The Value of Future Satisfactions of Want If we did not possess the power of providing for future wants, our lives would be but poorly provided for. No new products would be prepared; those we already possessed would be thoughtlessly dissipated; only chance and the goodwill of nature would provide for the morrow. And as it is of importance that we should be sensible in advance of the wants of the future, so is it of importance that the degree of that sensibility should be sufficient. Anxiety about future necessaries should be as powerful as the passion with which we give ourselves away before the urgent feelings of the moment. If future satisfactions of want were represented in present valuation, not at their full future value but at only a small fraction of the same, all economic life must in the end fall to pieces, just as though they were not represented at all; only that the course of economic decay would be less rapid and its end farther off.
It is evident that man possesses the capacity of acting in consideration of future feelings of want, but observation of human nature makes it very obvious that he will act with less energy than when he is under the influence of present feelings.
The future want, wherever it comes into the domain of the present, is preceded by a psychical reflection, and this reflection is of a totally different nature from the want itself.
It is far finer, more innerlich, and, even in the case of purely bodily wants, is always mental. The hunger of a future day, e.g., does not act as hunger, but as anxiety for sustenance; the object of desire is the same, but the desiring is different. Instead of a want of we have an interest in. Is not, then, some energy lost in this change from the coarser to the finer? Must not the anxiety about a future want always have less weight than the actual appetite that comes after it?
If men in civilised societies do possess the degree of foresight required for a prosperous economic condition, one thing is certain; -- they have not always possessed it. It has been gained through the labour of civilisation, just as, in moral conflicts, strength to meet the fires of passion has been gained through the feeling of duty. At bottom the economic conflict between the needs of to-day and those of to-morrow is really of a moral nature; it is a special case of the struggle between impulse and reason. Uncivilised races are only to a small extent capable of considering in advance the wants of the future; -- to so small an extent, in fact, that the miserable condition in which they are found can be fully explained by this alone. It is not only the foreknowledge that is wanting, but, quite as much, the previous mental excitation, the uneasiness which the civilised man experiences in the consciousness that wants are coming for which there is no provision. A heavy numb apathy deadens the sense of the savage. He awaits with indifference, or at most with a feeling of helplessness, the misery from which he does not suppose it possible to escape, but which he certainly could escape had he only the energy to will it.
Whether civilised races have reached the high-water mark of development that is desirable, may easily be ascertained by consideration of their economic actions. How do they behave in the majority of cases? Do most people sacrifice their means for the pleasure of the moment, or do they lay by for future needs?
