ence and behavior the same interest in novelty that is so
manifest in other departments of life, and the same attainment of new
self-validating levels of power and interest, through the acquisition
and exploitation of the novel. In our economic experience, no more than
elsewhere, is satisfaction an ultimate and self-explanatory term.
Satisfaction carries with it always a reference to the level of power
and interest that makes it possible and on which it must be measured. To
seek satisfaction for its own sake or to hinge one's interest in science
or art upon their ability to serve the palpable needs of the present
moment--these, together, make up the meaning of what is called
Utilitarianism. And Utilitarianism in this sense (which is far less what
Mill meant by the term than a tradition he could never, with all his
striving, quite get free of), this type of Utilitarianism spells
routine. It is the surrender of initiative and control, in the quest for
ends in life, for a philistine pleased acceptance of the ends that
Nature, assisted by the advertisement-writers, sets before us. But this
type of Utilitarianism is less frequent in actual occurrence than its
vogue in popular literature and elsewhere may appear to indicate. As a
matter of fact, we more often look to satisfaction, not as an end of
effort or a condition to be preserved, but as the evidence that an
experimental venture has been justified in its event. And this is a
widely different matter, for in this there is no inherent implication of
a habit-bound or egoistic narrowness of interest in the conceiving or
the launching of the venture.

The economic interest, as a function of intelligence, finds its proper
expression in a valuation set upon one thing in terms of another--a
valuation that is either a step in a settled plan of spending and
consumption or marks the passing of an old plan and our embarkation on a
new. From such a view it must follow that the economic betterment of an
individual or a society can consist neither in the accumulation of
material wealth alone nor in a more diversified technical knowledge and
skill. For the individual or for a collectivist state there must be
added to these things alertness and imagination in the personal quest
and discovery of values and a broad and critical intelligence in making
the actual trial of them. Without a commensurate gain in these qualities
it will avail little to make technical training and industrial
opport