Speculative reason

“ From the point of view of theory, therefore, it is incorrect to attach so little importance to the function of speculation; in practice it is impossible to deal intelligently with the evils of the speculative system without first recognizing its real relation to business. ”

“ These and other specialties escape, and not unaccountably, the view and the calculation of the speculative economist, who is so often astounded to find how a principle, or a theory, of unquestionable truth abstractedly, and apparently of general application, comes practically to be controlled by circumstances beyond his appreciation, or even to be negatived altogether. ”

“ All, to be sure, as yet exists in promise; but the believer in promises calculates the aggregate as solid capital, and falls back in amazement at the amount of public wealth, "the unexampled state of public prosperity!"
Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation ”

“ If any one fear that in insisting so strongly that behavior is the aim and end of every sound philosophy I have curtailed the dignity and scope of the speculative function in us, I can only reply that in this ascertainment of the character of Being lies an almost infinite speculative task. ”

“ The intelligence of the people increases by leaps and bounds, and goes peering curiously into all the little nooks and crannies of the world for opportunities of gain—the apotheosis of speculative enterprise.
All forms of human endeavor in material things are, or were at their beginning, speculations. Every ship that goes to sea carries with it a speculation, and leaves another one behind it at Lloyds. Every man who insures his life or his house buys a speculation, and every company that insures him sells one. ”

“ Now, sir, but for some speculation that had been entered into before they were, the one would have neither had the silver spoon in his teeth, nor the other the hot joint. Without speculation, commerce could not exist. In the community where its spirit is not felt, they must be dull as horses in a ring; moving round and round as regularly and as monotonously as the wheels of a machine, to procure the every-day bread and cheese of existence. I have been a speculator all my life—I am a speculator still. ”

“ And the Chicago man's letter, in substance, reads: "No!"
"Outsider" Has No Chance.
Speculation, for the most part, as in the case of this young man, means for the average intelligence a possibility for placing money in a side line where quick and profitable returns may be expected, wholly independent of the person's occupation. To the man who knows what the best of the speculative market is, the necessity for all of the time and attention and best judgment of the speculator is imperative. It is a business in which only the best business methods succeed. ”

“ Any one who was inclined to be hypercritical might object, and object with justice, that the practical application of knowledge often lags behind the speculative attainment, and that material progress therefore, at certain times, depends on {134} some new state of the practical rather than of the speculative faculties ”

“ We have confined our discussion to the settlement of the preliminaries of one great question. We think, however, that we have indicated the true foundations upon which modern philosophy must build, that we have described the vital crisis in which speculative thought is at present labouring, while old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new. ”

“ The most prosperous period in the industrial and commercial history of the United States begot an epidemic of speculative madness such as was never before known, and probably never again will be. Everybody had money in abundance, and the desire for speculation in superabundance. ”

“ In our problem the desiderated solution is the means, the end is the development, or, we should rather say, the creation of speculative thought—a kind of thought different altogether from ordinary popular thinking. ”

“ Now, sir, it is my conviction, that where there is no speculation, there can be no luck. As well might a man with his hands in his pockets expect a guinea to drop into them. People who, perhaps, have been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, or had enough to purchase them a hot joint every day, thrust upon them by accident, will tell you, in speaking of any particular subject, "Oh, I will have nothing to do with it—it is only a speculation." ”

“ A possible rapidity in the acquisition of wealth inflames the speculative temper. We mean by the speculative temper, purchase and sale, not in reference to production but with the hope of making large profits independently of production. Speculation is an expression of a venturesome spirit which, in its impatience, lays light emphasis on the usually slow methods of increase, and promises itself a rapid road to success. This hope is often disappointed, and when disappointed carries with it a more or less extended retardation of business. ”

“ The weakness of the speculative propensity in mankind generally has not, therefore, prevented the progress of speculation from governing that of society at large; it has only, and too often, prevented progress altogether, where the intellectual progression has come to an early stand for want of sufficiently favorable circumstances. ”

“ A speculator who expressly assumes what he wants to prove, and argues that all which contradicts it is absurd, because it cannot stand side by side with his assumption, is a case which can be exposed to all. ”

“ Reader! put no faith in those who preach to you about the limited nature of the human faculties, and of the things which lie beyond their bounds. For one instance in which this kind of modesty keeps people right in speculative matters, there are a thousand in which it puts them wrong ”

“ On the contrary, the speculative element represents for the most part men of uncommon shrewdness and foresight; men of studious and analytical minds; men who are, or have been, masters of every situation in their own professions or commercial vocations, even though most of them act like children when they get tangled up in the meshes of stock speculation.
Nor should it be imagined that the stock market is primarily a guessing game, or a game of chance ”

“ It is worth remarking that, while the only efficient mode of cultivating speculative science was missed from an undue contempt of manual operations, the false speculative views thus engendered gave in their turn a false direction to such practical and mechanical aims as were suffered to exist. ”

“ Ibid. "By which means, and not by any difference in speculative matters, they are more rich and populous." As if ever any body thought that a difference in speculative opinions made men richer or poorer ”

“ The professional speculative element in the community sniffs this movement on the part of the public with the accuracy of a pointer that has found his bird, and they commence to draw the credulous by fictitious prices, now and then unloading to be ready when the relapse comes, to commence anew when another favourable opportunity offers. ”

“ Of course, there is the possibility for ‘thinking’ to degenerate into profitless speculation; but we are certainly as much in need of the results of thinking about the facts already accumulated as we are of more facts. ”

“ Speculation is one of the most intolerable and revolting manifestations of disease in the economic organism. Those profound sages who maintain that everything that exists, is superexcellent, have also attempted to defend speculation, to justify it, to assert its necessity even to enthusiasm. ”

“ The bane of nearly all speculators of the soft-grained type—by which we mean men whose will and judgment bends this way and that, like a reed that nods allegiance to any quarter of the world according to the blow of the wind—is, that they are for ever on the itch to do something. ”

“ A great deal of nonsense is also heard about speculation. Now, speculation, like many other good things, may be carried to excess, and is then injurious and open to the severest criticism. But speculation within reasonable limits is most beneficial. It is one of the main incentives to enterprise. Crush this disposition to venture, or the willingness to accept a risk, and enterprise would languish, trade and industry would decline, and we should gradually settle down to certain industrial and commercial decay. ”

“ Thus speculative activity, just like artistic creation, in exact proportion as it connects itself with the ordinary processes of wealth-production, ceases to find its motive in the desire of self-realisation, and claims to be rewarded by the possession of the objective results produced by it. ”

“ The advocates of speculating say that the speculator plays an important and necessary role in the great drama of political economy; that his gains are the results of superior sagacity, deeper insight, prompter decision and more adventurous daring. ”

“ Now almost everything affecting its future value is known with a fair degree of accuracy before the crop is harvested. This advanced information naturally becomes the subject of speculative transactions which could not have existed in former times.
97“Speculation brings into play the best intelligence as to the future of values. It has always two sides. The one that is based principally on the facts and conditions of the situation wins in the end, and the result of the conflict is the nearest possible approach to correct values. ”

“ From which we may conclude that in stock trading, all speculators, whether experienced or inexperienced, are subject to those inscrutable laws of psychology which Nature herself seems to have designed for the discomfiture of those who play at the wheel of Fortune. ”

“ Many indeed are ready enough to laugh at speculators, because many profit, or expect to profit, by established and widening abuses. Speculations toward evil lose their name by adoption; speculations towards good are for ever speculations, and he who hath proposed them is a chimerical and silly creature. ”

“ One of the resources presenting itself most naturally to men in a position to profit by it was speculating with other people's money, and very naturally the result of such speculation was disastrous in the highest degree. ”

“ They set forth an exhaustive array of statistics, instructions and warnings; they furnish elaborately charted plans indicating many of the pitfalls of speculation; they tell how to avoid these, how to buy, what to buy, when to buy and how to make money; but while the theories advanced are oftentimes sound and easily comprehended, very few people profit by them, because when once caught in the maelstrom of stock speculation the average man becomes more or less mesmerized, and at critical moments his conservatism, his resolutions and his theories all take flight. ”

“ Thus, in order that speculative truths may be connected with productive effort, they must pass out of the hands of the men who first discovered them, and be made over to men whose motive in acquiring them will emphatically not be desire of the mere pleasure of intellectual acquisition, but the desire of some marketable products with a calculable pecuniary value, in the production of which a knowledge of the truths in question will help them. ”

“ As there is always a class of speculators whose operations, in the long run, leave a net result of loss rather than profit, it may not be amiss if I state what experience has taught me as to the causes of this want of success.
Undoubtedly, many who enter the arena of speculation are in every way unfitted to take the risks against such wily opponents as they must encounter. They are either too ignorant or too wise, too timid or too bold, too pessimistic or too sanguine, too slow or too hasty, too diffident or too conceited, too confiding or too incredulous. ”

“ The fact of speculation having come to be practised by established companies, where before it was a kind of business that it was considered necessary to pursue as secretly as possible, proves how strong is the tendency of the age in which we live to make royal roads to wealth. ”

“ A speculator may stand by and view with unruffled complacency the most enormous profits of others in securities that he never owned, but if one of his own pet stocks continues to advance after he has sold out, it not only reflects the error of his judgment, but the remorse he suffers in contemplating the additional sum he might have made dampens all the pleasure of reflecting upon the profit he actually did make. ”

“ Such were the results of that system of speculation, which assumed for its basis the existence of a species of beings far above the pitch of humanity, and which, in its application to human affairs, reduces them to the level of brutes. ”

“ But he has got excited; the spirit of speculation has seized him; he sees others making large sums in this way (we seldom hear of the losers) , and like other speculators, he “looks for his money where he loses it.” ”

“ Are you aware that in catering to your instinct to "invest," methods to get you to part with your money are so artfully and deftly applied by the highest that they deceive you completely? Could you imagine it to be a fact that in nearly all cases when you find you are ready to embark on a given speculation, ways and means that are almost scientific in their insidiousness have been used upon you? ”

“ A writer, too wise to publish his writings, once remarked that "more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs." Perhaps in course of time we may have an Exchange for thought; in fact, even now ideas, good or bad, have their consols, are bought up, imported, exported, sold, and quoted like stocks. ”

“ If to carry consumable goods from the places where they are superabundant to those where they are scarce, is a good pecuniary speculation, is it not an equally good speculation to do the same thing with regard to labour and instruments? ”