of Edinburgh, Session 1883-84. 975 
sesthetic sub-function preponderates over that which would merely 
satisfy the nutritive appetite. 
That desires realise themselves in efforts, and that efforts attain 
satisfaction, is the psychological or subjective side of the objective 
fact that wants necessitate labour, and that labour results in wealth. 
A simple economic action — say an amoeba devouring a grain of 
starch, or a labourer consuming food, may be expressed in three 
ways — (1) physical, the potential energy of the body is increased; 
(2) biological, the organism is nourished ; (3) psychological, a desire 
is satisfied. 
In the very simplest forms of life we find two essential forms of 
vital action — the nutritive and the reproductive. But Leconte has 
pointed out that, while the satisfaction of nutritive wants is funda- 
mentally egoistic, the reproductive desire contains the earliest germ 
of altruism. If this be admitted, as it must be, the exclusion of the 
altruistic element as a determinant of economic action is at once seen 
to be a mere artifice, alike impossible and absurd, if our psychology 
is to have any relation to living beings ; while the deductively con- 
structed fabric of orthodox economics collapses without criticism, 
since one half of its foundation (“self-interest”) alone was laid. 
Starting, then, from this primal manifestation of egoistic and altru- 
istic desires, we may briefly follow the development of these with 
the ever-increasing structural and social complexity of the organisms. 
With limited supply and space, these nutritive wants and desires must 
result in competition between the individuals. Competition has, of 
course, its objective and subjective aspects ; the objective antagonism 
must be represented by a subjective egoism and mutual antipathy. 
But every aggregate which can at all be termed a society has risen 
to some measure of complexity — of division of labour or poly- 
morphism ; and even these economists who insist most upon “ self- 
interest ” are not wanting in clear explanation of the economic advan- 
tage of the process. The subjective aspect of the process is not, 
however, personal egoism and mutual antipathy; since, for the 
co-ordinated muscular actions which any increase of polymorphism 
and synergy imply, a corresponding measure of co-ordination of 
nervous action is indispensable ; and thus, as competition involved 
antipathy, so objective co-operation involves subjective sympathy. 
As mutual antipathy implies individual egoism, so sympathy implies 
