Note 51 — THE PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST

I take routine to be the essence and meaning of hedonism. There are two fundamental types of conduct—routine and constructiveness. Reference may be made here to Böhm-Bawerk's pronouncement on hedonism in Kapital und Kapitalzins, 1912 (II-2, pp. 310 ff.): "What people love and hate, strive towards or fight off—whether only pleasure and pain or other 'lovable' and 'hatable' things as well,—is a matter of entire indifference to the economist. The only thing important is that they do love and hate certain things.... The deductions of marginal utility theory lose no whit of their cogency even if certain ends (dependent for their realization upon a supply of goods inadequate to the fulfillment of all ends without limit) are held to have the character not of pleasure but of something else. The marginal utility may be a least pleasure or a competing least utility of some other sort...." (p. 317). This is a not uncommon view. As W. C. Mitchell has suggested, it is too obvious to be wholly convincing. (Journ. Pol. Ec., Vol. XVIII. "The Rationality of Economic Activity.") Veblen has made it perfectly clear that particular matters of theory are affected by the presupposition of hedonism. (Journ. Pol. Ec., Vol. XVII, Quart. Journ. Econ., Vol. XXII, p. 147 ff.) The matter is too complex for a footnote, but I think it of little consequence whether "pleasure" be in any case regarded as substantively the end of desire or not. This is largely a matter of words. What is important is the practical question whether a thing is so habitual with me that when the issue arises I cannot or will not give it up and take an interest in something new the "utility" of which I cannot as yet be cognizant of because it partly rests with me to create it. If this is the fact it will surely look as if pleasure or the avoidance of pain were my end in the case. Hedonism and egoism are in the end convertible terms. There is conduct wearing the outward aspect of altruism that is egotistic in fact—not because it was from the first insincere or self-delusive, but because it has become habitual and may in a crisis be held to for the sake of the satisfaction it affords. Genuine altruism, on the other hand, is a form of constructiveness.