It is true that _future_ marginal utilities come into the utility theory scheme, but they come in, not as future utilities, but as "_present worths_" of future utilities, or as "present anticipated feelings" in Jevons' phrase[100] suffering a discount, usually, in the process. But I am not aware of any writer among the founders of the utility school, who has sought to bring past utilities into the scheme. The past is dead. Its effects persist in the present only in present processes. A _memory_ is a _present_ psychological fact.
Consider further. Is it the prices of yesterday that determine the subjective value of money to an individual, if the prices of yesterday are different from the prices of to-day, _and the individual knows it_? In so far as we have the clear, intelligent economic mind, seeking its interests--and the marginal utility theory assumes this type of mind--the tendency is to bring all the factors in the problem into the present. If prices change slowly, so that the individual can count on essentially the same situation to-day that he had yesterday, doubtless he will not take the trouble to recast his value system. There is a tremendous lot of trouble in bringing about, in the individual's mind, the rational equilibration of values--trouble which the Austrian theory commonly abstracts from, but which should be recognized in the analysis, and accorded its own marginal significance in the scale. To throw the emphasis on inertia, however, and to assume that men do not readjust their margins to meet changed conditions, is to depart from the fundamentals of the Austrian theory. If the price-situation is a rapidly changing one, men do rapidly readjust their estimates of money. If money is fluctuating rapidly in value--as, say, during a time when there is depreciated paper money, whose future depends on military events, the adjustments may be very rapid indeed. I quote the following from the news columns of the _New York Times_, of April 4, 1914, p. 2: "Jaurez, Mexico, Apr. 3.--After the hysterical outbursts last night that greeted the news of the fall of Torreon, this city was preternaturally calm to-day.... The silent gentleman with the dyed mustache who spins the marble at the roulette wheel in the Jaurez Monte Carlo, conducted by Villa's officers for the benefit of the rebel treasury, seemed the only person who was not excited. When the crowd of players suddenly deserted him on the sound of the bugle call of victory, he gave the marble another whirl from sheer force of habit, but none returned.... In an hour, however, play was faster and more furious than ever, for holders of Constitutionalist money early realized that their currency had suddenly increased in value, and that they were somewhat richer than before." I do not question the fact, however, that men are slow in making calculations, and that society is often unconscious of changed conditions, and often readjusts less rapidly than occasion requires. There is a vast deal of inertia, of blind habit, of custom, etc. But emphasis on these factors is not marginal utility theory! Factors like these are emphasized by a functional psychology, and by a social psychology--not by an individualistic psychology which rests on the assumption of rational calculation. It is not _past_ utilities that explain present subjective values of money when these subjective values are out of harmony with the present market facts, but rather _present_ habits, present customs, present disinclination to readjust, etc. There is a big difference, psychologically, between the mental processes through which one arrived at one's present state of mind, and the present state of mind itself. The original "commodity utility" of the money metal, in the far away time before the money use affected its value, is surely no longer a factor. Certainly not on the basis of an individualistic psychology of the Austrian type. All the individuals who experienced that original utility are long since dead! Not even memories of the original utilities persist.