Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/143

No. 2.] series. The monistic tendency in science has sought in turn to show that objective social values are governed by the same laws as economic values, and that economic laws are but aspects of larger biological processes. Such thinkers as Simmel and Ehrenfels look upon the principles of marginal and final utility as applicable directly to objective social values. For value is determined by affective dispositions, and with the empirical modifications of these occur mutations of value. Since the affective and volitional dispositions corresponding to social and ethical goods, are subject to the same physiological and psychological laws as those corresponding to economic goods, ethical valuation is subject to laws analogous to those that rule in the economic sphere. The consequence of this is that any given phenomenal value, as an objective value in the social order, is a function of objective forces abstracted from the valuing selves, like the abstractions, 'supply' and 'demand' in economics. As such, the value is part of a system of nature, and therefore cannot be conceived, as in any way permanent or absolute. Any given phenomenal value, e.g. the social worth set upon a virtuous disposition of the will, as a phenomenon of the objective social order, cannot conceivably have its nature described in terms of a progressive, irreversible series of values, as, for instance, an approximation of the virtue to the absolute by a progressive growth in extension and intension, as described by Green. Any given worth, precisely because it is phenomenal and depends upon these phenomenal conditions, is subject to the principle of limiting value. All social ethical values have a reversible serial order. They rise and decline. If we could, so to speak, cut a cross section through the social consciousness at any time, just as in a cross section of the individual consciousness we find some states appearing, others in the center of consciousness, and still others just disappearing, so in the social consciousness we should find three classes of values, those that are aspiring, those that are normal, and still others that are outlived. It follows that, though the more general and abstract worths—such as the moral activities that are described by the virtues—may have indefinitely longer periods of endurance, there are, nevertheless, no values, in any