We said earlier that contemporary philosophy manifests a high degree of tension between Value and Existence. Perhaps no writer has expressed this with so great vehemence as Miguel da Unamuno in The Tragedy of Life. It will be among the advantages of a Value-philosophy that, if it can make good its position at all, it will remove this tension. But it must rest on real values and not on any general theory of Value. It is here that the intellectualist tradition has most damaged philosophy. Discussions of Good in general carry us but a little way. Light comes from the study of the actual good things. This involves an element of unwelcome dogmatism, for our estimate of the various good things cannot claim universal acceptance. It is partly for this reason that philosophers have shrunk from taking their stand firmly on certain traditional scales of Value, such, for example, as that of Christianity. But when we find a philosopher who does this we are at once aware of a greater solidity and richness in his treatment of his problem; it is enough to cite in illustration Solovyof's great book The Justification of Good. The philosopher who makes value his central principle must take the risk of dogmatism and base himself on some selected actual values, vindicating his selection as fully as he can; he will gain in concrete fullness enough to justify the risk.

Above all he will avoid two difficulties that are inherent in the more traditional method of philosophy. We shall not try to treat the merely physical as selfsubsistent, leaving values to attach themselves to it in a rather vague manner, while still declaring that the explanation of the lower is in the higher; but making this declaration, we shall insist that the higher are the more nearly self-subsisting, while only the Highest is altogether so. And we shall not leave God to hover uncertainly between His function as the universal ground of existence and His adjectival attachment to

the universe as the sum or realisation of its values, but we shall confidently affirm Him as the sole selfsubsistent Being, existing in absolute independence of all else, for whose pleasure and by whose creative activity all things are and were created.

CHAPTER II

THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE

Ο δὴ διώκει μὲν ἅπασα ψυχὴ καὶ τούτου ἕνεκα πάντα πράττει, ἀπομαντευομένη τι είναι. —PLATO.

IT is in Man that the sense of Value seems first to become distinct. Other animals have appreciation, and even a rudimentary sense of duty. But it seems certain that only in Man is there a distinct awareness of good and evil as principles, and not only of particular good and evil things. If our whole position is sound, then all things exist either for their own value or else for the sake of something else that has value. Whether that is so or not, certainly human conduct is all directed to the attainment of value. Many of men's activities have indeed no value in themselves, but these are undertaken for the sake of value which it is hoped to realise by means of them.

The distinction of means and ends in this connexion. must be employed with some caution. It appears to suggest that what is classified as means is irrelevant to the good desired, except as a completely external condition. So it sometimes is. Thus a man may take up an occupation which he dislikes, and which he believes to do no good to any one, in order to make money which he may spend either on his pleasure or on work which he does believe to benefit mankind. Such an occupation is for that man a mere means, having no value in itself, and not affecting the value of the end. More commonly, however, there is some

value inherent in the means; and even when this is not so, the value of the end is affected by the process of its attainment. It is commonly said that men do not value what costs them nothing; and though many applications of this principle are rather ludicrous, it is a sound principle. It may be true that many people enjoy a concert more if they have paid for their seats than if they have not; if so, this is only because the fact of payment has suggested an expectation of enjoyment and has thus stimulated sensitiveness. But where the cost is not a mere payment as a condition of the experience, but an effort or sacrifice directly undertaken for the sake of the desired end, it is found to affect very intimately the experience in which the desired end consists. Perhaps a part of the secret of maternal love is to be found here. But the principle is certainly true. No one can really see the view from a mountain top who has not actually climbed the mountain; the man who goes up in a mountain-railway may enjoy the view in his own way, but it is a different way.

To this group of considerations we must return when we come to discuss the relation of the Timeprocess to our apprehension of Value. At present it is enough to make clear the danger of separating means and ends in our estimate of the value of ends. The means may have no value in itself, and yet may increase the value of the end which is reached through it.

It is, of course, in ends alone that value actually resides. Many activities or experiences which are chosen as means to others also have value in themselves; but to this extent they become ends. To ask, then, what are the various kinds of Value and to ask what are the possible ends of life is to ask the same question in different words. To that question we now turn.

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Value is recognised by a sense of kinship or athomeness which we may call satisfaction. Where a man claims to find this, his claim cannot be disputed. To every man his own sense of value is final. This

does not involve anarchy or chaos, as will become plain shortly; even if it did, the fact would stand.

But though value is recognised by a sense of satisfaction it does not consist in this satisfaction. Satisfaction is an indispensable element in the experience of value, but its prominence is very variable, and the amount of our nature affected by the satisfaction is also very variable. In Pleasure (as ordinarily understood that is in isolated moments or periods of satisfaction) the subjective element is extremely prominent, and the area of satisfaction is comparatively small; if it is Pleasure pure and simple, the good experienced is the feeling, and the satisfaction is of feeling only. No doubt most pleasures are also something more than pleasure pure and simple, and all forms of value are pleasurable when appreciated. But there are some forms of good, deliberately adjudged to be good and deliberately chosen, in which the element of pleasure is almost non-existent, while pain is very prominent. Of such a good we may say what George Eliot's Romola says of the highest happiness, "We only know it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good."

Pleasures of sense afford the minimum of satisfaction though they may occasion the maximum of excitement. Very different are the pleasures of Pride. Here the subjective element counts for less and the objective for more; but the subjective is still conspicuous. The objective element is here dependent on a comparison or a contrast. The value in pleasures of sense is absolute in the sense that it is wholly independent of other experiences; it is made comparative by circumstances, when we have to choose between such a pleasure and some other end in comparison with which the value of the pleasure may be great or small. But the value of a bodily pleasure i itself is what it is. The value of the pleasures of Pride is comparative essentially; or rather, the occasion of