Notwithstanding the insufficiencies of pecuniary valuation, the character of modern life seems to call for an extension of its scope: it would appear to be true, in a certain sense, that the principle that everything has its price should be rather enlarged than restricted. The ever-vaster and more interdependent system in which we live requires for its organization a corresponding value mechanism, just as it requires a mechanism of transportation and communication. And this means not only that the value medium should be uniform, adaptable, and stable, but also that the widest possible range of values should be convertible into it. The wider the range the more fully does the market come to express and energize the aims of society. It is a potent agent, and the more good work we can get it to take hold of the better. Its limitations, then, by no means justify us in assuming that it has nothing to do with ideals or morals. On the contrary, the method of progress in every sphere is to transfuse the higher values into the working institutions and keep the latter on the rise. Just as the law exists to formulate and enforce certain phases of righteousness, and is continually undergoing criticism and revision based on moral judgments, so ought every institution, and especially the pecuniary system, to have constant renewal from above. It should be ever in process of moral regeneration, and the method that separates it from the ethical sphere, while justifiable perhaps for certain technical inquiries, becomes harmful when given a wider scope. As regards responsibility to moral requirements there is no fundamental difference between pecuniary valuation and the state, the church, education, or any other institution. We cannot expect to make our money values ideal, any more than our laws, our sermons, or our academic lectures, but we can make them better, and this is done by bringing higher values upon the market.
To put it otherwise, the fact that pecuniary values fail to express the higher life of society creates a moral problem which may be met in either of two ways. One is to depreciate money valuation altogether and attempt to destroy its prestige. The other is to concede to it a very large place in life, even larger, perhaps, than it occupies at present, and to endeavor to regenerate it by the translation into it of the higher values. The former way is analogous with that somewhat obsolete form of religion which gave up this world to the devil and centred all effort on keeping out of it, in preparation for a wholly different world to be gained after death. The world and the flesh, which could not really be escaped, were left to a neglected and riotous growth.
In like manner, perceiving that pecuniary values give in many respects a debasing reflection of life, we are tempted to rule them out of the ethical field and consign them to an inferior province. The price of a thing, we say, is a material matter which has nothing to do with its higher values, and never can have. This, however, is bad philosophy, in economics as in religion. The pecuniary values are members of the same general system as the moral and æsthetic values, and it is part of their function to put the latter upon the market. To separate them is to cripple both, and to cripple life itself by cutting off the healthy interchange among its members. Our line of progress lies, in part at least, not over commercialism but through it; the dollar is to be reformed rather than suppressed. Our system of production and exchange is a very great achievement, not more on the mechanical side than in the social possibilities latent in it. Our next task seems to be to fulfil these possibilities, to enlarge and humanize the system by bringing it under the guidance of a comprehensive social and ethical policy.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PROGRESS OF PECUNIARY VALUATION
VALUES EXPRESS ORGANIZATION—DIFFERENT KINDS OF VALUE, HOW RELATED—ALL KINDS ARE MENTALLY COMMENSURABLE—PECUNIARY VALUES SHOULD APPARENTLY EXPRESS ALL OTHERS, BUT DO SO IMPERFECTLY—THEY ARE MOULDED BY A SPECIAL INSTITUTIONAL PROCESS—CLASS AGAIN—ORGANIZED RECOGNITION AND COMPETITION—CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS IN MARKET VALUES—PROGRESS-VALUES—EXAMPLES OF UNPROGRESSIVE VALUES—NEED OF SOCIAL GROUPS AND DISCIPLINES—INSTANCES OF PROGRESS—PROGRESS IN THE PECUNIARY VALUATION OF MEN
To make clear what I mean by progress in pecuniary valuation, let me recall something of the nature of values in general and of the relation of the various kinds to one another.
Value is an expression of organization. The power of an object to influence a man, or any other form of life, depends upon the established tendencies of that form of life, and, accordingly, wherever we find a system of values there is always a mental or social organization of some kind corresponding to it. Thus in the simpler provinces of the mind there are taste-values, touch-values, and smell-values, corresponding to our physiological organization. In a higher sphere we have intellectual and feeling values of many kinds, shown in our differential conduct as regards persons, books, pictures, theories, or other influencing objects, and indicating organized habits of thought and sentiment. So in the larger or societal phase of life we see that each organized tendency, the prevailing fashion, the dominant church or state, a school of literature or painting, the general spirit of an epoch, involves a corresponding system of values. You prefer Monet to David, or the German view of the war to the English view, or the present style of dress to hoop-skirts, because you are in one or another of these tendencies.
There are many ways of classifying values. In general, the kinds are innumerable and their relations intricate: taken as a whole they express the diversity and complex interdependence of life itself.
The question as to what are the differences among the various sorts of value, as moral, æsthetic, legal, religious, or economic, is answered, in general, by saying that they express differentiated phases of the social system. If the phase is definitely organized we can usually ascertain and distinguish the kind of value in question with corresponding definiteness; if not, the values remain somewhat indeterminate, though not necessarily lacking in power. Thus legal value is a fairly definite thing, because there is a definite institution corresponding to it and declaring it from time to time through courts, legislatures, text-book writers, and the like. How you must draw your will to make it legally valid is something a lawyer should be able to tell you with precision. Economic values—if we understand economic to mean pecuniary—are definite within the range of an active market. If religious values mean ecclesiastical, they are easily distinguished; but if they refer to the inclinations of the religious side of human nature, they are not readily ascertained, because there is no definite organization corresponding to them—or if there is, in the nature of the mind, we know little about it. The values that are most potent over conduct, among which the religious are to be reckoned, are often the least definable. A psychologist, however, like the late William James, who wrote a book on the human-nature aspect of religion, may succeed in defining them more closely. Much the same may be said of moral and æsthetic values. In the large human-nature sense, apart from particular ethical conventions or schools of art, they are of the utmost interest and moment, indeed, but do not lend themselves to precise ascertainment.
And all of these distinctions among kinds of value, whether definite or not, are conditioned by the fact that the various kinds are, after all, differentiated phases of a common life. It is natural that they should overlap, that they should be largely aspects rather than separate things. Values are motives; and we all know that the classification of a man’s motives as economic, ethical, or æsthetic is somewhat formal and arbitrary. The value to me of an engraving I have just bought may be æsthetic, or economic, or perhaps ostentatious, or ethical. (We see in Ruskin’s writings how easily an æsthetic value becomes ethical if one takes it seriously.) It may well be all these: my impulse to cherish it is a whole with various aspects.