test against _a priori_ and wholesale condemnation of such
legislation as merely irresponsibly "ethical" and "unscientific"? Is it
not, rather, economically experimental and constructive, amounting in
substance to a simple insistence that henceforth the hiring and paying
of labor shall express a wider range of social interests--shall
signalize a more clearly self-validating level of comprehension, on the
part of employers and consumers, of the social significance of industry
than the old? And may we not protest also, as a matter of sheer logic,
against carrying over a _producer's_ distinction of accounting between
"labor" cost and "welfare" cost into the _consumer's_ valuation of the
article? How and to what end shall a distinction be drawn between _his_
"esteem" for the trimmed and isolated article and _his_ esteem for the
men who made it--which, taken together, dispose him to pay a certain
undivided price for it?

For the egoism of men is no fixed and unalterable fact. Taking it as a
postulate, a mathematical theory of market phenomena may be erected upon
it, but such a postulate is purely formal, taking no note of the reasons
which at any given time lie behind the individuals' "demand" or "supply
schedules." It amounts simply to an assumption that these schedules will
not change during the lapse of time contemplated in the problem in hand.
And it therefore cannot serve as the basis for a social science. As an
actual social phenomenon egoism is merely a disclosure of a certain
present narrowness and inertness in the nature of the individual which
may or may not be definitive for him. It is precisely on a par with
anemia, dyspepsia or fatigue, or any other like unhappy fact of personal
biography.

Sec. 16. There is another suggestion of ethical and economic continuity
that may be briefly indicated. If our view of this relation is correct,
a problem, by becoming economic, may lose something in dramatic interest
and grandiosity but gains in precision and complexity. In the economic
phase an issue becomes sensibly crucial. It is in this phase that are
chiefly developed those qualities of clear-headedness, temperateness of
thought and action, and well-founded self-reliance that are the
foundation of all genuine personal morality and social effectiveness.
And one may question therefore the ethical consequences of such measures
as old age, sickness, and industrial accident insurance or insurance
against unemployment. In pro