Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/141



HROUGHOUT the history of philosophy the great systematic conceptions of value have been animated by one of two not uncertain motifs. Either the good is identified with the real, i.e., values are conceived to flow out of the metaphysical determination of the real; or the ethical consciousness, having determined its values, proceeds to identify the real with these. Spinoza's system is a typical example of the first of these methods, and its inadequate treatment of ethical values is a significant consequence of his procedure. On the other hand, Plato's ethical idealism is forced to find in the phenomena of the real world the values with which he comes to his problem. In both cases fundamental difficulties ensue. The latter procedure involves the discovery of degrees of reality to correspond to the grades of value; while the method which starts with a determination of the real, and there-from deduces its concepts of value, is prone to deny the degrees of value affirmed by the valuing consciousness. In either case, the thinker is likely to be left with a stock of illusions—in the one case, values which remain ungrounded; in the other, grades of reality which turn out to be illusory. Now, despite the advance in detail of treatment, these two methods have remained relatively constant in the history of thought. It is maintained, according to the latter method, that to the consciousness of value there must correspond a moral world order, the detailed working out of which constitutes a ground or sanction for the values of the individual. The principle of 'equivalence in values' in the subjective consciousness, it is thought, can be seen working itself out in the objective world order in an eternal principle of justice. The principle of infinite 'increase of value,' which is a cardinal postulate of the individual order of values, it is held, manifests itself equally in the objective social order. Thus certain forms