Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/613

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 597

would fall away from each other, although in each individual case, as a matter of fact, under consideration of its circumstances, they would coincide. We should not forget that the objective and just equivalence of value and price which we make the norm of the actual and the specific works only under very definite historical and technical conditions; and, with change of these conditions, at once vanishes. Between the norm itself and the cases which are characterized as exceptional or as adequate no general difference exists, but, so to speak, only a numerical difference — somewhat as we say of an extraordinarily eminent or degraded individual, "He is really no longer a man." The fact is that this idea of man is only an average ; it would lose its normative character at the moment in which the majority of men ascended or descended to that grade, which then would pass for the generically human.

In order to reach this perception we must, to be sure, extri- cate ourselves from deep-rooted conceptions of value, which also have an assured practical justification. These conceptions, in the case of relationships that are somewhat complex, rest in two strata with reference to each other. The one is formed from the traditions of society, from the majority of experiences, from demands that seem to be purely logical ; the other, from indi- vidual correlations, from the demands of the moment, from the constraint of given facts. In contrast with the rapid changes within this latter stratum, the gradual evolution of the former and its construction out of elaboration of our perceptions is lost to sight, and the former appears as alone justified as the expression of an objective ratio. Where now, in case of an exchange under the given circumstances, the valuations of sacrifice and gain at least balance each other — for otherwise no agent would consummate the exchange — yet judged by those general criteria a discrepancy appears, in such a case we speak of a divergence between value and price. This occurs most decisively under the two presuppositions (almost always united), viz., first, that a single value-quality passes as economic value in general, and two objects consequently can be recognized as equal in value, only in so far as the like quantum of that fundamental value is