[18] Among the leading figures in economics to whom this doctrine is unacceptable, I would mention especially Professor H. J. Davenport, Value and Distribution and The Economics of Enterprise. A writer who seeks to minimize the importance of the issue between the relative and the absolute conceptions of value is Professor J. M. Clark, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, Aug. 1915. Professor Clark seems to agree with much of what has been said here, and the present writer would agree with Professor Clark, as indicated above, that for many purposes we do not need to look behind prices—entering a caveat that this is true only so long as we can assume a fixed absolute value of money.
[19] The psychology of this statement, which involves hedonism, needs improvement, but the issue need not be discussed here. Cf. Social Value, ch. 10.
[20] As Professor R. B. Perry, Quart. Jour. of Econ., May, 1916.
[21] In this I am following a line of thought developed by Professor John Dewey in a lecture delivered before the Harvard Philosophical Club in 1913-14.
[22] For the elaboration of these ideas, cf. Hegel, Philosophy of History, passim; Willoughby, The Nature of the State, passim; Davidson, T., History of Education, New York, 1900, passim; Bosanquet, B., Philosophical Theory of the State; Royce, J., The World and the Individual.
[23] Tarde, Laws of Imitation; Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations.
[24] Human Nature and the Social Order.
[25] Cf. Ellwood, C. H., Some Prolegomena to Social Psychology, Chicago, 1901, and Cooley, C. H., Social Organization, New York, 1909. See also Social Value, ch. 9.
[26] Cf. Social Value, ch. 8. H. J. Davenport is the best modern representative of this extreme individualism in economics. Individualism is nearly dead in modern political, ethical, and sociological theory. Revivals of it appear, however, in W. Fite, Individualism, and in a recent article by R. B. Perry, "Economic Value and Moral Value," Quart. Journal of Economics, May, 1916. (I have discussed Professor Fite's views in the Pol. Sci. Quart. of June, 1912.) Professor Perry would there appear to reduce ethical value to a purely individual phenomenon. But he really brings in a "categorical imperative," not derived from the values of the individual, by the "back door." "Now our general moral law prescribes that an agent shall take account of all the interests which his conduct affects, or shall judge his conduct by its consequences all round." (Loc. cit., p. 481.) Just how this "general moral law" is to be derived from individual values, is not made clear. That the wants of every man should count equally with the wants of the agent is a principle which one would expect from Kant or Fichte, but hardly one which individualism can expect to maintain.
[27] I use "volition" here in that wide sense which makes it cover both the motor and the affective phases of mind. Munroe Smith would emphasize the motor aspect, where Savigny stresses feeling and sentiment.