Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/275

No. 3.] increase, and decrease—both moments in the opposition are in reality positives, and from the abstract, quantitative point of view, either of them may be looked upon as positive or negative, in internal opposition, on the other hand, the positive is always an organized system of volitional tendencies in opposition to which the negative is, to use Bradley's expression, a group of scattered particulars. To be sure, from the external point of view, the personality may be looked upon as a stage for the contrast and opposition of different social motives, but from the standpoint of the person himself the motives organize themselves in this fashion. This distinction arises from the fact that, in the quantitative estimation of economic and social values, the positive and negative energies are conceived as located in different social groups, abstracted from personalities, while affirmation and negation in personal values are functions of the same energy. In economics, the negative factor, scarcity, out of which issues demand, and the positive factor, supply, are conceived as located in different social groups. It is so also with the two factors in social opposition. Only by such abstractions does value become capable of objective quantitative treatment. Opposition is an essential condition of social values. As Tarde has made us realize, opposition is as important as assimilation in the generation of social values, so important indeed that while it is certain that the number of minor oppositions will be overcome by greater and greater sweeps of imitation and assimilation, yet this is to be accomplished only by the creation of fewer and more fundamental oppositions. The question now arises, as to whether opposition or lack is equally fundamental in the creation and continuation of personal value. That this is the question toward which our entire discussion has been tending will, I think, be evident when we recall that it was because the value function necessitates as one of its moments the negative factor of scarcity or opposition, that universalization of a disposition in the social series, and expansion of a disposition in the individual, conceived as part of the system of nature, was seen to be self-defeating. Now, that the negative moment is fundamental in the individual series, seems certain. But it is also certain that its relation to the positive factor is so