something outside itself. This dependence may be of various kinds and degrees. The organism may depend upon something outside itself for its life, well-being, or comfort, or merely for its pleasure, convenience, or amusement. An unsatisfied desire is a symptom of a lack, in the time and place where the desire is felt, of something upon which the organism depends. The complete satisfaction or satiation of a desire is a symptom of the sufficient abundance, but not superabundance, of the object of the desire. When the object is too abundant it may become an object not of desire but of repugnance, even though in smaller quantities the same thing would be an object of strong desire. The timber which once stood on the farmer's land and had to be cleared away before he could grow crops will serve as an example of superabundance. Timber in almost any modern community, where it is needed for fuel and for building purposes, will serve as an example of scarcity.

The complete satisfaction of all desires whatsoever, if such a condition can be imagined, would be a symptom of the sufficient abundance of everything upon which the organism depended in any way or in any degree. Such a condition would be one of complete adaptation, a complete harmony between the organism and its material environment.

The two roads to harmony. In the direction of that state of harmony two roads lie open-for a little way at least. No one knows how far they lead. One road is known in the Orient as the Way of Nirvana, or emancipation from craving. By the eradication of all craving from our minds, if that could be accomplished, we should certainly reach a state wherein there would be no dependence upon, or scarcity of, things outside ourselves. We know that we can travel this road for a little way; that is, we can discipline ourselves in the virtues of the simple life, and we can learn to like certain things whereof nature is bounteous, such as air, sunlight, and the clouds, the green of the fields and the blue of the sky, and we can learn to think less of those things whereof nature is niggardly in her supply, such as objects of ostentatious display, luxury, and

pride. This would reduce somewhat our feeling of dependence upon objects outside ourselves, or at least it would reduce our sense of irritation at the everlasting scarcity of the things upon which our happiness seems now to depend. But that we can eradicate all desire scarcely seems possible.

The way of labor. The other road is the way of labor. They who follow this road, instead of eradicating or repressing their desires, labor to increase the abundance of whatever objects they happen, for any reason, to desire, provided, of course, nature has not already supplied them in sufficient abundance when and where they are desired. They also labor to decrease the supply of whatever objects happen, for any reason, to arouse their repugnance. We occidentals generally prefer the way of labor, and we are very certain that we can travel it for a little way. Perhaps the oriental mind, wearying of the everlasting struggle of population against scarcity and not being gifted with our mechanical ingenuity, despaired of making much progress in this direction and turned to Nirvana as the more hopeful alternative. We occidentals have not yet begun to suspect that there is any limit to our possible progress in production, therefore we are not yet ready to forsake it for the road to Nirvana. The Occident, with its mechanical ingenuity and its love of strenuous action, finds it easier to increase its production than to control its desires or to emancipate itself from craving.

The restless effort of body and mind to produce everything we desire is the dominant fact in the economic life of Western nations. It also dominates, though in less degree, the economic life of the Eastern world. The philosophic doctrine of Nirvana is little more than a protest against it. The pursuit of the means of satisfying desire is the all but universal occupation. The great mass of people everywhere are driven by their unsatisfied desires. These are the great motive forces in all human activity. A completely satisfied or satiated desire ceases to be a motive force, ceases to cause men to act. A state of universal and complete satisfaction might be a blissful state, but it would not be

an active state unless, indeed, the chief desire were for action itself. Unless that were the chief desire there would not be much going on.

Human activity determined by desire. Not only must we look for the springs of human action in the unsatisfied desires of men, but we must also expect to find that the direction of men's activities is determined by the character of their desires and that the intensity of their action is determined by the degree of unsatisfaction in which the desires are found. The expression "degree of unsatisfaction" is a more accurate way of saying what is sometimes meant by the "intensity of desire." When a desire is completely satisfied it has no intensity; it ceases to exist as a motive force. When it falls short of complete satisfaction it has some degree of intensity, and the further it falls short the more intense it becomes. Therefore it is important that we understand the nature of our desires, especially those which are normally unsatisfied. Before we can get very far in the study of economic activities we must understand what it is all about. It is concerned with the satisfaction of those desires which are normally unsatisfied, which can be satisfied only through some conscious effort. Literally, that is what it is all about.

To sum up, we find that desire (that is, unsatisfied desire) is, first, a symptom of the fact that something is lacking in the adjustment of man to nature, or that something needs improving in the relation of man to his surroundings; second, it furnishes a motive for action in overcoming the lack or effecting the improvement. The fact that desires are satiable indicates that the imperfect adjustment of man to nature may be improved and perfected by increasing the supply of the thing desired. The fact that desires are self-centered makes it pretty certain that our activities will be a little more strenuous in the satisfaction of our own desires and the desires of those who are, in some sense, "near" to us, than in the satisfaction of the desires of other beings. These facts give direction and character to most of our economic activities.

CHAPTER III

ECONOMIC GOODS

Objects of repugnance (Nuisances or f Harmful to man

"Illth ")

MATERIÁL

Useful but superabundant

OBJECTS

Objects of indifference {

Useless but not harmful

Useful but sufficient (free goods)

Objects of desire (Economic Goods, or Wealth): Useful and scarce

The physical objects with which we are surrounded may be grouped under three classes according as our attitude toward them is one of repugnance, indifference, or desire. In other words, they are either objects of repugnance, objects of indifference, or objects of desire.

Objects of repugnance. Objects of repugnance include not only those few things which are always and everywhere thought to be harmful but also a much larger number of things which are, under certain circumstances, useful but, under other circumstances, become harmful because of their superabundance. Nothing, for example, could be more useful than water, but too much water, especially in our cellars or in swampy land, becomes an object of active repugnance. We work as hard to get rid of the surplus when there is too much as we do to get a larger supply when there is not enough. Many of the weeds in the farmer's fields have some uses, but they are so abundant as to interfere with the farmer's crops and are therefore nuisances.

Free goods. There are not many things that are always and everywhere objects of indifference or that are never either useful or harmful. There are a good many things that are objects of indifference merely because they are, in the circumstances of time and place, amply sufficient for all our needs, but not so

abundant as to do us any harm. Air is the most familiar example of this kind of sufficiency. In many places there is enough water, but not so much as to cause us any annoyance. Wherever this kind of sufficiency is found we are found to be indifferent toward the sufficient object. There is no good reason why we should pay much attention to things of this class. We are interested in improving our condition. If a given thing is sufficient for all our needs and not so abundant as to bother us in any way, our condition with respect to that thing cannot be improved. It would be economical of our time and strength to reserve them for improving conditions that need improving. Our indifference toward things that need no improving is, therefore, a means of economizing our time and strength and enables us to apply ourselves to those things that are either too abundant or not abundant enough for our highest well-being.

Economic goods. While we must obviously give a good deal of attention to objects of repugnance and try to thin them out, or reduce their supply, our chief concern nowadays is with objects of desire, or objects of which we desire more than we have. Those peoples who have gained very little control over nature and who are therefore living under savage surroundings were much more concerned with objects of repugnance than we are. We are still, however, actively combating weeds, parasites, disease germs, etc., in spite of the fact that our chief activity is the pursuit of objects of desire rather than fighting objects of repugnance. The problem of getting more than we have of certain scarce things is the problem of income, of production, and, in a very large sense, of human adaptation.

What are economic goods? Before we can go very far in our study of income and expenditure, or of production and consumption, we must get a fairly clear idea as to the sort of things that make up income, or the sort of things that men try to produce. When it was stated in the first chapter that the necessity for economy arose out of the fact of scarcity, it might have been guessed at once that scarcity has a great deal to do with our concept of wealth and with our efforts to produce it.