CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS OF ECONOMICS 9 



characters. Adaptation is likewise twofold, subjective and 

 objective, according as the change influencing fitness for survival 

 takes place in the living creature or in its environment. Both 

 modes of adaptation are related to scarcity, the subjective mode 

 enabling the individual to excel his competitors in securing and 

 utilizing the particular goods available; the objective mode concern- 

 ing the change in the environment itself, by natural means at first, 

 then later by artificial agencies. 



Economic gratifications. Now let us direct our attention to the 

 conscious human stage of developing thought. Among the varying 

 states or processes of mind and feeling, men distinguish some as good, 

 others as indifferent or as evil. The good became linked by experi- 

 ence and training with certain kinds of activity or with certain con- 

 ditions of the objective world. In the broad sense any good psychic 

 state or process is a gratification, and any objective condition of 

 it is " a good." 



The scarce goods evidently are not all the goods necessary to life, 

 and yet from the beginning of evolution the struggles, the appetites, 

 and the interests center about scarce things. The superfluous things 

 are not in dispute; they are taken for granted. Survival is favored 

 by the concentration of all available energies at the strategic points 

 where the real rivalry lies. Attention becomes intense only when 

 focused upon a small area of thought; effort becomes effective only 

 when narrowed in its task. And thus, throughout the world of 

 animate life, the margin of scarcity bounds the field of economic 

 interest and of economic effort. A distinction, therefore, is to be 

 recognized between free goods, which exist in superfluity, and 

 economic goods, which are scarce in relation to wants. Correspond- 

 ingly there is a distinction between free gratifications and economic 

 gratifications, but the word " gratification " is generally used in the 

 latter and narrower sense. The quality of arousing gratification is 

 not attributed prodigally to all goods ; it is not generally thought of 

 as arising merely from the physiological action of free and super- 

 fluous goods; it is the psychological effect credited only to the 

 relatively scarce goods. 



As gratification is the subjective aspect of the relation of man 

 to goods, so utility is the impersonal aspect, being the beneficial 

 effect of things, whether felt and recognized or not. The relations 

 of utility and value need further study. The paradoxes are forever 

 recurring, of intense desire, of strongly felt dependence on things 

 far from vital, and of heedless disregard of things whose loss would 

 be fatal. Gratification and gratitude are closely connected in 

 thought and in life. The relations of man with nature are ruled 

 by the principle of centering effort, interest, and appreciation, upon 

 the scarce things. Relations of exchange are ruled by the principle 



