of direct adjustment could not effect.[147]
The economic process thus presents on analysis the same factors as does
the ethical. On the subject side we have the means--which as economic
are problematic as to their reapplicability. On the predicate side we
have the suggested mode of reapplication in tension against conservative
ideals of application to established purposes. Just as it may be held
that the general ethical predicate is that of Right or Good--that is,
deserving of adoption into the system of one's ends--so the economic
predicate applied to the means as these come in the end to be defined is
the general concept Reappliable. And in general the distinction of the
types is not an ultimate one, for the more deliberately and rigorously
the method of economic valuation is pursued--in such a case, for
example, as that of the prospective emigrant--the stronger will be the
agent's sense of a genuinely ethical sanction as belonging to the
decision which is in the end worked out. The more certain and sincere,
therefore, will be the agent's judgment that the means must be
reapplied, for on the sense of sanction of which we speak rests the
explicit judgment that the purpose formed is expansive of the self.
From the analysis thus presented it must appear, therefore, that the
economic type of judgment is in our sense a constructive process. Its
function is to determine a particular commodity or portion of a stock of
some commodity in its economic character as _disposable_, and in
performing this function it presents a definite reality in the economic
order. Moreover, in thus defining the particular, recourse is had to
more or less distinctively namable economic standards which are in the
last resort symbols representing established habits of consumption in
the light of which the means, _prima facie_, seem not to be available
for any other purposes. These economic standards, like ethical standards
and the class concepts of science and our ordinary perceptual
experience, are, with all due respect to nominalism, constitutive of a
real world--a world which is real because it lends form and significance
to our knowledge of particulars as stimuli to conduct.
We have now before us sufficient reason for our thesis that the
valuation-process in both its forms is constructive of an order of
reality, and we have sufficiently explained the relation which the
economic order bears to the inclusive and logically prior order of
ethical objects and relations. We are now in a position to see that in
being thus constructive of reality (taking the conception in its proper
functional meaning) they are at the same time constructive of the self,
since the reality which they construct is in its functional aspect the
assemblage of means and conditions, of stimuli, in short, for the
development and expansion of the self. We shall bring this main division
of our study to a close with a series of remarks in explanation and
illustration of this view.
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