Value

1. The Nature of Value.—Value is one of the last of the great philosophic topics to have received recognition, and even now the Encyclopaedia Britannica has an article only on economic value. Its discovery was probably the greatest philosophic achievement of the 19th century, but opinions on the subject are not yet crystallized, and it is still one of the growing points of philosophy and one which seems likely to overshadow older issues. Reflexion at present commonly starts from the antithesis of ‘fact’ and ‘value’ and the difference between the standpoints of ‘description’ and ‘appreciation.’ It is widely held that consciousness of value differs in kind from consciousness of fact. It is posterior to the latter, and represents a reaction upon fact. It is an attitude assumed towards fact, a weighing of fact in relation to an agent, and his feelings, desires, interests, purposes, needs, and acts; and it expresses his appreciation (approbation) or reprobation (depreciation) of it in this relation. It follows (1) that a certain subjectivity, or, better, a relation to personality, is inherent in all values; (2) that value arises out of the mind’s practical attitude, when it reacts upon stimulation, and that for a purely theoretic or contemplative view no values would exist; (3) that values are something super-added upon the other qualities of objects by the mind, in order to express their relation to its purpose and acts, and do not inhere in objects per se. Indeed they seem to be even more subjective, variable, and personal than the ‘secondary’ qualities of objects, and hence are often called ‘tertiary’ qualities. Nevertheless they are also objectified and projected into objects, when these are regarded as valuable objectively and per se, or when the ‘validity’ of actual valuations and of existing values is called in question. Hence ‘superpersonal’ or ‘over-individual’ and even ‘eternal’ and ‘absolute’ values are recognized by many philosophers. Moreover, the genesis of values and their relations to the objects of desire to which they refer, to the value-feelings which accompany them, and the valuation-processes and value-judgments by which they are reached, instigate a number of psychological inquiries, while their validity raises the deepest questions of epistemology, metaphysics, and religion. All the questions raised moreover, are complex and contentious, and have had a history which is not easy to unravel.

2. The History of the Notion.—Historically the importance of the problem of value has been recognized very slowly, gradually, and grudgingly, and, moreover, its philosophic history is obscure; no early philosophy having made it central, or even expressly considered it. In the light of subsequent developments, however, we may trace its emergence to the Platonic doctrine (in Republic VI) of the idea of good. When Plato conceived the Good as the culmination of the Ideal world and as the principle which was to unify, systematize, and organize all the other ‘forms,’ he was really putting ‘value’ above ‘being,’ conceiving it as the supreme principle of explanation, and expressing the same thought as Lotze, when he declared that the beginning of metaphysics lies in ethics. For he was proposing to view all being teleologically, and to make its relation to a ‘good’ or end (an ethical notion) essential to its being. This was to affirm not only the objective validity of the ‘tertiary’ qualities, but also their supremacy over the others. Plato, however, did not himself develop this line of reflexion, nor succeed in inducing philosophers in general to investigate the problem of values. To the more naturalistic they seemed all too human to be attributed to ultimate reality. Spinoza’s wholesale repudiation of their objectivity, at the end of book I of his Ethics, is typical in this respect. The modern developments of the subject proceed from Kant, who, however, came upon it rather incidentally at the end of his philosophic career, and apprehended its significance very imperfectly. Kant’s philosophizing had ended in the theoretic impasse that certain vitally essential beliefs (in God, freedom, and immortality) could not be scientifically justified. Yet they had to be presupposed, he believed, for purposes of action; that is, to carry on life it was necessary to act as if they were true. He devised therefore the notion of a practical postulate, which was to be practically imperative without being theoretically cogent, attaching it to the Moral Law of unconditional obligation, and endowing it with objects of ‘faith,’ which were to be carefully distinguished from objects of knowledge. He thus established (1) a dualism between faith and knowledge which had obvious interest for theology, and (2) a supremacy of the practical over the theoretic reason, which was more fruitful, because less naive, than Plato’s. The latter result tended to raise ‘values’ above ‘facts,’ though the former at first masked this consequence, and it took subsequent philosophy a long time to overcome the Kantian dualism. Both, however, were prolific of further developments, divergent from the main line of post-Kantian speculation, which was too intellectualistic to notice that, just as the existence of fact must be conditioned for us by our knowledge, so our knowledge must in turn be conditioned by our interests and the prospective value of the objects of our cognitive endeavors. For a long time the investigation of value was carried on only in Germany, and even there progress was slow. The first (probably) to see that here was a new problem was F. E. Beneke (1798–1854), the only empirical psychologist among the German philosophers of his time, and hence a victim of Hegel’s intolerance. Already in his Grundlegung zur Physik der Sitten (1821) he sees that, if the science of morals is practical, the notion of value lies at the root of it. He lays it down that the value which we attribute to a thing is determined by the pleasure which it has excited in us, and he makes the whole of ethics depend on feelings of value. In his Grundlinien des naturlichen Systems der praktischen Philosophie (1837–1840) he makes it more explicit that valuations arise in the mind as reactions upon stimulations and depressions produced by the things of the external world, distinguishes between subjective valuation (Wertgebung), and traces the growth of ‘dispositions’ to value and to desire. R. H. Lotze (1817–1881) revived the Platonic idea that good ranks above being, wanting metaphysics to show that what ought to be conditions what is (Metaphysik of 1841), and that ‘Nature is directed to the accomplishment of Good,’ and interpreted the ‘ontological’ proof of the existence of God as meaning that the totality of value cannot be utterly divorced from existence. In the endeavor to vindicate value he had the sympathy of his theological colleague at Gottingen, Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), who agrees with him that the facts of concrete experience are the source of our general notions, and not, as Platonism has always held, pale reflexions of the latter. Hence personal experience is not deducible from metaphysics, but vice versa. Ritschl, however, started rather from the Kantian dualism of faith and knowledge and tried to differentiate them still further. Faith he equipped with distinct objects, those of religion—an independent method, which it shared with ethics and aesthetics—distinct from that of metaphysics and science, and formulated in value-judgments, different in kind from theoretical judgments, though equally capable of validity and certainty. It was therefore to misconstrue the essential meaning of religious affirmations to take them as expressions of theoretic insight rather than of moral trust. It is mainly to Ritschl that is due the current antithesis between value-judgments and judgments of fact, and the attempt to regard the sciences as different in kind according as they use the one or the other. Ritschl, however, recognized that this separation could not be really carried through. He observes:

All continuous cognition of the things which excite sensation is not only accompanied but also guided by feeling [pleasure-pain, as indicative of value for self, by way of enhancement or inhibition and] in so far as attention is necessary to attain the end of knowledge, will becomes the vehicle of the purpose of exact cognition; the proximate motive of will, however, is feeling, as expressing that a thing or an activity is worth desiring. … Value-judgments therefore are what determine all connected knowledge of the world, even when it is carried out in the most objective fashion. Attention during scientific observation … always declares that such knowledge has a value for him who exercises it.

This seems to render all theoretic judgments dependent on, and subordinate to, value-judgments; but Ritschl distinguishes between concomitant and independent value-judgments. In the sciences value-judgments accompany the theoretic, whereas “independent value-judgments are all cognitions of moral ends or impediments thereto in so far as they excite moral pleasure or displeasure, or otherwise set the will in motion to appropriate goods or to ward off evils.” The religions also are composed of such independent value judgments expressing man’s attitude towards the world. From Ritschl’s position it was easy to pass to that of W. Windelband (1848–1915), who, while sharply distinguishing between judgments and evaluations or judgments about judgments (Beurteilungen), emphasized that the latter are involved in every judgment in that it affirms or denies, approves or disapproves. Logic, therefore, becomes a science of values, a third normative science, along with ethics and aesthetics, and like them aims at the discovery of universally valid ‘norms.’ Philosophy becomes the critical study of the universally valid values; their recognition is its duty and its aim. Windelband was followed by H. Rickert and H. Munsterberg (1863–1916). The Austrian schools of C. Von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) and A. Meinong (1853–1920) devote themselves to the discussion of objects and sorts of values, and their relation to desire and will, the laws of valuation-process, and the accompanying feelings; and apply to all values the economic law of marginal utility. The rise of pessimism and the influence of Schopenhauer (1788–1860), by raising the question of the value of life as a whole, emphasized the importance of values. F. W. Nietzsche (1844–1900) effectively drew attention to the transformations of values, and set himself, before he went mad, to bring about a ‘transvaluation’ (Umwertung) of all the accepted values. Josiah Royce (1855–1916) acclimatized the distinction between appreciation and description in the English-speaking world with his Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892), and since then there has been a good deal of (rather unsystematic) discussion of the problems of value, especially in America, though the intellectualistic bias of the dominant ‘idealism’ has been unfavorable to it. The pragmatists, however, were glad to recognize the presence of valuations in cognitive processes, as a proof of the fictitious nature of ‘pure’ thought and ‘absolute’ truth. They emphasize the human purposive and personal character of value, tend to regard all values as relative, primarily in the particular situation which is valued, and declare the existence and efficacy of values to be plain, empirical facts.

3. Sorts and criteria of value.—As the result of this historical development it is generally admitted that distinct species of value exist, though there is no agreement as to what they are. However, it is clear that several sciences have been specialized to study them. Thus (1) Economic value has long been recognized as a fundamental notion of political economy, which, ever since Adam Smith, has divided it into value in use, that is, the utility of objects for human purposes, or, as J. S. Mill said, their “capacity to satisfy a desire or serve a purpose,” and value in exchange, that is, their power to induce or compel people to pay (other valuables) for the use of them. The former is simply teleological value, which refers to the relation of means and end; the latter arises when an object is not only useful but also difficult to procure, and is the special concern of economics (q.v.). (2) That ethics deals with values is also agreed, though there is much dispute as to what the specific ethical values are and how they are related. (3) Aesthetic values are also beyond dispute. (4) Pleasure must be regarded as a positive and pain (unpleasantness) as a negative value, since even the most ascetic do not really succeed in holding that pleasure is, or in denying that pain is, as such bad. The opposite doctrine, that all values are ultimately reducible to pleasure-pain, is commoner, but need not disturb the classification of values. For, even if the question whether objects are valuable because they give pleasure or give pleasure because they are desired (valued) were decided in favor of the former alternative, it would still be true that the other values are at least relatively independent. Consciousness of value does not directly imply consciousness of pleasure-pain, nor vary concomitantly with it; for example, in conscious wrongdoing an ethical value which is felt not as pleasant, but as painful, is nevertheless recognized; similarly the aesthetic value of a work of art may be recognized, which is yet declared to give no pleasure and to leave the spectator ‘cold.’ (5) It has been mentioned that, according to the school of Ritschl, the objects of the religious consciousness are really values, and affirmations about them are essentially value judgments. And, though other theologians dissent from it, this view gets considerable support both from the psychology of religion, which interprets religious beliefs as expressions of spiritual needs, and from every theological admission that faith, as well as reason, is operative in the apprehension of religious truth. (6) There are good reasons for recognizing the distinctiveness of biological or survival-values. For they are capable of objective scientific study, and cannot be simply represented, as Herbert Spencer thought, by the hedonic values. Pleasures are not always conducive to life, nor are all pains evil. The relations of survival to pleasure-pain are complex; so are its relations to the ethical values, as is vividly brought out by the ethics of pessimism. Moreover, the survival-values enter into all other values: the value of every being, belief, and institution is affected by its survival-value between the limits of such a high degree of positive value as to entail complete extinction and universal reprobation. (7) Several schools of philosophy hold that logic is the science of cognitive values, and that truth is the positive, error the negative, value; and this treatment is often implied also where it is not avowed. It would seem to be borne out by the far-reaching analogy between logic, ethics, and aesthetics as ‘normative’ sciences, and proved by the conformity of logic with the criteria generally used to distinguish values.

As criteria two primary oppositions appear to be used: (1) That between existence and value, the ‘is’ and the ‘ought.’ Even though there are in man natural tendencies to approve of what has succeeded in establishing itself, and to bring into being what is considered worthy of being—that is, both to realize ideals and to idealize the actual—there remains a considerable discrepancy between the existent and the valuable. It cannot (ordinarily) be argued that because a thing exists, it is valuable, or that, because it is valuable it must exist. What is need not be what ought to be, nor need what ought to be exist. Hence the laws of a science of values are not natural uniformities, but ‘norms,’ that is, precepts or imperatives; they formulate not what actually does happen, but what ‘ought’ to happen ‘normally,’ that is, if the persons concerned recognize and submit to the order proper to the subject. (2) Values appear to be positive and negative. As they express the attitude of a subject to an object, they indicate the acceptance or rejection, pursuit or avoidance, of the former, the attractiveness or repulsiveness of the latter. They occur therefore in couples of antithetical predicates, both admitting of degrees of intensity. Hence values may compensate, cancel, or neutralize each other, and the final value of an object may vary according to the balance between its positive and negative value, or become practically nil. A state of consciousness which is ‘neutral’ and an object of which is ‘indifferent’ are cases of such zero values. (3) All values are disputable. They involve a relation to a valuer whose valuation need not be correct, and need not be accepted. The allegation of a value, therefore, is not equivalent to its validity. All values are to be understood as primarily claims to value, which may be allowed, disallowed, or reversed, when other values are considered. In some cases such reversal is normal: thus: if A and B are enemies or have opposite interests, what is ‘good’ for A is normally ‘bad’ for B, and vice versa. With the aid of these criteria the following kinds of value can now be enumerated. (1) Hedonic values are the pleasant (positive) and the unpleasant or painful (negative). (2) Aesthetic values are the beautiful (positive) and the ugly (negative); also the attractive-repulsive, the fitting-improper, the noble-vulgar, the elegant-coarse, and many others. (3) Utility values are the good (positive) and the bad (negative); also the useful-useless. These last, though they properly have reference to the relation of means and ends (‘the good’), naturally pass over into ethics, when this science is conceived ‘teleologically,’ that is, as the science of the final end or supreme good. (4) Other ethical values relative to other conceptions of ethics, are marked by the oppositions of ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ ‘ought’ and ‘ought not.’ ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ seem sometimes to be used absolutely in ethics, but this usage hardly proves the existence of ‘absolute values.’ On closer inspection, the meaning is seen to be good or bad for the ethical end, however that is conceived. (5) Religious conceptions reveal their character as values by the frequency of such dualistic antitheses as God-devil, salvation-damnation, election-reprobation, holy-sinful, sacred-profane; also by the frequency with which religious arguments turn out to be postulates of faith. (6) Logic falls into line with the values ‘true’ and ‘false,’ ‘truth’ and ‘error.’ These also claim to be absolute; but whether what is believed true is so may be disputed, just as whether what is believed good or right, or beautiful, or valuable, or conducive to survival actually has the value which it claims. Even what is felt as pleasant is not always conceded to be a ‘true’ pleasure, nor is every ‘imaginary’ pain said to be ‘real.’ This illustrates also a further confirmation of the whole doctrine, that the various value-predicates are freely transferable from one species of value to another.

4. Value and Fact.—The recognition of logic as a science of values entails a radical revision of the antitheses between fact and value, existence and ‘value,’ the ‘theoretic’ and the ‘practical.’ If all ‘truths’ are values, there can be no absolute separation of the practical, the sphere of value, from the theoretic, the sphere of facts. Facts, being the objects of truths, must all imply values, and it must be vain to search for any existence which is wholly free from valuations. Now this is precisely what history shows. (1) The search for ‘true reality’ in pure and unadulterated ‘fact’ uncontaminated by any work of the mind, in an unconditional datum which has merely to be recognized, has always been in vain. Only the moral to be drawn is not, as idealism supposes, that reality is the work of ‘pure thought.’ The thought which cannot be rooted out is a valuing thought, which is aiming at ends and selecting means, and accepting, rejecting, and variously manipulating the data presented to it in the whole process of ‘recognizing’ reality. Thus the absolute antithesis between fact and value collapses, because facts without value cannot be found. (2) The very fact that it is considered so desirable to find it proves that it is impossible to do so. For the importance attributed to the discovery of fact, and the eulogistic sense in which ‘reality’ is opposed to ‘appearance’ or ‘illusion’ are, in fact, values. This comes out especially in doctrines about the ‘degrees of reality,’ which are plainly of value, or about the distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘existence.’ (3) It is not psychologically possible to reach any ‘fact’ except by a process permeated throughout by values, viz., a purposive endeavor to attain an end (‘good’) by a choice of the ‘right’ means, which implies selective attention, preferences for what seems valuable, and the influence of concomitant value-feelings and of a variety of prejudices and forms of bias. (4) Lastly, it seems a conclusive logical reason for holding that every ‘fact’ alleged must contain a latent value, that it claims not only to be ‘true’ but also implicitly to be better than any other judgment it was possible to make under the circumstances. Its maker was probably aware of this, and consciously preferred it to all alternatives that occurred to him; but, even where he did not think of any, they remain logically conceivable, and hence the actual judgment is only justifiable by its logical claim to be the best. Hence the value-relation and attitude can never be eradicated from even the merest and most stubborn ‘fact.’

Nor, conversely, can a recognition of fact be wholly eliminated from knowledge. Pure value exists as little as pure fact. It would be pure fancy or sheer postulation, and neither fancies nor postulates are elaborated without regards to fact. They are made to be realized, and when they are recognized as impossible their value is destroyed or impaired. It is said to be ‘no use’ to postulate the impossible or to cherish utterly unrealizable ideals. This recognition of fact, however, is always relative to the existing state of knowledge, and may be modified as knowledge grows. Knowers are often conscious of this, and assume their facts for the purpose of an inquiry or a science, hypothetically and experimentally. Hence it is not to be supposed that what is taken as fact and formally is ‘fact’ must remain so. It may turn out to be only a methodologically convenient ‘fiction.’ In general it may be concluded that since values inhere in all the ‘facts’ that are recognized as such, they are themselves facts, and that the antithesis between values and facts cannot be made absolute. Values are not simply fortuitous and gratuitous and should be eliminated by strict science, but are essential to cognitive process and compatible with any sort and degree of objectivity. Facts too are always reactions—upon prior facts—and are generated by their evaluation; and, moreover, these prior facts may have been merely hypothetical constructs recommended by their prospective value.

5. Value and existence.—It would seem to follow from relations between value and fact that value cannot be denied existence in any world that can exist for man, and this in several senses. (1) They are operative in and on human minds, and find expression in human acts and embodiment in human institutions; (2) they can occur in, and relative to, any universe of diction, however fanciful; (3) hence also in ideals and fictions, both of which are sometimes said to be incapable of real existence, and cited as objections to the connection of values with existence. But both must be so related to real existence as to be applicable to it and to conduce to its successful manipulation. Otherwise they become false ideals and futile fictions. Also an ideal which is recognized as impossible appears to lose pro tanto its obligatoriness and power of attraction. ‘Ultra posse nemo obligatur.’ Whether it is possible to infer the existence of a valuable object from a recognition of its value alone is a question of great importance for religion. For the objects of the religious consciousness appear to be largely or wholly of this kind, and the religious ‘proofs’ of their existence to be ultimately such inferences. They are, moreover, stubbornly persisted in, in spite of the protests of common sense against their validity, and have an important function also in the other sciences, in which they are not recognized so openly, but masquerade as ‘axioms’ and ‘a priori’ truths. In discussing in its generality this inference from value to existence, we should remember that all values are initially claims, which may fail of validation; if hence it will hardly seem valid to rest the reality of the valuable objects on what may be an unsound claim, viz., on the demand for them alone, unsupported and unconfirmed by experience. Logically we are to start with nothing but postulates. It may be legitimate to take them as methodological principles, but even then, they must be regarded as hypotheses to be assumed experimentally, until they have adequately approved and verified themselves by their applications to the actual problems which they concern. For example, it may be legitimate to extract from the actual pursuit of ends and of happiness by men the methodological assumptions that all things are to be regarded as tending towards a supreme all-embracing end and towards universal happiness (that is, everlasting and unalloyed pleasure unaccompanied by pain). … To justify such inferences two further assumptions would seem to be required, viz. that the whole of reality is conformable with human nature and bound to satisfy its demands. Now these assumptions, traditionally described as the axiom of the ultimate rationality of existence, are evidently themselves nothing but values for which existence is postulated, and, if they are to be admitted as axiomatic truths on their own assurance, it is difficult to see what limits can be set to the postulation of objects of desire. Even as it is, methodological postulates are given great, and perhaps undue, facilities in verifying themselves, because, so long as they work at all, their failures can always be ascribed to the imperfection of our knowledge, and so are not counted against them. Thus nothing short of total failure to predict the course of events need lead us to abandon the postulate of their ‘casual connection.’ Hence the testing of a value-postulate always, in a sense, presupposes its truth, though not in any sense that makes this presupposition alone a sufficient reason for regarding it as absolutely true; still it is better to get a postulated value confirmed by experience than to accept the mere recognition of value as an adequate guarantee, of its existence. What kinds and amounts of experimental confirmation are to be considered adequate to verify the existence of postulated objects of value will naturally depend on the specific subject matter, and, as in addition, the various values sought and got need to be in harmony with each other, and some may prefer one sort and others another, and as, moreover, the relevance of some of the values found to the existences to be proved may be called in question, opinions will probably long continue to differ on these matters.

6. Value and validity.—It follows from the above that the transition from value to validity is by no means a matter of course, though this is often assumed, both as regards ethical and as regards logical values. In both cases the motive is the difficulty of validating value-claims, which is a long, and indeed theoretically an unending, process. Hence the temptation to allege absolute and self-proving values which are independent of their working in experience. The absolute values, alleged however, are only formal claims, as comes out very clearly in Kant’s account of the absolute value of personality and of the ‘law’ of duty. The declaration that everybody should be treated as an end in himself is merely a recognition of the formal claim that every person makes to be so treated (even though he never is so treated and apparently could not be, in the actual order of things), which may serve as a definition of personality; while the moral ‘law’ that duty should be unconditionally fulfilled, is merely a paraphrase of the obligatoriness of the ought-value; in neither case is any light thrown on the questions how, concretely, anyone should be treated, or what, concretely, his ‘duties’ are. Similarly every judgment formally claims to be true, absolutely and unconditionally, and, as it mentions no restrictions to its claim, it may be said to be so; but, as this is so, however false a judgment turns out to be, it establishes no presumption in favor of its real truth. Thus it is quite possible, and indeed necessary, to enquire whether the values claimed are really possessed, and to question the validity of the values actually recognized. This indeed is one of the chief occupations of a critical philosophy. It means that the problem of value occurs also in the sphere of values; the antithesis of ‘ought’ and ‘is,’ which was supposed to differentiate value and fact, arises again over the value of values, when they are taken as facts for the purpose of assessing their value. The explanation perhaps is that error and failure are possible in all human operations, and hence also in the estimation of values. The values which are claimed are subject to revision and correction, and if it is decided that they are, but ought not to be, they can be called either ‘false’ or ‘wrong;’ for it is intrinsically as legitimate to use the value-predicates of logic as those of ethics to describe their failure. The difficulty of determining the precise connection between value and validity is, however, largely due to the obscurity of the notion of validity itself. We are accustomed to regard validity at first as an absolute and (theoretically) unquestionable degree of value and to illustrate it from the ideal validity of logic and ethics. On examination, however, this sense of validity appears to be merely formal, and to be nugatory or null as a guarantee of real value. For in both these sciences the valid and the valuable fall apart. Neither is the valuable necessarily valid, nor is the necessarily valuable. Every moral order makes extensive use of inferior moral motives; every science uses probable but invalid reasonings. Whether the ideal validity is ever reached, or would be valuable if it were, seems more than doubtful. Hence it seems proper to reduce the meaning of validity to a high or generally recognized and practically indisputable degree of value, and to make value determine validity, and not validity value.

7. Value and valuation.—If value is conferred upon an object by a personal attitude towards it, it is clear that all objects can be valued by being included in a valuation-process. Many objects, however, are so variously valued according to circumstances, or are so really important enough to be valued at all, that they are conceived as neutral or indifferent per se. So it is only if an object is constantly valued in a particular way that its value adheres to it and it comes to seem intrinsically valuable. For it then emancipates itself from the personal valuation and makes its valuation look like a mere recognition of an already existing value. Value acquires objectivity in other ways also. Thus the personal reaction expressed in a value-judgment carries a formal claim to universality, since every one initially regards himself as the measure of all things, until he is instructed by the dissent of others. This claim therefore maintains itself only while it is not disputed, and should not be taken as more than methodological. By the comparison of value-judgments it appears that different persons value very differently; hence many value-judgments being in dispute are regarded as ‘merely subjective.’ About others, many or all are found to agree, and these may thereby acquire every degree of ‘objectivity.’ Thus objects which have obtained social recognition as valuable come to rank as objective values. A value that has risen to be objective may then maintain itself without continuing to be valued, and even though, under the circumstances, its value may have been converted into the opposite. Thus, once a literary work is ranked as a ‘classic,’ its value remains uncontested, even though few care for it or even read it, except for examination purposes; and King Midas no doubt continued to think gold most valuable in spite of his inability to digest it. It cannot always be assumed therefore that, because a value is current and is recognized, it is fully functional, any more than it is right. There are then plenty of objective values, which any valuer encounters and has to recognize as given. But they may nevertheless all be conceived as products of valuation-processes, and as presupposing prior value-judgments. For when the valuation of an object, has been repeated and has grown familiar, the conscious and reflective value-judgment becomes superfluous, and an immediate apprehension of value results, just as immediate perception supersedes judgment about familiar objects of cognition. In other cases, it is true, this process does not occur in the history of the individual, but it can be traced in that of the race, whose achievements the individual inherits. An object may, for example, be apprehended as pleasant, beautiful or right, without a judgment or process of valuation; but the immediacy of its value-claim is no bar to any inquiry into why it is so valued, how it has come to be so, and whether it ought to be so, and really is as beautiful, right, or pleasant as it seems to be. Hence the values which are psychically data, and psychologically immediate, may always be logically mediated and made objects of valuation-processes and explicit value-judgments. They then function as facts to be evaluated.

8. Transvaluations.—The process of reflective reconsideration of given values continually leads to changes in their status. Hence ‘transvaluations’ must be regarded as normal and entirely legitimate occurrences in every sphere of values, though they are not everywhere as socially prominent as in the annual changes of the fashions.

As Dewey says, “All valuation is in some degree a revaluation. Nietzsche would probably not have made so much of a sensation, but he would have been within the limits of wisdom, if he confined himself to the assertion that all judgment, in the degree in which it is critically intelligent, is a transvaluation of prior values.”

One sufficient reason for this is that, strictly speaking, it is not psychologically possible to repeat a valuation. The second time the valuation has lost its novelty, and the delight of discovery is gone; it is acquiring familiarity and beginning to breed contempt or indifference; or again it is growing easier, and the resistance to it is diminishing, as habituation renders it less repugnant. Moreover, valuations necessarily vary according to the changes in the organic needs which condition them. His tenth penny bun will neither taste as good nor be valued as highly by a hungry boy as his first. No doubt these changes in value are little noticed because many of them are slight, unimportant, and ephemeral; but they would anyhow be obscured by the general bias in favor of stability. Unless it is discounted, it will hardly be recognized that stable values are exceptions rather than the rule. They bulk large because they are attended to and selected. Their stability is always more or less a construction for methodological purposes, like the extraction of stable objects out of the flux of happenings. It is always to some extent a fiction, because it is never absolute, and because there are no eternal values, none that endure unchanged and untransformed by new valuations forever, unless it be life itself, so long as that lasts. It may even become a dangerous illusion, if its character is not understood, and it is made an obstacle to salutary and necessary changes. In such changes the old values always condemn the new, and vice versa, often with tragic results. Transvaluations are the stuff out of which heroes and martyrs of ‘reform’ or ‘loyalty’ are made, at every step in human progress. The question of what is the right value is unanswerable for the time being, because it is precisely the question which is being fought out. But we can predict that such changes will always be opposed, for there is always a conservative and a progressive party with respect to any change. These party attitudes are essentially valuations, as any one can discover for himself, if he is open-minded, and also distracted enough to have a ‘cross-bench mind’ and to feel the force of both the opposite contentions. Nor are these the only conflicts which may lead to a change of values. Every society, and nearly every soul, is full of conflicts between opposing valuations, and any variation in their relative strengths may entail a change in values. The chief agency which blinds us to these transvaluations is the stability of words; for these change their form much less rapidly than their meaning.

9. Conclusions.—The above survey of the problems of value may be regarded as confirming most of the preliminary points noticed in #I. The philosophic importance of the subject has been attested by the great variety and universal prevalence of values. The provisional definition of value as essentially a personal attitude, as a recognition of the supremacy of the category of personality, has maintained itself and proved a clue to the labyrinth of values. It also renders somewhat nugatory the psychological debates of the schools of Meinong and Ehrenfels as to whether values are rooted in feeling, will or desire. For a personal attitude is a concern of the whole man and not of psychological abstractions. If, however, it is thought necessary to pick one among such psychological phrases, it is probably best to say that value is a personal attitude, of welcome or the reverse, towards an object of interest. For few are likely to dispute that ‘interests’ are relative to personality. This relativity, however, is not to be regarded as importing any objectionable subjectivity into values, just because it proves to be the source also of their objectivity. For it turns out that all objects are pervaded by values and constituted for man by valuations, and hence their avowed values may just as rightfully belong to them as the values latent in their other qualities. Accordingly the opposition between value and fact breaks down. ‘Facts’ are themselves values, values established in the endeavor to analyze out the factor of givenness contained in experience, and presupposing purposive manipulation of apparent ‘facts.’ They are thus ‘made’ things, though they are not made out of nothing, but out of previously recognized facts which are subjected to criticism to determine what they ‘really are.’ Values are also acts in so far as they presuppose valuations, purposive manipulations of date, and judgments; also in that they have prospective reference to action, and are intended to guide it. Accordingly the belief that values belong to the practical side of life is well founded, and even truer than it seems; for in ultimate analysis, logic also is a science of values. Its ‘theoretic’ values presuppose purposes, selections, choices, and judgments which are acts and do not differ in kind from those which are openly ‘practical.’ It is clear also that the notion of value as something gratuitously superadded upon fact must be modified, if it is interpreted as meaning that values are something unreal, artificial, and optional. Reality in its fullness contains and exhibits values, and they are ejected from it only by an effort of abstraction, which is relative to certain restricted purposes, and is never quite successful. Values therefore are not to be regarded as gratuitous additions to reality, made out of the superfluity of human perversity, but as its highest qualities and the culminating points of its significance for us.