So likewise is it as truly impossible,
for one intellectually and morally capable of appreciating problems of a
more advanced and complex sort, to exploit the physical properties thus
discovered until ethical determination of the end and economic
determination of the means have been completed.[108]
There are, then, we conclude, cases in which physical determination of
the means is by itself not a sufficient preparation for conduct--in
which there are ethical and economic problems which delay the
application of the physical means to the end to which they may be
physically adapted. Indeed, so much as this may well appear as
sufficiently obvious without extended illustration. Everyone knows that
it is nearly always necessary, in undertaking any work in which material
things are used as means, to count the cost; and everyone knows likewise
that not every end that is in any way attractive and within one's reach
may without more ado be taken as an object of settled desire and effort.
It is indeed needless to elaborate these commonplaces in the sense in
which they are commonly understood. However, such is not our present
purpose. Our purpose is the more specific one of showing that the
meaning of Objectivity must be widened so as to include (1) the
"universe" of ends in their ethical aspect and (2) the economic aspect
of the means of action, as well as (3) the physical aspect to which the
character of Objectivity is commonly restricted. We shall maintain that
these are parts or phases of a complete conception of Reality, and that
of them, consequently, Objectivity must be predicated for every
essential reason connoted by such characterization of the world of
things "external" to the senses. It has been with this conclusion in
mind, then, that we have sought to emphasize the frequent serious
inadequacy, for practical purposes, of the merely physical determination
of the means in one's environment.
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