Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/592

574 will quit work if he can be idle and still get the cold victuals I know by cumulative evidence, but I am unable to raise this knowledge to the rank of a "law," fundamental to everything psychic. My difficulties are not lessened when I am told that this "law" is "the basis of scientific economics" (p. 59); for a few pages earlier I read:

This confession that the most considerable attempt ever made to justify the "law of parsimony" has shown it to be worthless, coupled with the above undaunted assertion that it is "a law as exact as any in physics or astronomy," is a close second to the reply of the Irish lawyer: "Your Honor, if the court overrules this point, I have several others āqually conclusive."

All I can see in the "law" is that no man tries to do anything which, all things considered, he does not choose to do; or that nobody exerts himself without a purpose, and that no one puts into his exertion more effort than he feels to be worth while. But precisely this subjective element, the personal equation, is the part of the formula that upsets all its exactness, and that contains the whole problem of sentient action. It so happens that the most of what we want to do or be is ulterior to the immediate means that we must employ, and the more highly developed a man is, the more complex and remote are some parts of the ends for which he works. It is impossible to reduce those ends to any concrete measure. The "law of parsimony" therefore proves to be exact only when it becomes an identical proposition, viz., "No man will exert more effort than he exerts;" or else it is the vicious circle, viz., "A man always does what he thinks will produce the greatest good, because the thing that he thinks will produce the greatest good is what he does." The moment we put any real measure of action into the predicate, however, the formula becomes susceptible of several interpretations, each of them so elastic that no approach to exactness remains. For instance, I am just graduating from college. I have an independent income. I can choose between being a gentleman of leisure, entering the medical, legal or engineering profession, engaging in business, or devoting myself to politics. If this law of parsimony is exact, as Ward claims, it should indicate which course I shall choose, as the line of least resistance, or at least it should furnish