[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.
CHAPTER XI
RECAPITULATION. THE SOCIAL VALUES. FUNCTIONS OF THE VALUE CONCEPT IN ECONOMICS
Our conclusions reached in previous chapters, from the standpoint of economic theory, and from the standpoint of sociological theory, alike forbid us to stop with the results so far obtained as to the nature of value. From the standpoint of social theory, we are unable to consider the individual values discussed in the last chapter as completely accounted for on the psychical side by what goes on in the individual mind: every individual mind is a part of a larger whole; every thing in the individual mind has been influenced by processes in the minds of others; every process in the individual mind influences, directly or indirectly, processes in the minds of others. There is a social mind. And the values in the mind of an individual constitute no self-complete and independent system, either in their origin, in their interactions, or in their consequences for action. In our psychological phrase, their "presuppositions" include elements in the minds of other men, and they themselves constitute part of the "presuppositions" of the values in the minds of other men. Finally, there are values which correspond to the values of no individual mind, great social values, whose presuppositions are tremendously complex, including individual values in the minds of many men, as well as other factors which we shall have to analyze in considerable detail, great social values whose motivating power directs the activities of nations, of great industries, of literary and artistic "schools," of churches and other social organizations, as well as the daily lives of every man and woman—impelling them in paths which no individual man foresaw or purposed. In Urban's phrase,—