Within the fundamental selective process two types of behavior tend to differentiate in response to two general sorts of stimulation. One sort is simpler, more monotonous, more easily analyzable. Response to such stimulation, or treatment of objects which may be described under these terms of simple, analyzable, etc., is easily organized into a habit. It calls for no great shifts in attention, no sudden readjustments. There is nothing mysterious about it. As satisfying various wants it has a certain kind of value. It, however, evokes no consciousness of self. Toward the more variable, complex sort of stimuli, greater attention, constant adjustment and readjustment, are necessary.
Objects of the first sort are treated as things, in the sense that they do not call out any respect from us or have any intrinsic value. We understand them through and through, manipulate them, consume them, throw them away. We regard them as valuable only with reference to our wants. On the other hand, objects of the second sort take their place in a bi-focal situation. Our attention shifts alternately to their behavior and to our response, or, conversely, from our act to their response. This back and forth movement of attention in the case of certain of these objects is reinforced by the fact that certain stimuli from them or from the organism, find peculiar responses already prepared in social instincts; gesture and language play their part. Such a bi-focal situation as this, when completely developed, involves persons. In its earlier stages it is the quasi-personal attitude which is found in certain savage religious attitudes, in certain æsthetic attitudes, and in the emotional attitudes which we all have toward many of the objects of daily life.
Economic values arise in connection with attitudes toward things. We buy things, we sell them. They have value just in that they gratify our wants, but they do not compel any revision or change in wants or in the self which wants. They represent a partial interest—or if they become the total interest we regard them as now in the moral sphere. Values of personal affection arise as we find a constant rapport in thought, feeling, purpose, between the two members of our social consciousness. The attitude is that of going along with another and thereby extending and enriching our experiences. We enter into his ideas, range with his imagination, kindle at his enthusiasms, sympathize with his joys or sorrows. We may disagree with our friend's opinions, but we do not maintain a critical attitude toward him, that is, toward his fundamental convictions and attitudes. If "home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in," as Frost puts it, a friend is one who, when you go to him, has to accept you.
Moral values also arise in a social or personal relation—not in relation to things. This is on the surface in the form of judgment; "He is a good man," "That is a good act." If it is less obvious in the practical judgment, "This is the better course of action," i.e., the course which leads to the greater good, or to the good, this is because we fail to discern that the good in these cases is a something with which I can identify myself, not a something which I merely possess and keep separate from my personality. It is something I shall be rather than have. Or if I speak of a share or participation it is a sharing in the sense of entering into a kindred life. It is an ideal, and an ideal for a conscious personal being can hardly be other than conscious. It may be objected that however personal the ideal it is not on this account necessarily social. It embodies what I would be, but does not necessarily imply response to any other personality. This, however, would be to overlook the analyses which recent psychology has made of the personal. The ideal does not develop in a vacuum. It implies for one thing individuality which is conceivable only as other individuals are distinguished. It implies the definition of purposes, and such definition is scarcely if ever attempted except as a possible world of purposes is envisaged.
Æsthetic valuation is in certain respects intermediate between the valuation of things on the one hand and the moral evaluation of acts of persons or conscious states on the other. Æsthetic objects are in many cases seemingly things and yet even as things they are quasi-personal; they are viewed with a certain sympathy quite different from that which we feel for a purely economic object. If it is a work of art the artist has embodied his thought and feeling and the observer finds it there. The experience is that of Einfühlung. Yet we do not expect the kind of response which we look for in friendship, nor do we take the object as merely a factor for the guidance or control of our own action as in the practical judgment of morality. The æsthetic becomes the object of contemplation, not of response; of embodied meaning, not of individuality. It is so far personal that no one of æsthetic sensibility likes to see a thing of beauty destroyed or mistreated. The situation in which we recognize in an object meaning and embodied feeling, or at least find sources of stimulation which appeal to our emotions, develops an æsthetic enhancement of conscious experience. The æsthetic value predicate is the outcome of this peculiar enhancement.
It seems that the social nature of the judgment plays a part also in the varying objectivity of values. It is undoubtedly true that some values are treated as belonging to objects. If we cannot explain this fully we may get some light upon the situation by noticing the degree to which this is true in the cases of the kinds of values already described.
Economic values are dubiously objective. We use both forms of expression. We say on the one hand, "I want wheat," "There is a demand for wheat," or, on the other, "Wheat is worth one dollar a bushel." Conversely, "There is no demand for the old-fashioned high-framed bicycle" or "It is worthless." The Middle Ages regarded economic value as completely objective. A thing had a real value. The retailer could not add to it. The mediæval economist believed in the externality of relations; he prosecuted for the offenses of forestalling and regrating the man who would make a profit by merely changing things in place. He condemned usury. We have definitely abandoned this theory. We recognize that it is the want which makes the value. To make exchange possible and socialize to some degree the scale of prices we depend upon a public market or a stock exchange.
In values of personal affection we may begin with a purely individual attitude, "I love or esteem my friend." If I put it more objectively I may say, "He is an honored and valued friend." Perhaps still more objectively, we—especially if we are feminine—may say "Is not X dear?" We may then go on to seek a social standard. We perhaps look for reinforcement in a small group of like-minded. We are a little perplexed and, it may be, aggrieved if other members of the circle do not love the one whom we love. In such a group judgment of a common friend there is doubtless greater objectivity than in the economic judgment. The value of a friend does not depend upon his adjustment to our wants. As Aristotle pointed out, true friendship is for its own sake. Its value is "disinterested." If a man does not care for an economic good it does not reflect upon him. He may be careless of futures, neglectful of corn, indifferent to steel. It lessens the demand, lowers the values of these goods, an infinitesimal, but does not write him down an inferior person. To fail to prize a possible friend is a reflection upon us. However the fact that in the very nature of the case one can scarcely be a personal friend to a large, not to say a universal group, operates to limit the objectivity.
In the æsthetic and moral attitudes we incorporate value in the object decisively. We do not like to think that beauty can be changed with shifting fashions or to affirm that the firmament was ever anything but sublime. It seems to belong to the very essence of right that it is something to which the self can commit itself in absolute loyalty and finality. And, as for good, we may say with Moore in judgments of intrinsic value, at least, "we judge concerning a particular state of things that it would be worth while—would be a good thing—that that state of things should exist, even if nothing else were to exist besides."
With regard to this problem of objectivity it is significant in the first place that the kind of situation out of which this object value is affirmed in æsthetic and moral judgments is a social situation. It contrasts in this respect with the economic situation. The economic is indeed social in so far as it sets exchange values, but the object valued is not a social object. The æsthetic and moral object is such an object. Not only is there no contradiction in giving to the symbolic form or the moral act intrinsic value: there is entire plausibility in doing so. For in so far as the situation is really personal, either member is fundamentally equal to the other and may be treated as embodying all the value of the situation. The value which rises to consciousness in the situation is made more complete by eliminating from consideration the originating factors, the plural agents of admiration or approval, and incorporating the whole product abstractly in the object. In thus calling attention to the social or personal character of the æsthetic or moral object it is not intended to minimize that factor in the judgment which we properly speak of as the universalizing activity of thought, much less to overlook the importance of the judgmental process itself. The intention is to point out some of the reasons why in one case the thinking process does universalize while in the other it does not, why in one case the judgment is completely objective while in the other it is not. In both æsthetic and moral judgments social art, social action, social judgments, through collective decisions prepare the way for the general non-personal, objective form. It is probable that man would not say, "This is right," using the word as an adjective, if he had not first said, as member of a judicially acting group, "This is right," using the word as a noun. And finally whatever we may claim as to the "cognitive" nature of the æsthetic and moral judgment, the only test for the beauty of an object is that persons of taste discover it. The only test for the rightness of an act is that persons of good character approve it. The only test for goodness is that good persons on reflection approve and choose it—just as the test for good persons is that they choose and do the good.