which may be in large measure
diverted from the interests of older standing. And in the new system all
interests remaining over from the old will accordingly stand in a new
light and their objects will be valued, will be held important, for
reasons that will need fresh statement.[53]

In similar fashion it might be argued that the commodities or uses which
one sacrifices for the sake of a new venture are inevitably more than a
simple deduction that curtails one's schedule in a certain kind and
amount. Such a deduction or excision must leave the remaining lines of
the original complex hanging at loose ends. The catching-up of these
and their cooerdination with the new interest must in any event amount,
as has been contended, to a thoroughgoing reorganization. What must
really happen then, in the event of action, is in principle nothing less
than the disappearance of the whole from which the sacrificed uses are
dissevered. These latter, therefore, stand in the process of decision as
a symbol for the existing personal economy as a whole. The old order and
the new confront each other as an accepted view of fact and a plausible
hypothesis everywhere confront each other and the issue for the
individual is the practical issue of making the transition to a new
working level. To declare that the salient elements of the confronting
complexes are quantitatively equivalent is only to announce in symbolic
terms that the transition has been effected, the die cast.[54]

Sec. 13. The statement thus given has been purposely made, for many
transactions of the sort referred to, something of an over-statement. If
I contemplate purchasing a typewriter or a book on an unfamiliar but
inviting subject it may well seem somewhat extravagant to describe the
situation as an opposition between two schemes of life. Is the issue so
momentous; is the act so revolutionary? But the purpose of our
over-statement was simply to make clear the type of situation without
regard to the magnitudes involved. No novelty that carries one in any
respect beyond the range of existing habits can be wholly without its
collateral effects nor can its proximate and proper significance be
measured in advance. This is in principle as true of a relatively slight
innovation as of a considerable one. And our present conscious
exaggeration departs less widely from the truth than the alternative
usual preoccupation of economic theory with the logic of routine desire
and demand