THE THEORY OF INTEREST

change from one extreme of impatience to the other.Such an alteration may be caused by a change in the per-son’s nature (as when a spendthrift is reformed or a man,originally prudent, becomes, through intemperance, reck-less and thriftless), or by variation in his income, whetherin respect to size, distribution in time, or uncertainty.Everyone at some time in his life doubtless changes hisdegree of impatience for income. In the course of anordinary lifetime the changes in a man’s degree of im-patience are probably of the following general character:as a child he will have a high degree of impatience be-cause of his lack of foresight and self-control; when hereaches the age of young manhood he may still have ahigh degree of impatience, but for a different reason,namely, because he then expects a large future income.He expects to get on in the world, and he will have a highdegree of impatience because of the relative abundanceof the imagined future as compared with the realizedpresent. When he gets a little further along, and has afamily, the result may be a low degree of impatience,because then the needs of the future rather than its en-dowment will appeal to him. He will not think that heis going to be so very rich; on the contrary, he will won-der how he is going to get along with so many mouths tofeed. He looks forward to the future expenses of his wifeand children with the idea of providing for them—anidea which makes for a high relative regard for the futureand a low relative regard for the present. Then when hegets a little older, if his children are married and havegone out into the world and are well able to take careof themselves, he may again have a high degree of impa-tience for income, because he expects to die, and hethinks, “Instead of piling up for the remote future, why

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