Life in a modern industrial community, or in other words life under
the pecuniary culture, acts by a process of selection to develop and
conserve a certain range of aptitudes and propensities. The present
tendency of this selective process is not simply a reversion to a given,
immutable ethnic type. It tends rather to a modification of human nature
differing in some respects from any of the types or variants transmitted
out of the past. The objective point of the evolution is not a single
one. The temperament which the evolution acts to establish as normal
differs from any one of the archaic variants of human nature in its
greater stability of aim--greater singleness of purpose and greater
persistence in effort. So far as concerns economic theory, the objective
point of the selective process is on the whole single to this extent;
although there are minor tendencies of considerable importance diverging
from this line of development. But apart from this general trend the
line of development is not single. As concerns economic theory, the
development in other respects runs on two divergent lines. So far
as regards the selective conservation of capacities or aptitudes
in individuals, these two lines may be called the pecuniary and the
industrial. As regards the conservation of propensities, spiritual
attitude, or animus, the two may be called the invidious or
self-regarding and the non-invidious or economical. As regards the
intellectual or cognitive bent of the two directions of growth, the
former may be characterized as the personal standpoint, of conation,
qualitative relation, status, or worth; the latter as the impersonal
standpoint, of sequence, quantitative relation, mechanical efficiency,
or use.
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