Page:Philosophical Review Volume 31.djvu/276

264 of the cosmic object? The world about us is common to all. The answer is readily anticipated, for it has been given again and again. Whatever exists in the common-to-all world exists only for individuals, and exists for them only in so far as they give heed and thereby create value-content. The shared character of this content follows from its being the several responses to stimulations from a common source. The exigencies of social life develop in us the conviction that our world is literally and point for point the same qualitatively as another's world; but any who have given the subject even a little consideration know that this is not true. Only the symbols used in communication are common, and they are generalized content. Their instrumental character is essentially like that of the scientific structure of concepts and laws which we call 'nature' and which we are prone to substitute for the concrete experience.

The reality in the cosmic universe is value. This is the third answer to the riddle of the philosophic sphinx. But such a conception does not immediately commend itself to us. That value alone is the permanent element in change, that of all our possessions only value and nothing else can withstand the dissolving power of intellectual analysis seems on many accounts absurd. The variety, changeability, and intimately personal character of values—to mention only some of the more glaring difficulties—condemn the conception forthwith. But these difficulties and all others thus far proposed can not only be met, but can be turned into reinforcements. It is not our task to pursue the argument here. I would only indicate that this third answer to the central question of philosophy can give a good account of itself. Man makes his own real world, and makes it out of values.

If this answer will indeed hold, we have the deep-lying basis of the distinction between philosophy and science. The cleavage between them is complete, yet each is necessary to the other. Philosophy is the study of values as such, science is the study of the conditions for obtaining them. Whenever we raise the issue of how to secure or test a value, we ask a strictly scientific question. All the elaborate apparatus of scientific research may be needed to find a satisfactory answer. When, on the other