VALUE AS GENERIC. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF VALUE
We return, then, to the problem of the nature of value. Value is more than
the total utility of a good, or the marginal utility of a good, to an
individual, and it is more than a ratio of exchange. Economic value is a
species of the _genus_ value, which runs through other social sciences, as
ethics, aesthetics, jurisprudence, etc. Sometimes these various values are
so intermingled that it is impossible to tell them apart: thus, what kind
of value did a human life have in early Germanic jurisprudence, when a
_wergeld_ was accepted as compensation for killing a man?
Ethical and legal values we recognize as something very different from the
feelings of single individuals, and also as something very different from
abstract ratios. In fact, the idea of quantitative ratios in connection
with moral values is somewhat startling--though we do apply the "times
judgment" pretty far, and say, "he's twice the man the other fellow is," or
"this isn't half as bad as that." But we do not go into refinements,
ordinarily, and try to make the ratios more exact, as by saying that the
value of this noble deed is three and three eighths times as great as that.
The quantitative measure of legal value is a more familiar idea. Thus, a
man gets five dollars fine for a plain drunk, and twenty-five dollars for
getting drunk and "cussin' around" (a scale of "prices" recently
established in the court of a Missouri Justice of the Peace), or three
years in the penitentiary for one crime, and ten years for another. Here we
have quantitative measurements of values, but still it is rather strange to
our thought to speak of a ratio of exchange between them. We have no
occasion to exchange them ordinarily, even though it may happen that a
criminal, in contemplating the chances of success in two alternative
depredations, will weigh the penalties to which he would be liable in the
two cases against each other; and, indeed, the law of supply and demand
holds here also (though inversely applied, for we are dealing with negative
values). If a particular crime (as "Black-Handing") increases rapidly, we
increase the penalty on it to bring it to a stop. But this generalization
of the idea of value ought to make clear one thing: exchange, at least in
its ordinary meaning,[119] is not the essence of value. Exchange is a
factor in estimating value only in economic life. And even there, values
are often estimated without actual exchange, and the art of accountancy has
arisen for that purpose.
An exhaustive study of this generic aspect of value lies, of course,
outside the scope of this book. Ehrenfels, Meinong, and others,[120] have
made fruitful investigations in the psychology of value, with primary
reference to the problems of ethical value, while Gabriel Tarde,
approaching the subject with a sociological, rather than psychological or
ethical interest, has also made some illuminating suggestions. The most
comprehensive work in English, from the psychological point of view, is by
Professor W. M. Urban, whose _Valuation_ appeared in 1909. His interest is
also chiefly in ethical, rather than economic, value. Reference has been
made in an earlier footnote[121] to Simmel's views. There is, in fact, a
rich literature on the subject. The theory of economic value to be
developed in this volume, however, is relatively independent of many of the
theories treated in this literature, since, as will appear later, the
question I wish to raise is, not so much as to the fundamental nature of
value, in its psychological aspects, but rather, as to _what_ individual
values (and in what _relations_) are significant for the explanation of the
particular sort of value with which the economist is concerned. The
exposition which follows will be clearer, however, if a psychological
theory of value be premised, and the discussion of social economic value
will gain from a consideration of ethical and other forms of value, in
their sociological aspects, as treated by some of the writers named. The
rest of this chapter will be concerned with the problem of value as it
presents itself in individual psychology, and later chapters will treat the
problem of social value.
_For_ the experience, and at the time of the experience, a value is a
_quality_ of the object valued.[122] Values are "tertiary qualities" (to
borrow an expression from Professor Santayana's _Life of Reason_[123]),
just as real and objective as the "primary" and "secondary" qualities. We
speak of a gloomy day, or a fearful sight, and the gloom is a quality of
the day, and the fearfulness is really in the object--for the experience.
When we have sufficiently reflected upon the situation to be able to
separate subject and object, and to divest the object of the quality, and
put the fear in ourselves, or the gloom in our own emotional life, then the
experience is already past, and the value, as the value of that object, has
ceased to be. We are already over our fear when we can separate it from
the object. These qualities are intensive qualities, may be greater or less
in degree, i.e., are quantities.[124] And they must first _exist_, as such
quantities, before any reflective process of evaluation and comparison can
put them in a scale, and make clear their _relative_ values.[125]
So much for the experience as an immediate fact. If we break up the
experience analytically, however, we of course first distinguish subject
and object, and we throw the "tertiary quality," of value, over to the side
of the subject. It is a phase of the subject's emotional life. In this
analytical process we necessarily make abstractions,--the elements with
which we finally come out, put together in a synthesis, will not give us
our concrete experienced value again. But, recognizing this, we may still
distinguish what seem to be the more important aspects of the value
experience, on its psychological side, and set forth the criteria by which
a value is to be recognized. First of all, then, value has its roots in the
emotional-volitional side of mind. A pure intellect, if we may imagine it,
would understand logical necessity, would contemplate the "world of
description," but could know nothing of the "world of appreciation," or of
values.[126] (It is precisely because intellect is never "pure," because it
always has its emotional accompaniment and presuppositions, that we can
objectively communicate our values, as urged in chapter VIII.) But what
phases of the emotional-volitional side of mind are most significant? For
hedonism, an abstract element, a _feeling_, a pleasure or a pain, is the
essence of the value,--in fact, _is_ the value. Critics of hedonism, as
Ehrenfels[127] and Professor Davenport,[128] have made _desire_, rather
than feeling, the worth-fundamental. The psychology lying back of this
conception represents a great advance over the passive, associationalistic,
element psychology of the hedonists, and is especially significant as
emphasizing the impulsive, dynamic nature of value, but it is still too
abstract,--indeed, it abstracts from a very fundamental aspect of the value
as _experienced_, namely, the feeling itself. Moreover, in many cases,
value may be great with desire at a minimum, else we must say that value
ceases when an object is _possessed_, and desire is satisfied. I may value
my friend greatly, may be vividly conscious of that value, and yet, because
he _is_ my friend, because I already possess him, may find the element of
desire a minor phase in his value, even if it be present at all.[129]
Hedonism abstracts a prominent and important phase of the value experience,
and while it errs in making that phase the whole of the experience, and
while it has sadly misinterpreted that phase (for feelings of value cannot
be reduced to pleasure and pain feelings), still we cannot afford to
disregard it. Just because the hedonistic analysis is crude, it has to
seize on something obvious. If we must choose between feeling and desire
as _the_ value-fundamental, we must, I think, with Meinong and Urban,[130]
settle on feeling rather than desire. Our point will be, however, to
protest against the identification of value with either of these, and to
distinguish both of them as _moments_, or phases, in value, and value
itself as a moment or phase in the total psychosis. Value is not to be
understood apart from what Urban calls its "presuppositions."[131] Every
value presupposes a going on of activity, and is intimately linked with the
total psychosis,--a moving focal point of clear consciousness, with a
surrounding area of vaguer processes, gradually shading off into the
subconscious and unconscious at the borders. Every value is linked with the
whole body of ideas, emotions, habits, instincts, impulses, which, in their
organic totality, we call the personality. Back of the value stands a long
history, which persists into the present in the form of dispositions and
activities, of which we are unconscious so long as they are unimpeded, but
which spring into consciousness at once if arrested. If the object be one
that appeals to simple biological impulses, we may, as a rule, safely
abstract from most of these "presuppositions," and centre attention upon
the biological impulse and its accompanying feelings and ideas. But as we
rise to objects that appeal to wider and higher interests, the essential
presuppositions include more and more till, in vital ethical values,
virtually the whole personality is essentially involved. Of these
presuppositions, or "funded meaning," we need not be conscious in any
detail. The value, which is the emotional-volitional aspect of this funded
meaning, is, of course, sufficient, so long as it is unchallenged by an
opposing value, for the motivation of our activity--which is the essential
function of values. The presuppositions tend to become explicit when the
value is challenged by another value, though they never come entirely into
light, in the case of the higher values, and to make them even
approximately clear is the work of long conflict in an introspective mind.
A frequent result of conflicts among values is a sort of mechanical "haul
and strain," producing "more heat than light." The question of the
relations among values is a separate topic, which will be discussed for its
own sake later. We are here interested in it as making clearer the nature
of the "presuppositions" of value.
Now in the value, as has been said, we may distinguish both desire and
feeling. The feelings, in Professor Dewey's phrase, are "absolutely
pluralistic" and cannot be reduced to any one type, or two types, as
pleasure and pain. The desires may be either intense or slight, without
reference to the amount of the value, depending on circumstances. As
stated, if we _have_ the object we value, the element of desire must be
reduced to an _attitude_, to a disposition to desire, in the event the
object should be lost. It remains a vague background of concern, of
"anxiety lest the object escape," capable, of course, of springing into
full intensity if need be. In aesthetic values, and in the values of
mystical repose, we have cases where desire is,[132] thus, at a minimum.
Strictly speaking, desire, as a conscious fact, has in it always a negative
aspect, a privative aspect,--we desire when we are incomplete, when we
lack. It is this negative aspect of desire which the Greek philosophers, as
Aristotle, stressed, and which has led absolute idealism to eliminate
desire from its conception of the Absolute Spirit. But desire has also a
positive or active aspect, and in this aspect it remains in all values.
Where the activity is perfectly unified,--a situation which we sometimes
approximate,--we may not be conscious of desire, even though intense
activity is going on. Since, however, the human mind is rarely in this
state, and never completely in it, we may hold that desire, in its
privative aspect, is always to some degree present, if only as a vague
uneasiness. And as a disposition to activity, if the value should be
threatened, desire is always present.
Conversely, desire may be at a maximum, and feeling at a minimum. If we do
_not_ possess the object, if we are striving for it, while there may be and
doubtless is feeling in connection with the desire, it cannot, obviously,
be the _same_ feeling that we would experience if the object were present
and quenching the desire. Indeed, it may be held that much of the
feeling-accompaniment of intense desire is extraneous to the value-moment:
that it is, in fact, kinaesthetic feeling, due to the stress of opposing
muscular reactions, etc. The disposition to feel is there, and, if the
object of desire be one that is familiar, the mere anticipation of it may
call up traces of the feeling that its presence has in the past produced
and will produce again. But the feeling element in such a situation is a
minor phase.
Finally, unless we mean to insist that all the objects which one values,
and whose values motivate one's conduct, are present in consciousness all
the time, we must recognize that neither desire nor feeling need be actual,
present, conscious facts, for the value to be effective. It may happen that
the object of value is one reserved for later use, and that it is not
threatened. In such a case we may accord its value intellectual
recognition, with desire and feeling both at a minimum, and that
recognition may serve as a term in a logical process which may lead to a
practical conclusion of significance for action. Or, a value may form part
of the unconscious "presupposition" of another value, which is consciously
felt at the moment. Mind is economical. Consciousness is not wasted, when
there is no function to be served by it. The essential thing about value is
that it motivate our conduct. If a satisfactory set of habits be built up
about a value, it may serve this purpose perfectly, without coming into
consciousness very often. But both desire and feeling must be potentially
there.
A further element is necessary. Meinong insists upon an existential
judgment, a judgment that the object valued is real, as essential to
value.[133] Gabriel Tarde[134] makes a similar contention, holding that
belief, as well as desire, is involved in value, and that a diminution of
either means a lessening of the value. Urban's opinion, which seems to me
the correct one, is that we need not and cannot go so far as this.[135] In
many cases such judgments are explicit and the value could not exist if the
object were explicitly judged unreal. But the mere unconscious assumption
or presumption of the reality of the object, the mere "reality-feeling," is
sufficient,--as is obvious enough from the fact that we value the objects
of our imagination. We shall often find, especially in the field of the
social values to which we shall shortly turn, that Tarde's contention is
highly significant, particularly with reference to economic values, and
there, particularly in the matter of credit phenomena.[136] But explicit
affirmation, even there, is not necessary, provided the question of reality
is not raised at all. A "reality-feeling," however, is essential. It should
be noticed, too, that this "reality-feeling" is an essentially emotional,
rather than intellectual, fact. It is the emotional "tang" which
distinguishes _belief_ from mere ideation, and, if it be present, the
ideation and explicit judgment may be dispensed with.
In the value experience, as a conscious experience, and from the structural
side, we may distinguish these phases: feeling, desire, and the
reality-feeling, each present at least to a minimal degree. And yet it
seems to me that we have in none of these, considered as phases _in
consciousness_, the most essential aspect of value. For our purposes the
structural aspect is not the most significant. The _functional_ aspect is
of more importance. And the function of values is the function of
_motivation_. That value is greatest which counts for most in motivating
activity. A well-established and unquestioned value, which in a concrete
situation has the _pas_ over all the others concerned, has little need to
awaken the emotional intensity that other, less certain, values, whose
position in the scale is as yet undetermined, may require. A girl is
arranging a dinner-party. Whom shall she invite? Well, her chum of course
must be there. No question arises. There is no need for conscious emotion.
One or two others are settled upon almost as readily, and with as little
emotional intensity. But now comes the problem _at the margin_! For eight
or ten others are almost equally desirable, and there are only six places.
The lower values, compared with each other, must show themselves for what
they are, must come vividly into consciousness, must be felt and desired
_in order that_ they may be _compared_,--not in order that they may be!
From the functional side, then, the test of a value is its influence upon
activity. The "common denominator," or, better, the abstract essence, of
values, is, not feeling, nor desire, but power in motivation, and the
expression of this is of course the activity itself. The _functional_
significance of the consciously realized desire and feeling aspects of
values comes in when values are to be compared and weighed against one
another, and--a phase that was stressed in a preceding section, and will
again be adverted to shortly--when values are to be _shared_ consciously by
different individuals, when they are to be communicated and
discussed,--that is to say, are to become objects of a group consciousness.
The significant thing about value, then, from this functional point of view
is its dynamic quality. Value is a _force_, a motivating force. But now we
must revert to our original point of view,--the total situation. We have,
by an analytical process, sundered subject and object, and then, within the
subject, have discriminated phases which psychological analysis reveals.
But in the course of activity, these elements are not discriminated. The
value is, not in the subject, but in the _object_. The object is an
embodiment of the force. It has power over us, over our actions. If the
object be a person, we are under his control--to the extent of the value.
If the object be a thing controlled by another person, we are subject to
his control--to the extent of the value. I do not wish to be understood as
picking out this abstract phase of value as the whole of the story, or
thinking that it is possible for value to exist in this abstract form.
Qualities are never separate. But I do contend that this is the essential
and universal element in values, and that for an individual engaged in the
active conduct of life, this aspect is so significant that it may often be
the sole feature to engage his attention--because it is the sole feature
that _need_ engage his attention for the activity to go on in harmony with
his values. Here, then, is value "stripped for racing": _a quantity of
motivating force, power over the actions of a man, embodied in an object_.
All the other phases, in the course of the active experience itself, may be
relegated to the sphere of the implicit.
A necessary limitation has been definitely indicated in what has gone
before, but, to avoid misunderstanding, it may be well to indicate it more
explicitly. Not every form of impulse is to be counted a value. Every state
of consciousness is motor, and tends to pass into action, even vague,
undefined feelings, and half-conscious fancies. A value must have its
organic presuppositions, as indicated before, and must be embodied in an
_object_. The objects of value may be infinitely various: they may be
economic goods, they may be persons, they may be activities, they may be
other values, they may be ideal objects, the creatures of our imaginations,
they may be social utopias or the Kingdom of Heaven. But there must be an
object, and the value is a quality of the object. But, functionally, the
essential thing about this value is its dynamic character.
Values are positive and negative.[137] A "fearful sight" repels us, has a
negative value, tends, to the extent of its strength, to make us withdraw.
A bad act, an ugly woman, a cruel man,--here we have negative values.
Little need be said further with reference to this point. They alike are
motivating forces, the positive values attracting us, the negative values
repelling us.
The question of the relations among values we shall discuss rather briefly,
not that it is unimportant, but that much of it is familiar. Values may be
complementary--as when several objects are all essential to one another if
any of them are to be of use. Values may depend on other values, as the
value of the means depends on the value of the end, which is its essential
"presupposition." Values may antagonize each other, and here two cases are
to be distinguished, which differ so much in degree that the difference may
be regarded as qualitative. Values may be in their nature quite compatible,
so that nothing in their character prevents the realization of both, but
there may not be _room_ enough for both, owing to the limitation of our
resources,--as when the young lady of our illustration had only six seats
at her dinner, and so was obliged to exclude some of her friends. But the
values may be qualitatively incompatible. We may be unable to realize them
both because the one involves a different sort of _self_ from the self that
could realize the other. This is the typical case in ethical values, where
the presuppositions, especially in ethical crises, involve the whole
personality. In case of such conflicts, say between the value of Sabbath
observance and the allurement of Sunday baseball in the case of an
orthodox "fan," we may have, as before indicated, a mere mechanical haul
and stress, in which one or the other wins by sheer force, to the very
considerable discomfort of the uneasy victim. But the conflict may lead to
a reexamination of the presuppositions of each value, to a process of
bringing each into more organic relation to the whole system of values. In
this process, other values may be called into play, may reenforce one or
the other of the two alternative values. And, after such a process, both
values may be different from what they were. There may emerge some higher
value which comprehends them both, or one may be reduced to a minor place,
and the other may prevail. Values are no more permanent than any other
phase of the mental life. Constant transformations, even though not always
fundamental transformations, take place.
There is another case which is so familiar to economists that it need
merely be adverted to. Where objects of value are indivisible, we must take
one _or_ the other, if there be a conflict. But, in the case of
qualitatively compatible objects, a different situation is the rule. We may
have _part_ of one, _and_ part of the other, and the question arises as to
_how much_ of each. Here the Austrian analysis gives us an answer, which,
when we generalize it, despite its antiquated psychology, may be accepted
with little modification.[138] The law of "diminishing utility" as we
increase the increments of each object, holds, and the problem is that of
a marginal equilibrium. The young lady of our illustration would certainly
have her chum if she have only one dinner, but if she have a number of
dinners, the "marginal utility" of her chum's presence may sink so low that
she may find the presence of some one hitherto excluded more valuable at
the sixth or seventh dinner. And, indeed, our conception of qualitatively
incompatible values must not be made too absolute. Human nature is
accommodating and practical, and a little wickedness may be tolerated by a
good man for the sake of a value which would not induce him to tolerate
more. He may find the "final increment" of his Sabbath observance lower
than the "initial increment" of his Sunday baseball.
Two antagonistic values may cohere in the same object. Our _fearful_ sight
may also be an _interesting_ sight. And the initial increment of the
interest may outweigh the initial increment of the fear. But, as the
interest is partially satisfied, the fear may grow, until it finally
overcomes the interest, and we flee. Indeed, it may be laid down as the law
of negative values that as the "supply" increases (_caeteris paribus_) the
negative value rises--the obverse of the law of "diminishing (positive)
utility"--a doctrine recognized, in one of its aspects, in the economic
doctrine of "increasing (psychic) costs."
A further point is to be noted in the case (especially though not
exclusively) of these qualitatively incompatible values, where a
quantitative compromise of the sort described is worked out between them.
The personality itself may change, through a growing familiarity with the
negative value. It may cease to be a negative value, and may become
positive. And if, as may happen, this change takes place quickly, in the
course of a moral crisis, our process would be, first, a gradually
increasing negative value, as the "supply" of the objects of negative value
is increased; next, a sudden shift from a high negative to a high positive
value, as the personality changes, and we come to love what we have hated;
then a gradual sinking of the new positive value as the supply is still
further increased.[139]
The case of the conflict between qualitatively incompatible values is the
typical case of the conflict between "duty and pleasure," between
"obligation and inclination," etc. Certain values present themselves as
"categorical imperatives," as "absolute universals," and refuse, or tend to
refuse, any compromise. Our analysis would tend to cast doubt on the
"absolute absoluteness" of these values (taking absolute in the sense in
which it has been used in the history of ethics, as distinguished from the
sense in which I have earlier used it in this book[140]). The most
significant thing about these "absolute" values from the standpoint of our
present inquiry, seems to be the resistance which they offer to the
"marginal process." They seem to insist that their objects be taken _in
toto_ or not at all. They tend to universalize themselves, attaching to the
remotest possible increment of the "supply" quite as strongly as to the
initial increments. They refuse to place their objects in a scale of
"diminishing utility." Such values are those which have been so fortified
by habit and education that they are vital parts of the personality, and
that any compromise where they are involved seems treason to the inmost
self. If we wish to make precise analogies between our social and our
individual values, we shall find here the nearest approach in the
individual field to those fundamental legal values which determine the
inmost character of the state, and which present themselves as "practical
absolutes" in the legal value system, e.g., democracy, or personal
liberty--or fundamental sociological values, like the "color line."
It will be noted, further, that our analysis draws no hard and fast lines
between the different sorts of value, ethical, economic, esthetic,
religious, personal, etc., in the sphere of the individual's psychology.
Such lines do not exist. There are shadings, gradations, quantitative
differences which become distinct enough to justify a classification of
values. But values never become, on the functional side, so fundamentally
different in character that there can be no reduction of them to the
"common denominator" of power in motivation. And especially is that a false
abstraction which would separate the different sorts of value, ethical,
economic, etc., into separate, water-tight systems, and let each system
have its own equilibrium and its own interactions, uninfluenced by the
other systems. The fact is, simply, that ethical and esthetic values may
constantly reinforce economic values, economic values reinforce ethical
values, or economic and ethical or other values may oppose each other, and
marginal equilibria are constantly worked out between them. Or, better,
_among_ them, for, while in the consciousness of the moment we may have
only _two_ opposing values in mind, and may have our equilibrium apparently
between just two, yet in fact the whole system of values is constantly
tending toward equilibrium, ethical, religious, economic, esthetic, all
asserting themselves, and finding their place in the scale, and getting
their "margins" fixed,--extensive margins and intensive margins. But this
is so obviously merely a generalization of well-known economic laws, that
further detail is needless. One point may be mentioned, however. _Price_ is
to be generalized in the same way as value. Since this equilibrium among
values holds, then any object of value may be used to _measure_ the value
of any other. If the presence of her chum at the fifth dinner is in
equilibrium with the presence of some hitherto excluded friend, for our
young lady, then the one is the _price_ of the other, and measures her
value. A material good which one takes in return for an immoral act is the
price of that act. And if, in a moment of fundamental ethical crisis, a man
surrenders a cherished purpose about which his whole life has been built,
to the allurement of some dazzling temptation, it is much more than a
metaphor to speak of "the price of a soul."[141]
The Austrian analysis was essentially faulty, then, not so much in its
hedonistic psychology--for it can be freed from that[142]--as in its
abstraction of the economic from other aspects of the individual's value
system. Equilibria among economic values will not explain even the
individual's economic behavior--do not by any means constitute a
self-complete system. This abstraction has been noted before.[143] The
other abstraction of the Austrians, the abstraction of the individual from
his vital, organic connection with the social whole, we shall treat more
fully later.
So far, we have kept pretty strictly within the field of "individual
psychology" and "individual values." But we shall find, when we come to the
field of the social values, that essentially the same laws hold. On the
_functional_ side, the analogy between the individual mind and the social
mind is a very close one, and the correspondences on the _structural_ side
are numerous also. While we shall not try to find analogies in the social
field for all these laws of individual value, it is not because of any
difficulty that the problem presents, but rather, because it is unnecessary
for the vindication of our thesis to do so.
FOOTNOTES:
[119] See the discussion of Simmel's contention, _supra_, p. 19, n.
[120] Ehrenfels, C., _System der Werttheorie_, Leipzig, 1897; Kreibig, J.
C., _Psychologische Grundlegung eines Systems der Werttheorie_, Vienna,
1902; Kallen, H. M., "Dr. Montague and the Pragmatic Notion of Value,"
_Jour. of Philosophy_, etc., Sept., 1909; Montague, W. P., "The True, the
Good and the Beautiful, from a Pragmatic Standpoint," _Ibid._, April 29,
1909; Meinong, A., _Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie_,
Graz, 1894; Paulsen, Friedrich, _Introduction to Philosophy_, and _System
of Ethics_; Stuart, H. W., "The Hedonistic Interpretation of Subjective
Value," _Jour. of Pol. Econ._, vol. IV, "Valuation as a Logical Process,"
in Dewey's _Studies in Logical Theory_, Chicago, 1903; Shaw, C. C., "The
Theory of Value, and its Place in the History of Ethics," _International
Jour. of Ethics_, vol. XI; Slater, T., "Value in Moral Theology and
Political Economy," _Irish Eccles. Rec._, ser. 4, vol. X, Dublin, 1901;
Tufts, J. H., "Ethical Value," _Jour. of Philosophy_, etc., vol. XIX;
Baldwin's _Dictionary of Philosophy_, etc., _s. v._ "Worth" (article by W.
M. Urban); Simmel, G., _Philosophie des Geldes_, Leipzig, 1900, "A Chapter
in the Philosophy of Value," _Amer. Jour. of Sociology_, vol. V; Urban, W.
M., _Valuation_, London, 1909. These titles are representative of an
extensive literature on the subject.
[121] _Supra_, p. 19, n.
[122] I am indebted to Professor John Dewey for many valuable suggestions
and criticisms in connection with this part of my study. My more general
obligations to him will be manifest to any one who is familiar with his
epoch-marking point of view. Economic, sociological and political
philosophy have, in my judgment, more to learn from him than from any other
contemporary philosopher.
[123] Pp. 141-42.
[124] _Cf._ Gabriel Tarde, _Psychologie Economique_, vol. I, p. 63, and
Urban, _Valuation_, p. 78.
[125] Urban, _op. cit._, p. 32.
[126] Paulsen, Friedrich, _Ethics_, _passim_.
[127] _System der Werttheorie_, vol. I, chap. I.
[128] _Op. cit._, p. 311.
[129] _Cf._ Urban, _op. cit._, p. 36; Meinong, _op. cit._, pp. 15-16.
[130] Meinong, _op. cit._, pt. I, chap. I; Urban, _op. cit._, pp. 38-39.
[131] _Op. cit._, pp. 14-16, and following chapter.
[132] Urban, _op. cit._, p. 39.
[133] _Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie_, Graz, 1894,
pt. I, chap. I, esp. p. 21.
[134] "La psychologie en economie politique," _Revue Philosophique_, vol.
XII, pp. 337-38.
[135] _Op. cit._, pp. 41 _et seq._
[136] See chapter XVI, _infra_.
[137] The German, with its facility in compounding, offers a convenient
nomenclature here: _Wert_ and _Unwert_. _Cf._ Ehrenfels, _op. cit._, for a
brief discussion of negative values (pp. 53-54).
[138] For this generalization, see Urban, _op. cit._, chap. VI; Ehrenfels,
_op. cit._, vol. II, chap. III, esp. p. 86.
[139] An analogue in the field of social values is readily suggested. A new
heresy starts, opposed by the dominant element in the social will, _i.e._,
having a negative value for the majority. As the heresy increases, the
negative value rises till, in a crucial point, the tide turns, and the
heretics become the dominant element in the society. Then--since their
position is far from certain--new recruits to the heresy have a high
positive value, but, as the heresy still further spreads, additional
recruits count for less and less.
[140] _Cf._ Urban, _op. cit._, _passim_; Ehrenfels, _op. cit._, vol. I, pp.
43 _et seq._; Mackenzie, criticism of Ehrenfels and Meinong in _Mind_,
Oct., 1899. _Cf._ also, Wicksteed, _The Common Sense of Political Economy_,
London, 1910, pp. 402 _et seq._
[141] The generalization of the idea of price, while not original with
Wicksteed, is interestingly developed by him in chaps. I and II of his
_Common Sense of Political Economy_, London, 1910.
[142] Davenport, _op. cit._, pp. 303-11, gives a good summary of economic
discussions of hedonism. His own view is that the Austrians are not
essentially bound up with hedonism.
[143] _Supra_, chaps. VI and VII.