Page:Philosophical Review Volume 24.djvu/187

No. 2.] it seems to me that we must restrict the term to values that in some sense are rational, intelligent. If raccoons and monkeys reason, and there are authorities who think that they do, one may accord to them some slight notion of values; but it seems impossible to attribute 'value' to the activities of white mice and guinea pigs, and still less to plants, and least of all to inorganic matter acting in accordance with the law of inertia, unless we rob 'value' of all the significance which it has had hitherto. Values must not be confused with lower forms of adjustment, although in a sense they have evolved from some of them, as will be shown. 1. Valuation, therefore, in the proper sense, first appears when in a conflict between instinctive impulses some sort of comparison between the ideas connected with these impulses is made, and a mediation or coordination is thereby effected Reasoning, in other words, involves cognitive and ideational elements, and valuation involves a selection between these elements. The error in rationalism has not been in insisting upon this phase of the matter, but in abstracting this phase from the entire process, oblivious of the fact that selection among these ideational elements is always in some sense prompted by the conative and affective sides of our mental constitution, since without these there could be no preference. At its lowest level the consciousness of values might be illustrated by Professor Angell's celebrated case of the man in the burning building, who rushes about in mad excitement, happens to notice some bed-clothes and makes a rope of these by which he escapes. Angell observes that if the man had not previously heard of using bed-clothes for this purpose he would be reasoning, in the sense that he would be abstracting through conception one aspect of a situation and making an application of it to his problem. Even at so low a level as this it can be said that we have valuation of means for achieving an end.

2. A much clearer and more unambiguous level of valuation is reached when we have conscious comparisons of ends. Such cases ordinarily involve a conflict between sentiments. If an