of most sorts for the ordinary person,
regular supplies of the household staples--these will suffice. This is
the province within which a hedonistic account of the economic motive
holds good with a cogency that anti-hedonistic criticism has not been
able to dissolve. Our outlays for such things as these may as a rule be
held in their due and proper relation to each other--at all events in
their established or "normal" relation--simply by recalling at critical
times our relative marginal likes and dislikes for them. That these
likes and dislikes are not self-explanatory, that they are concrete
expectations and not abstract affective elements, does not seem greatly
to matter where the issue lies between maintaining or renouncing an
existing schedule of consumption. And in this same classification belong
also industrial and commercial expenditures of a similarly routine sort.
Even where the scale of operations is being enlarged, expenditures for
machines, fuel, raw materials, and labor may have been so carefully
planned in advance with reference to the desired increase of output or
pecuniary profit that no special problem of motivation attaches
directly to them. And these outlays are so important in industry and
commerce that the impression comes easily to prevail that all business
undertaking, and then all consumption of finished goods, fall under the
simple hedonistic type.

But if we keep to the plane of final consumption, there appears a second
sort of situation. Our interest in the commodity before us may be due to
a suggestion of some sort that prompts us to take a step beyond the
limits that our present formed desires mark out. The suggestion may be
given by adroit advertising, by fashion, by the habits of another class
to which one may aspire or by a person to whom one may look as guide,
philosopher, and friend. An authority of one sort or another invites or
constrains us to take the merits of the article on trust. Actual trial
and use may show, not so much that it can minister to a latent desire as
that we have been able through its use to form a habit that constitutes
a settled need.

And, finally, in the third place, there is a more spontaneous and
intrinsically personal type of interest which is very largely
independent of suggestion or authority. A thing of beauty, a new author,
a new acquaintance, a new sport or game, a new convenience or mechanical
device may challenge one's curiosity and powers of appreci