Page:Philosophical Review Volume 24.djvu/197

No. 2.] primacy over facts of values, or of the instincts from which values evolve. A neo-Hegelian who believes that the universe is a system of internal relations might accept this view of the relation of values to instincts and maintain that the level of the instincts is an abstract determination of categories that later become aufgehoben into sentiments that are more inclusive and concrete, and hence truer interpretations of the universe as it is. In fact, it seems to me that the theory ought especially to appeal to neo-Hegelians who insist that the logic of development must be found within things that evolve and not be imposed on them from without. The psychology of instinct might from this point of view be regarded as a moment in a continuous logical evolution in which a higher and more concrete synthesis of reality is subsequently attained in the sentiments.

The neo-realist of the more common American type, with naturalistic bias, could combine this theory of the evolution of values from instincts with the biological theory that instincts are mechanistic combinations of reflexes. If there would be various hiatuses involved in such a genetic descent they at least would not be greater, wider, or more numerous, and probably less so, than would follow upon any other account of values that he could advance in the present stage of human knowledge. Neo-realists of the type of G. E. Moore or Bertrand Russell would have more difficulty in accepting such a conception of values. Their conception of values is so rigid, static, inflexible, and non-evolutionary, that change and development in the sphere of values seem irreconcilable with their objectivity. But, unless they are willing to be contented permanently with a Platonic dualism between values and existences, it is hard to see how thinkers of this type can permanently refuse to think of values as evolutionary.

It is, however, from the standpoint of a functional pragmatism that the writer himself surveys instincts and values. It is in situations in which instincts and impulses are inhibited, or come into conflict with each other, that man becomes fully conscious of the objects of his conative tendencies, and values come into existence for him. His earliest and most primitive values are of