Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/374

 362 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

scribable one ; for we cannot get at those units entirely, since they each have their individual descriptions and appreciations, and, furthermore, since we cannot get at those appreciations descrip- tively. But as these appreciations are an essential and determin- ing element in the make-up of these units, a real explanation of some social processes, or, in the extreme, of all societary processes, goes beyond description and into appreciation. The reason for this appears when we come to consider the real nature of social phenomena and ask ourselves whether in the last analysis, they do not all go back, for their explanation, to a sense of value, to a worth-attitude out of which the action arose. Take even such empirical concepts as those of economics; e. g., What is it that regulates values ? Some will say it is demand. What, then, regu- lates demand? Demand has, of course, many purely objective determinations ; but when we get to those which are final, we find that we are on the plane of values. Or again, M. Tarde's discus- sion comes to the conclusion that imitations are the imitations of some inventions; that imitation presupposes an invention as its temporal prius. But in the last analysis the invention rests upon a worth-attitude, 9 for without that there would be no incentive to invention ; invention would not exist. All social actions in which there are ethical or aesthetic moments have this worth-ingredient. Similar examples might be multiplied. We might then say that when I interpret your social acts, what I really do is to interpret those in terms of your worth-consciousness which I attribute to you on the basis of my own experience, and which I conceive of as being like my own in its general make-up. When I, therefore, put this into terms which shall be socially available, when I try to explain such actions, to interpret them in a scientific way, what I am constrained to do is to use appreciatively descriptive terms. Professor James does this constantly in describing the experience of religious enthusiasts. There can be no doubt that the worth- content is appreciative, since it is always purposive. Professor Urban, who has been doing considerable work in this field t. e., the consciousness of value holds that appreciative description of feeling or worth-attitudes is distinguished from scientific

v


 * For our purpose, the terms " worth " and " value " are synonymous.