Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/601

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 585

only in a crazy world. This is now, for immediate consciousness, correct. Indeed, it is more correct than that popular standpoint is apt to allow in other cases. As a matter of fact, the value which an actor surrenders for another value can never be greater for this actor himself, under the actual circumstances of the moment, than the one for which it is given. All contrary appearances rest upon confusion of the value actually estimated by the actor with the value which the object of exchange in question usually has. For instance, when one at the point of death from hunger offers a jewel for a piece of bread, he does it only because the latter, under the given circumstances, is of more value to him than the former. Particular circumstances, however, are neces- sary in order to attach to an object a valuation, for every such valuation is an incident of the whole complex system of our feelings, which is in constant flux, adaptation, and reconstruction. Whether these circumstances are exceptional or relatively con- stant is obviously in principle a matter of indifference. There can be no doubt, at any rate, that in the moment of the exchange, that is, of the making of the sacrifice, the value of the exchanged object forms the limit which is the highest point to which the value of the sacrificed object can rise. Quite inde- pendent of this is the question whence that former object derives its so necessary value, and whether it may come from the objects that are to be sacrificed for it, so that the equivalence between gain and price would be established at once a posteriori, and by the latter. We shall see presently how often value comes into existence, psychologically, in this apparently illogical man- ner. If, however, it is once in existence, the psychological necessity exists in its case, not less than in that of value consti- tuted in any other way, of regarding it as a positive good at least equal to the negative good sacrificed for it. In fact, there is a series of cases in which the sacrifice not merely raises the value of the aim, but even produces it. It is the joy of exertion, of overcoming difificulties, frequently indeed that of contradiction, which expresses itself in this process. The necessary detour to the attainment of certain things is often the occasion, often also the cause, of regarding them as valuable. In the relationships of