and irresponsibility of
bachelorhood endurable? Shall we say that in changes like these we have
to do simply with the quantitative increase of some quality, present in
small measure in the earlier stages and in larger measure in the later?
Or shall we evade the issue with the general admission that _of course_,
as every schoolboy knows, there are in this world many differences of
degree that somehow "amount to differences of kind"? As a matter of fact
what has happened in every case like these is an actual change of
standard, a new construction in the growing system of one's norms of
value and behavior. Provisionally, though hopefully, a step has been
taken--a real event in personal and in social history has been given
place and date. From some source beyond the scope and nature of the
earlier function a suggestion or an impulsion has come by which the
agent has endeavored to move forward. The change wrought is a
transcendence of the earlier level of experience and valuation, not a
widening and clarification of vision on that level. And the standards
which govern on the new level serve not so much to condemn the old as to
seal its consignment to disuse and oblivion. Least of all can a judgment
or appraisal of the old from the standpoint of the new be taken for a
transcript of the motives which led to the transition.

We must confine ourselves more closely, however, to the sphere of
material goods and their uses. And in this sphere objection to the view
proposed will run in some such terms as the following: Take our
ancestors, for example, and their household arrangements to which
invidious reference has been made: why should we suppose that their
seeming contentment was anything more (or less) than a dignified
composure in which we might well imitate them--an attitude in no way
precluding a definite sense of specific discomforts and embarrassments
and a distinct determination to be rid of them as soon as might be? And,
in fact, if they were satisfied with what they had why did they receive
the new when it was offered? If, on the other hand, they were not
satisfied, how is the fact intelligible except upon the assumption that
they had distinct and definite wants not yet supplied, and were wishing
(but patiently) for conveniences and comforts of a sort not yet
existent. And this latter hypothesis, it will be urged, is precisely
what the foregoing argument has sought to discredit as an account of the
moving springs in the