The Psychology of Saving

T HE most distinctive mental asset of man as compared with the lower animals is foresight, the capacity to act in the present as if the future were also present. The fundamental basis for such action is the power of representative thought, that is, of imagination. But imagination which issues in care for the future is never mere fanciful imagination untrammeled by reality. It is a looking ahead in the light of past experience. Imaginative insight into the needs of the future is a tree the growth of which is dependent on roots striking down into the past. But to act in the present as if the nonexistent future were more real and important is in some sense to ignore the present, which is so insistent in its demands for immediate action. Foresight implies deferred action, deliberation, inhibition of immediate desires, labor and sacrifice. Thus, if man has risen superior to the lower animals, it is at the expense of being burdened by a certain duality of nature by virtue of which he has to choose between the satisfaction of present desires and future needs. The history of mankind in his struggle for civilization is a record of a slow and laborious improvement marked by a steadily increasing use of foresight

Psychoanalysis · Applied Psychology · Economic Theory and Institutions · Psychology