Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/144

128 sense absolute, to be found in the social order. As a consequence, the principle of 'infinite increase of value' finds no objective expression in the social series. The individual value series finds in the social order, as a system of nature, no ground, no sanction for making absolute any given worth; in fact, any attempt to apply any such conception leads to contradictions. Nor does the principle of 'equivalence of value' which underlies the concept of justice, get any sanction in the objective order, conceived as a system of nature.

Now, granting for the sake of argument, this method continues, that the inner meaning of the ethical Self, as an individual series, is this progression in the direction of infinite increase of value, it could not possibly apply its principle to any particular phenomenal social value without developing contradictions. Let us first conceive this increase of value in terms of the universalization of an idea, or of an affective or volitional disposition. No matter how general or abstract this valued disposition or idea be conceived, its universalization has only subjective value. When introduced into the objective causal nexus, its universalization would destroy its value, just as surely as the increase of the quantity of a good destroys or diminishes the economic value of the same. Thus, while altruism, because of our constitutional lack of it, as an attitude of an individual might be conceived as increased indefinitely, yet as a good in society, its value rests upon the lack of it, and its increase indefinitely would of necessity lead to the recognition of egoism as a virtue. This, Meinong expresses by distinguishing between Steigerungs-fähiger and nicht-Steigerungs-fähiger Altruismus. Nor is the case much better for a purely material interpretation of this principle in terms of increase of pleasure. To say nothing of the difficulty of reconciling a continuous increase of pleasure with its equality of distribution, a difficulty which hedonism always meets when it attempts to do justice to the inner meanings of the ethical subject, the more fundamental difficulty arises, namely, whether natural laws make conceivable any real increase of pleasure in the social series, whether all our activity is not rather concerned with its redistribution. Does not then, Simmel asks, our attempt to apply any