10 ECONOMICS 



of giving scarce goods only in return for scarce goods, measuring the 

 equivalent more or less accurately in accordance with the gratifica- 

 tion expected; that is, with the felt and recognized dependence of 

 the want upon a particular supply. 



It is to be feared that after all the able recent contributions to the 

 psychological economics, the terminology still bears the marks of an 

 origin in a narrower utilitarian psychology, now much disputed. 

 Fuller studies should clarify this important subject. Economists 

 meantime, however, may (despite the confusion of terms) recognize 

 that, as bearing on the analysis of value, the important factor is 

 gratification expected rather than realized, gratification in acting 

 quite as much as in being acted upon, gratification in the totality of 

 sentiments connected with experience rather than in an absolutely 

 isolated pleasure ; that, in short, gratification is an efficient 

 element in the valuation process only in so far as it is expressed 

 in volition. 



Psychic income next must be recognized as a conception. The 

 various gratifications form a series of psychic conditions which 

 constitute the motives of economic activity. This subjective form 

 of income logically precedes all objective forms of income, for the 

 importance attributed to any objective goods is but the reflection of 

 the gratification which instinct, memory, and reason tell men those 

 goods are capable of affording. 



Consumption goods are the favorable and scarce things about 

 men just being converted into psychic income. These are the 

 immediate points of contact of wants with environment. If men 

 lived their economic life in the immediate present, consumption 

 goods would be the only objects to which utility would be attributed. 

 In a philosophy of goods these present the simplest and most under- 

 standable problem of value. The animal economy, with rare excep- 

 tions, is concerned only with this phase of value. The child and the 

 savage recognize little dependence on any goods but these. Despite 

 the growing complexity of the value problem, this phase of it re- 

 mains separable in thought from other phases, and both chrono- 

 logically and logically is the primary objective aspect. The problem 

 of value in its simplest form is that of the comparison of these 

 immediate objective conditions to gratification. 



Usufruct . - - It is a slight step to the conception of usufruct. 

 The material things affording gratification are not all perishable and 

 destroyed, but are giving off or affording scarce uses, while little, if 

 any, injured by use. Ever since men began to think of economic 

 questions, this temporary use, apart from the durable bearer of the 

 use, has been recognized more or less vaguely as one of the essential 

 aspects of the value problem. Usufruct always implies a more or 

 less durable agent which is affording a psychic product. The 



