the issue finally at stake in any economic
problem of constructive comparison, is an ethical issue. Two immediate
alternatives are before one--to expend a sum of money in some new and
interesting way, or to keep it devoted to the uses of one's established
plan. Upon the choice, one recognizes, hinge consequences of larger and
more comprehensive importance than the mere present enjoyment or
non-enjoyment of the new commodity.[55] And these "more important"
consequences _are_ important because there appears to lie in them the
possibility of a type of personal character divergent from the present
type and from any present point of view incommensurable with it.[56] The
ethical urgency of such a problem will impress one in the measure in
which one can see that such an issue really does depend upon his present
action and irretrievably depends. And we are able now to see what that
economic quality is that attaches to ethical problems at a certain stage
of their development and calls for a supplementary type of treatment.

Let us first consider certain types of juncture in conduct that will be
recognized at once as ethical and in which any economic aspect is
relatively inconspicuous. Temperance or intemperance, truth or
falsehood, idleness or industry, honesty or fraud, social justice or
class-interest--these will serve. What makes such problems as these
ethical is their demand for creative intelligence. In each, alternative
types of character or manners of life stand initially opposed. If the
concrete issue is really problematical, if there is no rule that one can
follow in the case with full assurance, constructive comparison, whether
covertly or openly, must come into play. How long, then, will a problem
of temperance or intemperance, idleness or industry, preserve its
obviously ethical character without admixture? Just so long, apparently,
as the modes of conduct that come into view as possible solutions are
considered and valued with regard to their _directly physiological and
psychological_ consequences alone. Any given sort of conduct, that is
to say, makes inevitably for the formation of certain habits of mind or
muscle, weakening, or precluding the formation of, certain others.
Attention is engrossed that is thereby not available elsewhere, time and
strength are expended, discriminations are dulled and sharpened,
sympathies and sensitivities are narrowed and broadened, every trait and
bent of character is directly or i