Page:Philosophical Review Volume 24.djvu/186

170 to this second question in the affirmative. But if tendencies are devoid of conscious reference, of meanings of any sort, can we reasonably suppose that these tendencies are identical in principle with what they would be if meanings were present? It seems hard to see how any one can now deny consciousness, or at least the nervous stratum that attends it, the capacity to make a difference. And if there is a difference in tendencies that are attended by consciousness, we should have to devise a new term to connote the instances where this is the case, if we extend 'value' to cover all tendencies. Nothing is gained, so far as I am able to discover, by using 'value' in the wider sense. It seems much better to restrict the term to impulsive tendencies of which the individual is conscious,—"affective-volitional meanings," to use Urban's apt phrase. But is the extension of 'value' even now properly restricted? Have we values whenever an instinct is sufficiently evoked to give us consciousness of slight emotion? If we say Yes, then we shall need in some other way to distinguish these more rudimentary cases from those in which values are chosen as a result of more or less self-conscious, critical selection between conflicting impulses and ends. For surely it is fundamentally different to appreciate an end toward which one's way is blocked, but toward which one engages in random and unintelligent striving until it is attained—not unlike the trial and error movements by which white mice learn to enter labyrinths in the animal psychologist's laboratory—and to compare means and ends critically, to discriminate between meanings and to make a reasoned selection. Unless we are willing to pervert the significance of the term 'value' wholly, so that we shall have to substitute some other term for the mental experiences for which it has hitherto stood,