Part 35

[146] We use the expression "energy-_equivalent_" because the "excess" gained by the self through the past adjustment is not of importance at just this point. The essential significance of the means now is not that they "cost" less than they promised to bring in in energy, but that _because they required sacrifice the self will now lose unless they are allowed to fulfil the promise_. They are the logical equivalent of the established modes of consumption from the standpoint of conservation of the energies of the self, not the mathematical equivalent.

It would be desirable, if there were space, to present a brief account of the psychological basis of the concepts of energy and energy-equivalence which here come into play, but this must be omitted.

[147] Putting it negatively, the renunciation of the new end involves a "greater" sacrifice than all the sacrifices which adherence to the present system of consumption can compensate.

[148] Green, as is well known, allows that any formulation of the ideal self must be incomplete, but holds that it is not for this reason useless. But this is to assume that development in the ideal is never to be radically reconstructive, that the ideal is to expand and fill out along established and unchangeable lines of growth so that all increase shall be in the nature of accretion. The self as a system is fixed and all individual moral growth is in the nature of approximation to this absolute ideal. This would appear to be essentially identical in a logical sense with Mr. Spencer's hypothesis of social evolution as a process of gradual approach to a condition of perfect adaptation of society and the individual to each other in an environment to which society is perfectly adapted--a condition in which "perfectly evolved" individuals shall live in a state of blessedness in conformity to the requirements of "absolute ethics." For a criticism of this latter type of view see MR. TAYLOR'S above-mentioned work (chap. v, _passim_).

[149] For GREEN'S cautious defense of conscientiousness as a moral attitude see the _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book IV, chap. i; and for a statement of the present point of view as bearing upon Green's difficulty, see DEWEY, _The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus_, p. 37 _ad fin._, and _Philosophical Review_, Vol. II, pp. 661, 662.

[150] Along the line thus inadequately suggested might be found an answer to certain criticisms of the attempt to dispense with a metaphysical idea of the self. Such criticisms usually urge that without reference to a metaphysical ideal no meaning attaches to such conceptions as "adjustment," "expansion," "furtherance," and the like as predicated of the moral acts of an agent in their effect upon the "energetic" self. Anything that one may do, it is said, is expansive of the self, if it be something new, except as we judge it by a metaphysical ideal of a rightly expanded self. For an excellent statement of this general line of criticism see STRATTON, "A Psychological Test of Virtue," _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. XI, p. 200.

[151] The polemic of certain recent writers (as, for example, EHRENFELS in his _System der Werttheorie_) against the objectivity of judgments of value appears to rest upon an uncritical acceptance of the time-honored distinction between "primary" and "secondary" qualities as equivalent to the logical distinction of subjective and objective. Thus EHRENFELS confutes "das Vorurteil von der objectiven Bedeutung des Wertbegriffes" by explaining it as due to a misleading usage of speech expressive of "an impulse, deep-rooted in the human understanding, to objectify its presentations" and then goes on to say "We do not desire things because we recognize the presence in them of a mysterious impalpable essence of Value but we ascribe value to them because we desire them." (_Op. cit._, Bd. I, p. 2.) This may serve to illustrate the easy possibility of confusing the logical and psychological points of view, as likewise does EHRENFELS's formal definition of value. (Bd. I., p. 65.)

[152] The essential dependence of factual judgment upon the rise of economic and ethical conflict is implied in the widely current doctrine of the teleological character of knowledge. It is indeed nowadays something like a commonplace to say in one sense or another that knowledge is relative to ends, but it is not always recognized by those who hold this view that an end never appears as such in consciousness alone. The end that guides in the construction of factual knowledge is an end in ethical or economic conflict with some other likewise indeterminate end in the manner above discussed.

[153] See above, pp. 282, 283.

[154] _Cf._ SCHILLER, _Riddles of the Sphinx_, chap. vii, §§ 10-14.

[155] It would appear that the principle of the conservation of energy is valid only in the physical sphere; but the logical significance of this limitation cannot be here discussed.

[156] That the assumption mentioned is the essential basis of the twin theories of associationism in psychology and hedonism in ethics is shown by DR. WARNER FITE in his article, "The Associational Conception of Experience," _Philosophical Review_, Vol. IX, pp. 283 ff. _Cf._ MR. BRADLEY's remarks on the logic of hedonism in his _Principles of Logic_, pp. 244-9.

[157] The "energetic" self is apparently MR. BRADLEY'S fourth "meaning of self," the self as monad--"something moving parallel with the life of a man, or, rather, something not moving, but literally _standing_ in relation to his successive variety" (_Appearance and Reality_ [1st ed.] p. 86, in chap. ix, "The Meanings of the Self"). Mr. Bradley's difficulty appears to come from his desiring a psychological content for what is essentially a logical conception--a confusion (if we may be permitted the remark) which runs through the entire chapter to which we refer and is responsible for the undeniable and hopeless incoherency of the various meanings of the self, as Mr. Bradley therein expounds them. "If the monad stands aloof," says Mr. Bradley, "either with no character at all or a private character apart, then it may be a fine thing in itself, but it is a mere mockery to call it the self of a man" (p. 87). Surely this is to misconstrue and then find fault with that very character of essential _logical_ apartness from any possibility of determination in point of descriptive psychological content which constitutes the whole value of the "energetic" self as a logical conception stimulative of the valuation-process and so inevitably of factual judgment. See pp. 258, 259, above. The reader may find for himself in Mr. Bradley's enumeration of meanings our concept of the empirical self. But surely the "energetic" and empirical selves would appear on our showing to have no necessary conflict with each other.

[158] In the first of these inseparable aspects valuation is determinative of Rightness and Wrongness; in the second it presents the object as Good or Bad. See p. 259, above.

[159] See, for example, WIESER, _Natural Value_ (Eng. trans.), p. 17.

[160] See pp. 307-12 above.

[161] The illustration, as also the general principle which it here is used to illustrate, was suggested some years since by Professor G. H. Mead in a lecture course on the "History of Psychology," which the writer had the advantage of attending.

[162] The conservative function of valuation may be further illustrated by reference to the well-known principle of marginal utility of which we have already made mention (p. 307 above), and which has played so great a part in modern economic theory. The value of the unit quantity of a stock of any commodity is, according to this principle, measured by the least important single use in the schedule of uses to which the stock as a whole is to be applied. Manifestly, then, adherence to this valuation placed upon the unit quantity is in so far conservative of the whole schedule and the marginal value is a "short-hand" symbol expressive of the value of the whole complex purpose presented in the schedule. Moreover, the increase of marginal value concurrently with diminution of the stock through consumption, loss, or reapplication is not indicative so much of a change of purpose as of determination to adhere to so much of the original program of consumption as may still be possible of attainment with the depleted supply of the commodity.

[163] Thus except on this condition we should deny the propriety of speaking of the value of a friend or of a memento or sacred relic. The purpose of accurate definition of the function of such objects as these in the attainment of one's ends is foreign to the proper attitude of loving, prizing, or venerating them. We may ethically value the _act_ of sacrifice for a friend or of solicitous care of the memento, but the object of our sacrifice or solicitude has simply the direct or immediate "qualitative" emotional character appropriate to the kinds of activity to which it is the adequate stimulus.

[164] _History of Philosophy_ (TUFT's translation), p. 117.

[165] _Cf._ PROFESSOR J. R. ANGELL's article, "Relations of Structural and Functional Psychology to Philosophy," _Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago_, Vol. III, pp. 10-12; also _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XII, No. 3. _Cf._ also MR. SCHILLER's essay on "Axioms as Postulates" in _Personal Idealism_.

[166] From this point on this paper is an expansion of some paragraphs, pp. 11-13, in an article on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality," printed from Vol. III of the First Series of the _Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago_.

[167] P. 22.

[168] Pp. 22, 23; italics mine.

[169] P. 25.

[170] P. 26.

[171] p. 36; italics mine.

[172] Pp. 22, 23; italics mine.

[173] P. 307.

[174] P. 327.

[175] P. 23; italics mine.

[176] _Cf._ p. 34; also p. 22.

[177] P. 35.

[178] This warns us that in the phrase, "a plan of action," the term "action" must be more inclusive than it is in much current discussion. It must not be limited to gymnastic performance. It must apply to any sort of activity planned for, and which, when it arrives, fulfils the plan. This, I take it, is the import of the paragraph at the top of p. 7 of PROFESSOR JAMES's _Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results_.

[179] P. 270.

[180] Pp. 270, 271.

[181] P. 276.

[182] P. 277.

[183] Pp. 280, 281.

[184] See p. 256.

[185] P. 289; italics mine.

[186] P. 281; italics mine.

[187] It is worth noting in passing that here the universal appears to be located in finite experience, while the ground of the particular is in the absolute.

[188] P. 282.

[189] P. 284; italics mine.

[190] P. 283.

[191] P. 332.

[192] P. 339.

[193] This ghost of subjectivism haunts the entire part of the essay in which the final fulfilment of finite ideas is found in "a certain absolute system of ideas."

[194] P. 330; italics mine.

[195] P. 337.

[196] P. 286.

[197] P. 307.

[198] P. 297.

[199] This reduction of the purposive to the representative function carries with it an interesting implication concerning the whole character and relationship of thought and will. From beginning to end, on almost every page, Mr. Royce insists upon the idea as an expression of will. At the outset we read: "When we try to define the idea in itself, as a conscious fact, our best means is to lay stress upon the sort of will or active meaning which any idea involves for the mind that forms the idea" (p. 22). Again: "The idea is a will seeking its own determination. It is nothing else" (p. 332)--and so on throughout the lectures. And we have already seen how consistently this is worked out in the analysis of concrete acts, such as singing, etc. But now, as related to the absolute system, the will, as embodied in the idea, is to find its final determination in approximating the certain absolute system of ideas. This would seem to make will but little more than the mere form of representation itself. The idea is a will, but in its relation to truth its will is "to correspond even in its vagueness to its own final and completely individual expression."

[200] P. 339.

[201] P. 338.

[202] P. 335.

[203] _Cf._ MR. GORE'S paper, above.

[204] _Cf._ BALDWIN'S _Development and Evolution_, pp. 250, 251, on the necessity of the submission of the "new experience" to the test of its ability to utilize habit. Interpreted broadly, habit might here mean the whole mechanical side, including organism _and_ environment, and so include Mr. Baldwin's second or "extra-organic" test.

[205] P. 19.

[206] Pp. 17, 18.

[207] See, above, PROFESSOR DEWEY'S Study III, pp. 49 ff.

[208] P. 55.

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Transcriber's note:

1. Footnotes have been renumbered and moved from the middle of a chapter to the end of the main text.

2. Other than that, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.