ere can be an interest of this seemingly
self-contradictory type in human nature, the answer can only be that we
must take the facts as we find them. Is such a conception inherently
more difficult than the view that all ramifications and developments of
human interest are concretely predetermined and implicit _a priori_? To
ignore or deny palpable fact because it eludes the reach of a current
type of conceptual analysis is to part company with both science and
philosophy. We are in fact here dealing with the essential mark and
trait of what is called self-conscious process. If there are ultimates
and indefinables in this world of ours, self-consciousness may as fairly
claim the dignity or avow the discredit as any other of the list.

Sec. 7. Does our interest in economic goods on occasion exhibit the trait
of which we are here speaking? Precisely this is our present contention.
And yet it seems not too much to say that virtually all economic theory,
whether the classical or the present dominant type that has drawn its
terminology and working concepts from the ostensible psychology of the
Austrian School, is founded upon the contradictory assumption. The
economic interest, our desire and esteem for solid and matter-of-fact
things like market commodities and standardized market services, has
been conceived as nothing visionary and speculative, as no peering into
the infinite or outreaching of an inexpressible discontent, but an
intelligent, clear-eyed grasping and holding of known satisfactions for
measured and acknowledged desires. Art and religion, friendship and
love, sport and adventure, morality and legislation, these all may be
fields for the free play and constructive experimentation of human
faculty, but in our economic efforts and relations we are supposed to
tread the solid ground of fact. Business is business. Waste not, want
not. First a living, then (perhaps) a "good life."[48] And we are
assured one need not recoil from the hard logic of such maxims, for they
do not dispute the existence of spacious (and well-shaded) suburban
regions fringing the busy areas of industry and commerce.

Such is the assumption. We have said that it precludes the admission of
speculation as an economic factor. Speculation for economic theory is a
purely commercial phenomenon, a hazarding of capital on the supposition
that desires will be found ready and waiting for the commodity
produced--with a sufficient offering of purchasing