3. The judgment of energy-equivalence, then, defines the inhibiting
economic aspect of the means, and moreover defines it for the means as
subdivided and set apart for a schedule of uses if this was the form of
the past adjustments to which reference is made. The problem of the
third stage of the process is that of "bringing subject and predicate
together," as we have elsewhere expressed it--that is, of determining,
in the light of the economic character of the means as just ascertained,
what measure of satisfaction, if any, may be accorded to the new and as
yet undefined desire. The new disposition of the means, if one is to be
made, must bring to the "energetic" self a degree of furtherance and
development which shall be sensibly as great as would come from the
established method of consumption. The means, as economic, are means to
the conservation of the old adjustment, and any new disposal of them or
of any portion of them for a full or partial execution of the new
purpose must make out at least as good a case. It must appear that the
new disposition is not only physically possible, but also economically
necessary in the light of the same principle of expansion of the self as
sanctioned the disposition now in force. It must make the self in some
way more efficient--whether more strong and symmetrical in body, more
skilled in work, more clear of brain, or more efficient in whatever
other concrete way may be desired.
Psychologically the sanction of any course of action which is taken as
evidence of conformity to the general rule thus inadequately stated is
the more or less strong sense of "relaxation" of attentive strain which
comes with the shift of attention, in the final survey, from means to
end. We may accordingly, for the sake of greater definiteness, restate
in the following terms the process which has just been sketched: The
ends in conflict at the outset are ends which do not sensibly bear upon
each other through their dependence upon a common fund of psychical
capacities or energies. They are related in the agent's experience
solely through their dependence upon a common stock of physical means,
and they do not therefore admit of adjustment through the ethical type
of process. The economic process consists essentially of a revival in
imagination of the experiences accompanying the former disposition of
the means and a re-enforcement by these of the means in their adherence
to that former and still recognized disposition. If an adapted form of
the new end can be imagined which will mediate a like experience of
relaxation when the attention shifts from the means, thus emotionally
re-enforced in their economic status, to the end as thus conceived, the
means will be recognized as economically redisposable. Thus the method
of valuation of the means makes possible, through appeal to the
sensibly invariable experience of relaxation or assurance in the outcome
of judgment, a co-ordination of disparate ends which the ethical method
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