926 REPORT—1890. 
maintenance of the other sex and for that of the family; next arises the consump- 
tion of the wider associations arising beyond the family, of which there are many 
leyels—civic, national, and universal. Civilisations and individuals thus first 
differ in the different proportions of consumption upon each plane. 
To each of these planes of legitimate consumption there is, however, to be 
observed a corresponding negative plane. Thus to the normal or ideal scale of 
expenditure on individual maintenance we must contrast that on intemperance; 
to that on family, that on vice ; while to those of social well-being there are a no 
less distinct series of contrasts, widening in their social destructiveness as we 
descend. 
The diagram must not be left blank, however, as in fig. 1, but becomes 
capable of recording and contrasting the average type or tendency of consumption 
for any given period or person. Thus A BE may denote the consumption of a 
non-ascetic society or individual, which leaves only to higher planes what is not 
required—+.e., consumable on the lower—and CD Z the ideal of the ascetic, who 
limits every expenditure upon the lower planes in order to spend more upon the 
higher. Between these two there are, of course, innumerable gradations— 
Hellenic, Hebraic, Roman, Florentine, in fact, any and every society or 
individual having its characteristic curve at any given time. But it is each of 
these states of consumption that determines the nature of production; hence our 
‘National Gikonomie’ (or our contemporary economic theory, which is only a 
phase of national economy, and has, of course, no permanence) requires a 
preliminary comprehension of the state and ideals of consumption at the time 
under consideration. Here, then, also arises the connection of economics with 
morals, since each ascending plane of consumption is more species-regarding— 
z.e., more altruistic, more moral—than the one below it. The scheme of classifica- 
tion, founded as it is on the stages of biological evolution, has similar parallels to 
the stages of psychological evolution, which necessarily correspond, and thus a 
regular and detailed parallelism of interpretation for any historic fact or social 
process becomes possible. The aspects of this, biological or psychological, 
economic and ethical, may thus be kept as clearly apart as the respective 
specialists could desire, yet may also be superposed or compared at will. The 
evolution of the animal through the lower stages, and of man through the whole, 
is the biologist’s aspect of the subject; the corresponding evolution of mind the 
psychologist’s; the corresponding concrete social processes are the phenomena 
observed by the economist ; while the subjective aspect of these is criticised by 
the ethicist. The synthesis of these four aspects is, in fact, the ideal of the science 
of sociology. 
It is only necessary briefly here to note the corresponding negative possibilities 
of evolution in which the same four aspects become manifest. 
The sociological analysis and synthesis here sketched out may now pass from 
the abstract field to the concrete phenomena, with which the inquiry started, for 
we see that what the anthropologist and the archeologist, the art critic and the 
historian (who supply the materials to the four preceding schools of abstract 
study), are respectively occupied with is, in every case, a study of actual social 
life and its results upon all four planes, with their ascending and descending 
stages. In short, within the diagrammatic outlines of the preceding classification 
may now be reinterpretéd alike our facts of ancient or modern history, or the 
details of our own personal expenditure, and this to their remotest bearings, 
economic or ethical. We have, in fact, a common denominator by help of which 
to re-read at will Darwin or Tylor, Roscher or Gibbon, Lepsius or Ruskin— 
one might add even Zola or Dante. 
A base of intercommunication and co-operation between all these abstract and 
concrete specialists, and this especially as concerns the economist, is thus practi- 
cable. The possibility of their co-operation in the criticism of actual life, and in 
the task of social amelioration, also follows. 
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