ndirectly affected in some way by
every resolve concluded and every action embarked upon. If one moves a
certain way along a certain line he can never return to the
starting-point and set out unchanged along any other. If one does one
thing one cannot do another. And when the sufficient reasons for this
mutual exclusion lie in the structure and organization of the human mind
and body our deliberation as between the two alternatives, our
constructive comparison of them remains upon the ethical plane.

If one does one thing one cannot do another. If we substitute the
well-worn saying "one cannot eat his cake and have it" we indicate the
economic plane of constructive comparison with all needful clearness.

This is in fact the situation that has been already under discussion at
such length above and the economic quality of which we are just now in
quest arises from neither more nor less than the fact of our dependence
in the working out of our personal problems upon limited external
resources. The eventual solution sought under these circumstances
remains ethical as before. But to reach it, it is necessary to bring
into consideration not only such other interests and ends as the
psycho-physical structure of human nature and the laws of
character-development show to be involved, but a still wider range of
interests less intimately or "internally" related to the focal interest
of the occasion but imperatively requiring to be heard. If my
acquisition of a phonograph turns upon the direct psychological bearing
of the new interest upon my other interests, its probable effects
whether good or bad upon my musical tastes and the diplomatic
complications with my neighbors in which the possession of the
instrument may involve me, the problem of its purchase remains clearly
in the ethical phase. But when I count the cost in terms of sacrifices
which the purchase price makes necessary, from literature down to food
and fuel, and must draw this whole range of fact also into the
adjustment if I can, the economic phase is reached. In principle two
entire and very concrete schemes of life now stand opposed. Just _what_
concrete sacrifices I shall make I do not know--this, in fact, is one
way of stating my problem. Nor, conversely, do I know just what I shall
be able to make the phonograph worth to me. It is my task to come to a
conclusion in the case that shall be explicit and clear enough to enable
me to judge in _the event_ whether my e