Page:Philosophical Review Volume 24.djvu/182

166 this has been attempted. A particularly brilliant account, which everybody now reads who desires to become oriented in the problem of values, is Professor Urban's treatise. But even this, as it seems to me, has not wholly bridged the chasm between psychological explanations of value and logical interpretations. His later chapters, especially the one in which evaluation is treated, do not clearly join themselves to his earlier psychological analysis. Whatever transition is effected is highly formal and abstract. He never treats the transition in specific detail, in order to bring out the connection between the psychological origin and later logical fruition of particular values.

Although only a very general preliminary sketch can here be attempted, this paper will endeavor to show (1) that a transition between the biological and psychological roots of valuation and its exuberant ethical, esthetic, and religious foliage is thoroughly feasable, and can be worked out in the case of particular values. The admirable account of the instincts given by Dr. William McDougall, and the conception of sentiments and systems of sentiments which was originally the discovery of Mr. Alex. F. Shand, and has since been further developed in connection with the instincts by McDougall, and finally elaborated in Shand's recently published volume, furnish a basis for this transition. (2) The practical usefulness of such a conception of the origin of values for social and ethical problems will next be indicated. (3) It will in conclusion be argued that the reader may accept the account here advanced without being committed to any particular standpoint in biology or metaphysics, but that he will none the less find it illuminating and significant for whatever standpoints he may adhere to.

The great sources of all impulses and desires in man, and hence the roots of value, are to be found in the primary instincts and