Generalization and Economic Standards 9 



tical measures. In the ideal or socialistic society, no one will 

 have burdens to bear that will assume the form of an injury. 

 The inquiry then is, how shall society be brought nearer to the 

 ideal state? It will be necessary to dwell further on the con- 

 cept of relative truth. 



In no economic category are individuals more subject to 

 apparent injustice than in that of deferred payments. The 

 more the money question is agitated, the more the feeling of 

 dissatisfaction grows. Even if accepted principles of deferred 

 payments were rigorously applied, the individual would always 

 be more influenced by his circumstances than by the public 

 point of view, and would believe that his difficulties in pay- 

 ment or collection were due to inequality in the money system. 

 The^e is, therefore, a constant temptation to depart from the 

 public point of view, and probably no one who studies ques- 

 tions of economics can forever avoid this pitfall. 



The public point of view is not that of patriotic sentiment; 

 it is rather that of social reason. Reason may be socially defined 

 as that thought which is an addition to the thought which has 

 preceded, and is a foundation for the thought which is to follow. 

 Popular fallacies are not constructive. It is because there is a 

 logic of events that society moves, rather than because of logical 

 thought. Social science seeks to delimit popular conceptions, 

 and thus to create the logical form which shall reflect the 

 logic of events. Society advances by virtue of occasional suc- 

 cesses adopted out of endless experiments. Social science 

 passes over the failures and shows us the necessary sequence 

 of the successes. Reason is thus essentially constructive. 

 New reasons never destroy old ones; they only add to them. 

 Much of the discussions of economists, which are popularly 

 supposed to prove the unsettled condition of the science, is 

 really about the latest proposed additions to it. Persons who 

 are really adding to former acquisitions of reason, frequently 

 think they are destroying the old and replacing it by the new. 



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