the future, if it exempts the individual in part or wholly from the dread of premature physical extinction must leave him on higher levels of interest similarly dependent for success or failure upon his ultimate personal discretion. And is it inconceivable that on higher levels there should ever genuinely be such a persisting type of issue for the multitude of men?[58]