Chapter 12 Chapter 2 The Relationship Between Desire and Activity

Section 1 Diverse Desires. Human desires and hopes are infinite in quantity and varied in kind: but they are generally finite and satiable.It is true that the savage has not many more desires than the brute; but every step of his advance increases the variety of his needs, and the variety of the means of satisfying them.He desires not only a greater quantity, but a better quality, of the things he is accustomed to consume; he also desires a greater variety of things to choose from, and things to satisfy the new desires which arise in his mind. Thus beasts and savages alike love fine morsels, but neither pays much attention to variety for variety's sake.However, with the improvement of human culture, with the development of human intelligence, even human sexuality began to be combined with spiritual activities, and human desires quickly became more refined and more varied; Long before human beings consciously broke free from the shackles of habit, they began to hope for change for the sake of change in the small things in life.An important first step in this direction came with the invention of fire: man gradually became accustomed to cooking all kinds of food and drink in many different ways; To force man to subsist on one or two kinds of food for a long time is considered a great hardship.

As a man's wealth increases, his food and drink become more varied and costly; but his appetite is limited by nature, and when his expenditure on food amounts to extravagance, Satisfies the desire for hospitality and display more often than he indulges his own sense organs. This brings us to what Senior says: "The desire for variety, strong as it is, is weak compared with the desire for superiority: if we consider the universality and permanence of the latter desire, That is, that it affects all men at all times, that it follows us from the moment we are born, and that it does not leave us until we are in our grave, and this emotion may be said to be the most powerful of all human emotions.” This important The half-truth of this is sufficed by the comparison of man's desire for fine and varied food with his desire for fine and varied clothing.

Section 2 Desire for Pride. The need for clothing due to natural variability varies with climate and season, and varies slightly with the nature of the occupation of the person.But in dress the desires of habit prevail over the desires of nature.Thus, in many earlier periods of civilization, those enactments of law and custom, concerning thrift, had rigidly regulated the standard of style and expense to which the members of every class of society or estate must attain, and which they could not exceed; Although its essence has changed dramatically, some parts are still retained.In Scotland, for example, it was custom for many to go out without shoes and stockings in Adam Smith's day, and they probably do not do so now; Not anymore.In England, too, it is now expected that a well-to-do workman would go out on a Sunday in a black coat, and in some places a silk hat; people ridiculed.The variety and luxury, which custom requires as a minimum, and which custom permits as a maximum, is constantly increasing; and the effort to get pride in clothes, is expanding among the lower classes of British society.

But among the upper classes, while the dress of women is still varied and expensive, the dress of men is simple and cheap, as compared with the European dress of not so long ago, and with the oriental dress at present.For men who are most truly distinguished in their own merit naturally dislike being noticed as if by their clothes; and so they establish the custom. The third section continues. A house satisfies the inevitable need for shelter from the elements: but this need plays no role in the effective demand for a house.For a small and well-built house, though ample protection from the elements, is a great mischief in its suffocating air, its inevitable uncleanliness, and its want of the elegance and quietness of life.These evils not only cause physical discomfort, but tend to retard the development of faculties and limit the nobler activities of the man.With each increase in these activities, the need for larger housing becomes more acute.

Therefore, a relatively spacious and well-equipped house is a "necessary for maintaining efficiency" even for people of the lowest social class, and is the most convenient and immediate method of materially obtaining social prestige.Even among those classes of society where each already has sufficient housing for himself and his family for the higher activities, there is still a desire for further, almost unlimited, enlargement of housing, which is necessary for the development of many higher social activities. thing. Section 4. The desire for pride for pride's sake.The place of consumption theory in economics.

Moreover, there is a desire to develop and develop activity, which pervades every class of man in society, and which leads not only to the pursuit of science, literature, and art for their own sake but to those who pursue them as professions. The need for work is rapidly increasing.Leisure is used less and less as a mere opportunity for rest; there is a growing desire for developmental activities, such as athletic competitions and travel, rather than those recreations of the indulgence of sensory addictions. For indeed the desire for superiority for its own sake is almost as wide in scope as the desire for lower pride.Just as the desires of pride are graded: from the aspirations of those who might hope for posterity and afar, down to the hope that the new ribbon a country girl wears at Easter will be noticed by her neighbors; And the desire for superiority can also be divided into grades: from the desire for superiority and superiority of a man like Newton or Stradevelius, down to the desire of superiority of a fisherman - even when no one sees and he When he is not busy, he takes pleasure in steering his fishing boat skilfully, and that it is well built and obeys his command.This desire has a great influence on the supply of the highest talents and greatest inventions, but it is also important on the demand side.

For the need for the services of the most highly skilled freelancer and the best work of the artisan arises largely from men's love for the training of their own faculties, and their recourse to the most skilfully adapted and handy tools. To develop the hobby of this talent. So, in a nutshell, in the initial stage of human development, although human desires caused human activities, every new step forward in the future is considered to be the development of new activities that caused new desires, and the development of new activities caused new desires. It is not the development of new desires that gives rise to new activities.

We can see this clearly if we look elsewhere beyond the sane state of life in which new activities are constantly developing; but for idle stagnation that is not rest; or we look again at that rapidly diminishing section of the English working class, who have no ambition, no pride and joy in the development of their talents and activities, and leave them What is left of their wages, after providing the filthy and unclean minimum necessities of life, is spent on drinking. Therefore, the sentence "consumption theory is the scientific basis of economics" is wrong.For much of what is of chief interest in the study of desire is derived from the study of effort and activity.The two complement each other, and neither is complete without the other.But if any of the two can be called human history—

The interpreter, whether economic or any other, is the science of activity, not of desire; McCulloch, in his study of "the nature of human progress," shows the true relation of the two, he Said: "The fulfillment of a desire or hope is but a step towards some new pursuit. At every stage of human progress it is lawful for man to devise and invent, to engage in new enterprises; " It follows that the study of needs which can be done at the present stage of our work must be confined to an almost purely formal preliminary analysis.The more advanced study of consumption must be placed after, not before, the main body of economic analysis; although such a study may begin within the proper limits of economics, it cannot draw conclusions therefrom, but must be far away. well beyond that.