Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/145

No. 2.] such subjective principle of increase of value to any particular object of value in the social consciousness turn out to be irrational, illusory?

We are here brought face to face with an ultimate problem of methodology. The problem in its simplest form is this: Whatever a value may be for an individual, whatever may be the grounds of his valuation, whatever of absolute and infinite meaning it may for him seem to contain, must it not, as soon as it takes its place as a phenomenon, as a function of forces of valuation, conceived as part of an external system of nature, follow causal laws, and thus suffer a fate which is for him irrational or in some sense meaningless and indifferent? In the light of the foregoing reflections, either this question may be asked, or the alternative one, viz., whether the postulates of absolute objective values and of infinite increase of value which characterize the individual consciousness are not from the larger point of view of the system of nature, illusory. The latter of these alternatives is clearly accepted by Ehrenfels. Even in the subject an indefinite increase of a given phenomenal value, say a virtuous disposition, is impossible on account of the working of these laws which we have been considering. Nay more—even the power of valuing itself, as a function, is limited by the economy of the nervous system to modifications of which the affective dispositions must ultimately be reduced, and from which the laws of mutation of values spring. As valuation involves energy, and the nervous energy is limited, the increase of the sense of value is itself limited. All absolute valuation of an individual Ehrenfels conceives as springing out of an æsthetic isolation of the individual, which may have a utility for the social order, but which has no ultimate epistemological significance. On the other hand, there are thinkers, such as Simmel, who find in this unique characteristic of the individual value series, its postulate of infinite increase of value, a relative truth. While unable, in view of their recognition of these laws which govern the fate of objective social values and the mutations of value that follow, to conceive of the subject applying its inmost meaning to any given phenomenal content of social value, nevertheless they believe that there may be an