Almost always the
most visible and obvious standard of measurement will determine the
rules of the game: such as money, power, popularity, applause, or Mr.
Veblen's "conspicuous waste." What other standards of measurement does
our civilization normally provide? How does it measure efficiency,
productivity, service, for which we are always clamoring?
By and large there are no measures, and there is, therefore, not so
much competition to achieve these ideals. For the difference between
the higher and the lower motives is not, as men often assert, a
difference between altruism and selfishness. [Footnote: _Cf._
Ch. XII] It is a difference between acting for easily understood aims,
and for aims that are obscure and vague. Exhort a man to make more
profit than his neighbor, and he knows at what to aim. Exhort him to
render more social service, and how is he to be certain what service
is social? What is the test, what is the measure? A subjective
feeling, somebody's opinion. Tell a man in time of peace that he ought
to serve his country and you have uttered a pious platitude, Tell him
in time of war, and the word service has a meaning; it is a number of
concrete acts, enlistment, or buying bonds, or saving food, or working
for a dollar a year, and each one of these services he sees definitely
as part of a concrete purpose to put at the front an army larger and
better armed, than the enemy's.
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