VI
In the foregoing pages we have consistently used the expressions "ethical and economic judgment" and "judgment of valuation" as synonymous. This may have seemed to the reader something very like a begging of the question from the outset, as taking for granted that very judgmental character of our valuational experience which it was the professed object of our discussion to establish. We are thus called upon very briefly to consider, first of all, the relations which subsist between the consciousness of value and the process which we have described as that of valuation. This will enable us, in the second place, to determine the logical function which belongs to the consciousness of value in the general economy of life. The consciousness of value is a perfectly definite and distinctive psychical fact mediated by a doubtless highly complex set of psychical or ultimately physiological conditions. As such it admits of descriptive analysis, and in a complete theory of value such descriptive analysis should certainly find a place. It would doubtless throw much light upon the origin of valuation as a process, and of valuing as an attitude, and admirably illustrate the view of the function of the consciousness of value to which a logical study of valuation as a process seems to lead us. This problem in analysis belongs, however, to psychology, and therefore lies apart from our present purpose; nor is it necessary to the establishment of our present view to undertake it. It is necessary for our purpose only to suggest, for purposes of identification, a brief description of the value-consciousness, and to indicate its place in the process of reflective thought.
The consciousness of value may best be described, by way of first approximation, in the language of the Austrian economists as a sense of the "importance" to oneself of a commodity or defined moral purpose. It belongs to the agent's attitude of survey or recapitulation which ensues upon the completion of the judgment-process and is mediated by attention to the ethical or economic object in its newly defined character of specific conduciveness to the well-being of the self. The commodity, in virtue of its ascertained physical properties, is adapted to certain modes of use or consumption which, through valuation of the commodity, have come to be accepted as desirable. The moral act likewise has been approved by virtue of its having certain definite sociological tendencies, or being conducive to the welfare and happiness of a friend. Thus commodity or moral act, as the case may be, has a determinate complexity of meaning which has been judged as, in one sense, expansive of the self, and the value-consciousness we may identify as that sense of the valued object's importance which is mediated by recognition of it as the bearer of this complexity of concrete meaning. The meaning is, as we may say, "condensed" or "compacted" into the object as given in sense-perception, and because the meaning stands for expansion of the self, the object in taking it up into itself receives the character of importance as a valued object.
The sense of importance thus is expressive of an attitude upon the agent's part. The concrete meanings which make up the content of the object's importance would inevitably, if left to themselves, prompt overt action. The commodity would forthwith be applied to its new use or the moral act would be performed. The self would, as we may express it, possess itself of the spiritual energies resident in the chosen purpose. The attitude of survey, however, inhibits this action of the self and the sense of importance is the resulting emotional apprehension of the value of the object hereby brought to recognition. Now, it should be carefully observed that the particular concrete emotions appropriate to the details of the valued purpose are not what we here intend. The purpose may spring from some impulse of self-interest, hatred, patriotism, or love, and the psychical material of its presentation during the agent's survey will be the varied complex of qualitative emotion that comes from inhibition of the detailed activities which make up the purpose as a whole. So also the apprehension of the physical object of economic valuation is largely, if not altogether, emotional in its psychical constitution. Psychologically these emotions are the purpose—they are the "stuff" of which the purpose as a psychical fact occurring in time is made. But we must bear in mind that it is not the purpose as a psychical fact that is the object of the agent's valuing—any more than is the tool with which one cuts perceived as a molecular mass or as an aggregation of centers of ether-stress. As a cognized object of value the purpose is, in our schematic terminology, a source of energy for the increase of the self, and thus the consciousness of value is the perfectly specific emotion arising from restraint put upon the self in its movement of appropriation of this energy. In contrast with the concrete emotions which are the substance of the purpose as presented, the consciousness of value may be called a "formal" emotion or the emotion of a typical reflective attitude.
The valuing attitude we may then describe as that of "resolution" on the part of the self to adhere to the finished purpose which it now surveys, with a view to exploitation of the purpose. The connection between the valuation-process and the consciousness of value may be stated thus: The valuation-process works out (and necessarily in cognitive, objective terms) the purpose which is valued in the agent's survey. But this development of the purpose is at the same time determination of the "energetic" self to acceptance of the purpose that shall be worked out. Thus the valuation-process is the source of the consciousness of value in the twofold way (1) of defining the object valued, and (2) of determining the self to the attitude of resolution to adhere to it and exploit it.[158] The consciousness of value is the apprehension of an object in its complete functional character as a factor in experience.
The function of the consciousness of value must now be very briefly considered. The phenomenon is a striking one, and apparently, as the economists especially have insisted, of much practical importance in the conduct of life.[159] And yet on our account of the phenomenon, as it may appear, the problem of assigning to it a function must be, to say the least, difficult. For the consciousness of value is, we have held, emotional, and, on the conception of emotion in general which we have taken for granted throughout our present discussion, this mode of being conscious is merely a reflex of a state of tension in activity. As such it merely reports in consciousness a process of motor co-ordination already going on and in the nature of the case can contribute nothing to the outcome.
Now if it were in a direct way as immediately felt emotion that the consciousness of value must be functional if functional at all, then the problem might well be given up; but it would be a serious blunder to conceive the problem in this strictly psychological way. A logical statement of the problem would raise a different issue—not the question of whether emotion as emotion can in any sense be functional in experience, but whether the consciousness of value and emotion in general may not receive reflective interpretation and thereby, becoming objective, play a part as a factor in subsequent valuation-processes. Indeed, the psychological statement of the problem misses the entire point at issue and leads directly to the wholly irrelevant general problem of whether any mode of consciousness whatever can, as consciousness, put forth energy and be a factor in controlling conduct. The present problem is properly a logical one. What is the agent's apprehension of the matter? In his subsequent reflective processes of valuation does the consciousness of value, which was a feature of the survey on a past occasion, receive recognition in any way and so play a part? This is simply a question of fact and clearly, as a question relating to the logical content of the agent's reflective process, has no connection with or interest in the problem of a possible dynamic efficacy of consciousness as such. The question properly is logical, not psychological or metaphysical.
Thus stated, then, the problem seems to admit of answer—and along the line already suggested in our account of economic valuation.[160] Recognition of the fact that the consciousness of value was experienced in the survey of a certain purpose on an earlier occasion confirms this purpose, holding the means, in an economic situation, to their appointed use and strengthening adherence to the standard in the ethical case. This recognition serves as stimulus to a reproduction, in memory, of the cognitive details of the earlier survey, and so in the ideal case to a more or less complete and recognizably adequate reinstatement of the earlier valuing attitude, and so to a reinstatement of the consciousness of value itself. The result is a strengthening of the established valuation, a more efficacious control of the new end claiming recognition, and an assured measure of continuity of ethical development from the old valuation to the new. The function thus assigned to the consciousness of value finds abundant illustration elsewhere in the field of emotion. The stated festivals of antiquity commemorative of regularly recurrent phases of agricultural and pastoral life, as also the festivals in observance of signal events in the private and political life of the individual, would appear to find, more or less distinctly, here their explanation. These festivals must have been prompted by a more or less conscious recognition of the social value inherent in the important functions making up the life of the community, and of the individual citizen as a member of the community and as an individual. They secured the end of a sustained and enhanced interest in these normal functions by effecting, through a symbolic reproduction of these, an intensified and glorified experience of the emotional meaning normally and inherently belonging to them.[161] In the same way the rites of the religious cults of Greece, not to mention kindred phenomena so abundantly to be found in lower civilizations as well as in our own, served to fortify the individual in a certain consistent and salutary course of institutional and private life.[162]
It has been taken for granted throughout that there are but two forms of valuation-process, the ethical and the economic. The reason for this limitation may already be sufficiently apparent, but it will further illustrate our general conception of the valuation-process briefly to indicate it in detail. What shall be said, for example, of the common use of the term "value" in such expressions as the "value of life," the "emotional value" of an object or a moral act, the "natural value" of a type of impulsive activity? In these uses of the word the reference is apparently to one's own incommunicable inner experience of living, of perception of the object, or of the impulse, which cannot be suggested to any other person who has not himself had the experience. My pleasure, my color-sensation in its affective aspect, my emotion, are inner and subjective, and I distinguish them by such expressions as the above from the visible, tangible object to which I ascribe them as constituting its immediate or natural value to me. This broader use of the term "value" has not found recognition in the foregoing pages, and it requires here a word of comment. So long as these phases of the experience of the object are not recognized as separable in thought from the object viewed as an external condition or means, they would apparently be better characterized in some other way. If, however, they are so recognized, and are thereby taken as determinative of the agent's practical attitude toward the thing, we have merely our typical situation of ethical valuation of some implied purpose as conducive to the self and economic valuation of the means as requisites for execution of the purpose. Our general criterion for the propriety of terming any mode of consciousness the value of an object must be that it shall perform a logical function and not simply be referred to in its aspect of psychical fact. The feeling or emotion, or whatever the mode of consciousness in question may be, must play the recognized part, in the agent's survey of the situation, of prompting and supporting a definite practical attitude with reference to the object. If, in short, the experience in question enters in any way into a conscious purpose of the agent, it may properly be termed a value.[163]
Æsthetic value also has not been recognized, and for the opposite reason. The sense of beauty would appear to be a correlate of relatively perfect attained adjustment between the agent and his natural environment or the conditions suggested more or less impressively by the work of art. There must, indeed, be present in the æsthetic experience an element of unsatisfied curiosity sufficient to stimulate an interest in the changing or diverse aspects of the beautiful object, but this must not be sufficient to prompt reflective judgment of the details presented. On the whole, the æsthetic experience would appear to be essentially post-judgmental and appreciative. It comes on the particular occasion, not as the result of a judgment-process of the valuational type, but as an immediate appreciation. As an immediate appreciation it has no logical function and on our principles must be denied the name of value. Our standpoint must be that of the experiencing individual. The æsthetic experience as a type may well be a development out of the artistic and so find its ultimate explanation in the psychology of man's primitive technological occupations in the ordinary course of life. It is, as we have said, of the post-judgmental type, and so may very probably be but the cumulative outcome of closer and closer approximations along certain lines to a perfected adjustment with the conditions of life. It may thus have its origin in past processes of the reflective valuational type. Nevertheless, viewed in the light of its actual present character and status in experience, the æsthetic must be excluded from the sphere of values.
Thus the realms of fact and value are both real, but that of value is logically prior and so the "more real." The realm of fact is that of conditions warranting the purposes of the self; as a separate order, complete and absolute in itself, it is an abstraction that has forgotten the reason for which it was made. Reality in the logical sense is that which furthers the development of the self. The purpose that falls short of its promise in this regard is unreal—not, indeed, in the psychological sense that it never existed in imagination, but in the logical sense that it is no longer valued. Within the inclusive realm of reality the realm of fact is that of the means which serve the concrete purposes which the self accepts. The completed purpose, however, is not means, since still behind and beyond it there can be no other concrete valued purpose which it can serve. Nor is it an ultimate end, since in its character of accepted and valued end the self adheres to it, and it therefore cannot express the whole purpose of the self to whose unspecifiable fulness and increase of activity it is but a temporary probational contributor. It is rather in the nature of a formula or method of behavior to which the self ascribes reality by recognizing and accepting it as its own.