Values
Content
VALUES BY W. TUDOR JO ES, D.PHIL.
IT is evident at the present moment that fundamental changes are taking place with regard to the worth or value of things. " Fundamental changes in the actual values of mankind, giving rise to what has been well called c our anxious morality/ with its characteristic talk of creating and conserving values, have brought with them what may, without exaggeration, be described as a gradual shifting of the philosophical centre of gravity from the problem of knowledge to the problem of values. The problem of knowledge has itself become, in some quarters wholly, the problem of values." x Attention is called to this subject of Values because it has already shed a good deal of new light on some of the darkest problems of human life. The thinkers who have reflected closely 1 Urban, Valuation^ p. I. 117
ii8 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA upon the meaning of human life are agreed that it is well-nigh impossible to present that meaning by means of one general conception. Life has at least two sides the theoretical and the practical. Though the two are closely related to each other, and react upon each other, still it is necessary
to see the function and significance of each separately. And this becomes necessary because man is often prone to treat one side with respect and, more or less, to ignore the other. In connection with the theoretical side of his life man deals with Judgmentshe attempts, in understanding or interpreting anything, to bring the fact into relation with the dictates of his reason. In doing this he has to select and to reject. Some explanations seem fitter than others. If he is true to his deeper intellectual nature, he accepts the better and discards the worse. In this act, which is founded in the very structure and work of reason itself, man perceives that all things are not the same ; that there are many kinds of differences in the things he comes in contact with. These differences may be in the things themselves
VALUES 119 -at least some of the differences may be there. It is not our purpose to discuss this matter here, as the problem is one of the hardest in metaphysics, and consequently requires a long and intricate piece of work. Of one thing, however, we are certain. On the theoretical side of life things do affect the judging mind in different ways. Some seem better, some worse ; some good, some evil. It is by making such a distinction, in so far as things are interpreted by mind, that the whole of organised knowledge has come into existence. But the distinctions made on the theoretical side of life refer mainly to things that come to the mind without any change in the man's deeper
personality. The mind is face to face with the things. It takes its standpoint as an observer of the objects presented to it, and passes judgment on them. Thus " things as they are " are interpreted. ow, as we have already remarked, things do not enter into the mind as though they were a row of postage stamps of the same kind and price, but, carrying the analogy further, they may rather be likened to stamps of different
120 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA colour, size, price, and so forth. The judging mind thus assigns different worths or values to things. But these different values, we must remember, are the property of things probably only in so far as the different standards of custom or need have made them so. For instance, we have long ago decided that gold is of more value than silver; the individual now accepts this valuation because by consent or, if necessary, compulsion all individuals have to accept it. The mind has to take certain material as a kind of standard of judgment. Reason has to acquiesce in such a standard, and interpret things in reference thereto. Of course, the standards may be revised when a new need arises, just as at the present moment a great deal of " paper money" has been put into circulation in order to meet new and urgent needs. All things that present themselves to the human mind are judged ; some are valued higher than others because they mean more for the individual or for mankind, or for
both. These things which present themselves to mind are judged according to
VALUES 121 the needs which they satisfy. But the theoretical side of life does not embrace the whole need of man. Indeed, it is the practical side which exhibits the most important needs. On the practical side man is only dealing with the things which face him in so far as they contribute towards the satisfaction of his needs. He has not only to pass judgment concerning things from the theoretical side, but also from the side of the needs, motives, and ends which are present within the soul. His body needs certain things, and so does his mind, and so do some deep stirrings of the inner life. Just as on the intellectual level, so also on this deeper practical level he sees that some things are better than others for the preservation and further development of his life. The extent and worth of the demands depend upon the nature of the End which man has placed before himself. When Ends are all-inclusive, they cover what pertains to the intellectual, moral, and aesthetic nature of man. To these three aspects of consciousness there correspond needs ^ and the content of the Ought or End shows what
122 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA will make life truer, better, and happier. In the words of one lately passed away,
Otto Liebmann, " man finds himself the possessor of a logical conscience, the ideal of which is Truth ; of an aesthetic conscience whose ideal is the Beautiful ; and of a moral conscience, and its ideal is the Good." Turning to these different values, we find that the logical ideal, or value, constitutes a portion of the work of theoretical Philosophy. As already stated, the two aspects of Philosophy are indissolubly connected. Logic deals with something of far greater significance than the forms of thought. In its objective character it compels us to think the world and life in certain determined ways ; its laws place alternatives before the human mind ; its judgments imply a distinction between truth and error. It deals in this and other respects with the conceptions of the natural and the mental sciences, and its influence is felt even within the provinces of ./Esthetics, Ethics, and Religion. To obey the norms set forth by Thought is something of the greatest importance in the development of personality, although
VALUES 123 such norms may appear intellectual in their nature. Even if the function of Logic were entirely confined to the intellectual realm it would still enable the person who follows the demands of Thought and the rules of Judgment to construct some kind of valid universe within his own consciousness. Such a person would possess an individuality richer in content than one who had not made the attempt, for he would be able to select and
reject, to set before himself Ends at least in Thought. The knowledge of the right way of handling the material which is given of itself to man, or which is sought out by him, is a Value : it bestows some power on the mind, and has a relation to the will on an important side. To adopt and follow the logical process in the handling of material requires at every step an act of discrimination between the various Values of the material either for man himself or for the universe. However impersonal the material may seem, it is of importance to the individual because material is often impersonal, not because it has no connection with the individual as individual, but because it has
I2 4 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA connection with, and is of importance to, all individuals. A theory of the universe or of life, if it is true, is true for all and good for all. The individual is thus in his battle for the possession of Truth a combatant in an over-individual struggle. In other words, he is battling for the possession, in this realm, of an over-individual world which will satisfy the needs of his reason. The satisfaction of this demand of the intellectual nature of man must produce a change in him. Or, as Miinsterberg says : " What else does that mean than that we grasp the elements, the parts, the groups, perhaps the whole of the chaos, and hold every bit of our experience before us as something which is to be more than a passing dream, more than a glowing spark. To have a world means to hold up the
flying experience as something which is not to be experience only, but is to be itself. And yet what else can it mean than to tell our experience to be itself, than to impart to it a will that it is to last, that it is to remain itself, independent of our individual experience ; that it is to aim toward the
VALUES 125 preservation of its own reality ; that it is to strive for loyalty to its own nature. To make the World out of our experience means, and cannot mean anything else than, to apperceive every bit of the chaos as something which must will to be itself. . . . To be itself may mean, finally, that our bit of experience is to be preserved, is to last through ever new experiences, and is to be found again and again. The satisfaction of this demand gives us the Values of truth." 1 The same author points out further : " In the field of reality it means that we have not only the immediate acknowledgment of things, persons, and duties, but also the created values of causal, historical, and logical knowledge.'' 2 The demand for Truth is thus a demand for something over-individual that shall persist. Hoffding in his Philosophy of Religion and in his Menschliche Gedanke has emphasised this point with great force and 1 Miinsterberg, Science and Idealism, pp. 38, 39. Cf. also my article on The Philosophy of Values in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Session 191415.
2 Miinsterberg, ibid., p. 50.
126 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA originality. 1 His main point is that in connection with the reflective, affective, and active aspects of consciousness the real meaning of the development of personality lies in the conservation and enhancement of all the values which affect consciousness. Such Values are connected with the physical world and our own physical bodies, but it is now admitted by the leading psychologists of our day that the Values are not merely physical on that account. In so far as they arc physical they act as servants of the spirit of man ; they are physical means to intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic Ends. They are used by man's spirit for the purposes of spirit. Thus they undergo, by virtue of the power of spirit, a process of transformation. Their thmghood is transformed into meaning and worth. As Lloyd Morgan says : " We find, as a matter of fact, that men and women some of them civilised like ourselves, some of them with very different social 1 Hoffding's Philosophy of Religion has been translated into English, but his Menschliche Gedanke has not yet appeared in English, though there are French and German editions of this remarkable volume obtainable.
VALUES 127 notions from ours do form ideals of one kind or another, though we may often think
them very wrong-headed. These ideals may be classified, the nature of their sequence may be described, and generalisations may be reached as to their mode of development. . . . We are perhaps told that they are the natural outcome of his character and the circumstance of his life and upbringing. o doubt they are : I would not for a moment deny that in the formation of every ideal there is a chain of antecedents, the links of which we might, but often cannot, unravel. I do not deny that every man's character and personality is a synthesis of elements, the stages of which might be traced if only we had sufficient insight and knowledge. But it seems to me that of this synthesis there is a cause, which for metaphysics is the will of the individual." x The passages we have quoted could be matched by what is found in the works of a number of prominent writers. These writers are agreed that the meanings and values 1 C. Lloyd Morgan, The Interpretation of ature, p. 138.
128 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA created by the needs of the human spirit have not been brought into existence by the material world or by our own physical bodies. Such meanings and values have their existence in themselves ; they subsist in their own world a world of spirit. The proofs of such meanings and values are not to be found in anything that is external to
themselves or below themselves. They are, indeed, their own proofs. And their value consists in their setting up Ends towards which the personality may move and, consequently, become a greater and deeper personality. The world at large is not as yet ready to understand the conclusions which have been drawn by the thinkers mentioned concerning the actual meaning of the things of the spirit as against material things. But such a step constitutes an allimportant part of the education of the race. The world, if it is ever to progress to a higher level of being, must somehow realise that the presence of individual and overindividual Ends constitutes what is termed in religion " the revelation of the Divine." The revelation of the Divine is thus found,
VALUES 129 on the intellectual level, in the activity of the reasoning mind when it comes in contact with the vast material which at every moment surrounds it. Man's intellectual judgment must take up the chaos of material that is presented to it ; it must reflect upon it ; it must select and reject ; and what is selected and accepted in the light of the ideal or end of the reasoning mind constitutes a Truth. Such truth is to be conserved. It contains a spiritual reality which will make its abode in the deeper consciousness, and which will help to expand and enlarge the core of man's personality. So much as this has been made clear by the idealistic thinkers of the present. They have shown that the intellectual
nature of man cannot be ignored in his search for the deepest that will satisfy his life. Although intellectual search and satisfaction does not constitute the whole of man's nature, still it does form a fundamental part of it a part, indeed, which is most intimately connected with the other sides of his nature. To be what we know is the main object of life. But we cannot be
130 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA without knowing. If the desire to know is dismissed, a personality will emerge which is one-sided, and which may leave out of account Values which could prevent the man from drifting into all kinds of superstitions, and from running after all kinds of chimeras. Though God is more than the truths which the intellectual Judgments of man are able to form, He is not less than these. He is those intellectual Judgments; and whenever man is true to these Judgments, whenever he conserves them, intensifies and furthers them, he is dealing with a reality that is spiritual in its nature, and that will lift him to a new kind of world, and grant him a new kind of existence. But, as already seen, man's intellectual nature does not comprise the whole of his being. Although it is necessary for him to search for truth and to conserve and further whatever truth he finds, still the other aspects of his nature must also be brought to the foreground. He is not only to know but also to be. Knowing and being are indissolubly related : one reacts
on the other. Each of the aspects of con-
VALUES 131 sciousness must have its chance of entering into the foreground of life, must have its turn in the transformation, conservation, and furtherance of reality. What is in the foreground of consciousness affects, it is true, the other aspects which are in the background. When the search for truth is in the foreground something of value is filtered into the affective, conative, and religious sides of our nature. But each of these, too, must come to the foreground, because the whole of reality possible to be attained can never be viewed from any one angle of our nature any more than the whole of a mountain can be viewed from any one single standpoint. So we now pass from the ideal of Truth to that of Goodness. Truth and Goodness are inseparably connected. They differ, in the main, in the fact that the former may only call into play the intellectual portion of the personality a portion which is furthest removed from life. It is quite possible to possess some kind of insight into the nature of the ideal as goodness without being good. Just
132 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA as Judgments fall into true and false, just as some things have to be selected and others
rejected, so Ends which pertain to our moral nature involve a situation different from, and better than, the one which we occupy at the moment. Wherever in life we look we find, over against the ordinary daily life and its values, a command that has to be obeyed and whose value consists in its realisation. Everywhere such a command is presupposed, however much the individual may fail to understand the nature of it. This command is termed Duty or Moral Law. This Moral Law is differentiated from the multiplicity of relations in which man finds himself placed from day to day. Life has grown from lower to higher levels by means of individual and over-individual qualities. It has already been stated that a fundamental difference exists between the individual and the overindividual elements in human nature. In the remarks on the collective life of the Community, expressing itself as the Will of he Community, there was seen to be present a reality over-individual in its nature. The
VALUES 133 history, necessity, and value of this overindividual reality for every individual in the Community, for the preservation of the Community, for its superiority to any individual whim or caprice, has conferred upon such a reality an imperative character. It has become an Ought. It is thus differentiated from the reality of the natural world which merely is so and can be no other ; it is also differentiated from the reality of the aesthetic world because it cannot be attained
without an activity of Will, and also because it is something to be attained^ and not, as on the aesthetic level, something which is rather " given " than attained, and something which is enjoyed without effort. The self is conscious of this interval between the Ought and the Is even when it does not make an effort to traverse the interval. It is conscious that one of the main values of life consists in that which is beyond the individual, however much the individual has already realised. The self is aware that it is in becoming the content of this imperative that a main value of life consists. This is no mere theory, but the actual experience
134 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA of what the social world presents as a demand and a sanction for man to conform with. The demand and sanction are here again over-individual in their nature ; they are not the creation of any one individual, but something which has persisted and has constituted the actual evolution of the human world. The human world has thus created a reality beyond itself, greater than any individual experience, and which persists and grows though each generation passes away. Such a reality is independent of the pleasure of the individual ; and the individual is aware that he cannot withdraw from it save at the peril of losing some of the greatest values of his life. He knows that these greatest values are in the Ought and not in the Is in what should be and not in what already exists by any natural necessity. The late
R. L. ettleship expressed this truth in the following powerful manner : " I have a real conviction at times of something that is in me and about me, in the consciousness of which I am free from desire and fear something which would make it easy to
VALUES 135 accomplish the most otherwise difficult thing without any other motive except that it was the one thing worth doing." l " Such a value is beyond the grasp of the mere scientific treatment of the events in nature and in mind." 2 What should be emphasised in Ethics is not only its descriptive character but also its imperative. This work of Practical Philosophy is looked upon by some philosophers as being greatly inferior to the relation of subject and object of mind and body, and so forth. It is a province which will probably at the start not yield such an intellectual harvest as Psychology, but it will prove of incalculable benefit to the human race, and may succeed in making Philosophy a living discipline to the world at large. 3 We now pass to the cesthetic side of man's nature. In the remarks on intellectual values we found these to be mainly over-individual, and not direct, personal experiences of the 1 ettleship, Philosophical Remains^ p. 107. 2 Miinsterberg, Science and Idealism^ p. 61. 3 I am indebted in this section for some remarks from
my article on The Philosophy of Values in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Session 1914-15.
136 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA individual. It is true that these Values of Truth are the creations of the mind, and express the demands and conclusions of Thought. But it is quite possible to regard these Values as being understood by the intellectual nature of man without being possessed by his whole nature. Man needs truth, but much as he needs it, he needs something else as well he needs something, however small it may be, which is more intimately his own. It is not given to every man to follow Truth far enough to be able to construct an open systematic view of the universe and life ; and it is not given to any man to frame a closed and complete system. So both types of men require their constructions to be supplemented by something else something which is a deep need of human nature, something which cannot be expressed in words. We may also assert that when man passes from the intellectual side to the moral, even then his whole nature is not at work. His partial realisation of the Good takes place through struggle, for, without a con-
VALUES 137 stant struggle, the Good cannot be realised.
But a constant struggle, void of the consciousness of something that is actually realised thereby, cannot satisfy the whole nature of man, and cannot exhaust the reality possible for his nature to attain. There are things outside us and within us which will not allow themselves to be expressed in logical Judgments, things which mean more than the mere act of striving. In other words, we have to confess with Faust <c Ich habe keinen amen Dafiir. Gefuhl ist alles." The individual feels the need of becoming something self-subsistent in himself in the form of immediacy. The individual claims, at least in a part of his being, the right to become independent, complete in himself, " not looking for any help or addition, and fulfilling all his desires through himself. . . . Wherever an experience comes to us in perfect fulfilment of this demand, there the world has aesthetic value." l Even in this 1 Miinsterberg, Science and Idealism, p. 54. Cf. also his Eternal Values.
138 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA domain the individual is often dependent upon material from the outside, but the material affects him in a different way from what it did in the realms of Truth and Goodness. On the esthetic level the beauty of nature forms the material ; in the social world the unity, harmony, and affection of
men and women contribute the material ; and in the world of his own inner life it is the equilibrium and unity of the content and experience of his own nature that furnishes the material. The very same material which presents itself may be valued in different ways. A young man's father told me some time ago that, in spite of his son's scientific achievements, he felt that a side of the son's nature was on the point of becoming atrophied. Father and son went out often to the country together, and observed the beauty of earth, sea, and sky. The son saw nothing but his own physics and chemistry in every object, and was incapable of deriving pleasure from any landscape, however beautiful. The father found that the same material sufficed to give him strength to carry on his laborious work
VALUES 139 for the coming week in a dingy part of London. The son passed from effect to cause and from cause to effect ; the father was able to pick out from the surrounding beauty the bit which he perceived and to find it, for the time being, complete, absolute, and satisfying. And it is the same with the material in all the sciences. It may be handled analytically and synthetically from a logical standpoint, or it may be viewed in its wholeness or totality, as a complete picture is viewed. The Value that belongs to the latter sense is that of satisfaction and enjoyment. How much intellect is present in the process it is difficult to detect, but however much there is it
has to be melted into the complete feelingview which human beings are able to possess. Some are inclined to think that there is more intellect in the process than is generally allowed by many writers on ^Esthetics, for country people with a minimum of intelligence are not very capable of appreciating the landscape of their own neighbourhood a neighbourhood which may draw some of the best artists to it every
140 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA year in the early summer and the early autumn. 1 Works of sculpture, paintings, poetry, drama, and music have all had their value in the civilising and moralising processes of mankind. They are over-individual in their nature, but they differ from the intellectual and moral over-individual in that they gain an entrance into the soul in the form of immediacy. They are less difficult of apprehension than intellectual Truth, and do not require the effort which is involved in the attainment of the Good. But they are all-important Values in a world such as ours where but few can hope to attain to a view of the universe, and where rest and enjoyment are sometimes needed after toiling hard in satisfying the intellectual demands of the nature or in overcoming some of its imperfections. But there is grave danger in making ./Esthetic Values the sole Values of life. Life is meant for alternate periods of effort
1 Cf. my article on The Philosophy of Values in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Session 1914-15, pp. 22O-22.
VALUES 141 and rest effort in the realm of the intellectual, rest in the realm of the Beautiful. Consciousness is many-sided, and is exposed to a real danger if we make one side of it pre-eminent and ignore the other sides. Something of value is thus lost, and only a partial development of the nature can take place. But none of the three systems of Values already enumerated touches the whole nature of man. It is clear that he has to work in all the three spheres if his personality is to unfold and deepen. But as he cannot get his whole nature into activity in any one of these spheres, and as only one of them can occupy his nature at the same time, the final quest of life is for a unity which embraces the three and includes more than the mere addition of the three. This unity constitutes the metaphysical and religious Value of life. This level of experience means that consciousness now rests upon the final convictions it has gained from the other provinces, and actually experiences them as one. That one experience is a new experience. As each of
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the other provinces of Values was obtained by binding the multiplicity of the material into a unity, so these three unities may become convictions in which the final, absolute Values of life are to be found and experienced. Values of life are to be experienced. As one of the idealists puts it : " That which completely fulfils it (this demand of our nature) is the system of our convictions. Their immediate form is religion. If we transcend the outer world by our convictions we come to God ; if we transcend the social world we come to immortality ; if we transcend our own inner sphere and link it with religion we come to the belief in providential leading. In every one of these conceptions, the world of things and of men and of duties is developed into a system in which the logical, sesthetical, and ethical demands are unified, in which the causal events of the universe and the moral duties and the desire for happiness are no longer in conflict. Religion, too, can speak a hundred languages, as the logical, aesthetic, and ethical demands which must be harmonised
VALUES 143 may vary from man to man, from time to time. But the value of the conviction that the reality in which we live, if we knew it completely, would be perfectly harmonious in the totality of its demands, is eternal and absolute." l In the religious Values the three different
aspects of consciousness come into operation the cognitive, the affective, and the conative. On the metaphysical side the religious consciousness has constructed a theory of its own relationship to the universe, and of the ideal meaning of its own life. The Values of the three sides of man's nature are shown as the various meanings which the soul has to realise, conserve, and further develop. On doing this depends all the progress of the individual and of the world. The Values are what they are the world's determining factors which enable the mind and spirit of man to escape from the limitations of his nature to a Reality that is more inclusive and more true to the meaning of life than any single, individual standpoint it is possible to take. The final conviction 1 MUnstcrberg, Science and Idealism, p. 65.
i 4 4 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA of the individual finds in them truths that have been attained, and still greater truths to be attained ; the final conviction, further, finds " Goods " that have been realised, through effort in the direction of the goal which truth pointed out, and " Goods " which are still ahead ; the feeling-side of our nature, in its contemplation of what has been gained, which is also an earnest of more to be gained, finds itself in union with the cognitive and conative sides. Doubtless the three sides have acted and reacted on one another on the lower planes of experience. But now they come closer together ; knowing and being are experi-
enced together as one experience, and such an experience cannot but produce feelings of happiness and bliss. As much as this is even true on the metaphysical level. At the higher level the religious all the norms and standards which were seen to constitute the value of- life the Ought with all its demands are now found to be realities that proceed from a Source akin to themselves. The Values are found to possess eternal significance, and to form the very
VALUES 145 meaning and interpretation of the universe and of life. The human spirit cannot cease to ask the question, Whence have these come ? Illusions they cannot possibly be, for they alone are capable of interpreting the universe and life in final terms. All science and philosophy are only preparatory stages in the direction of such over-individual ideals, norms, and standards. It is out of the absolute value of these, then, that the idea of God arises. We shall return to this subject at a later stage of our inquiry. It is for the moment sufficient to state that the idea of God is a legitimate idea : it has been forced on man by the final thoughts, conclusions, efforts, and feelings concerning the deepest meaning of life and the universe. The Values which we have enumerated could not have originated out of nothing ; and neither could they have originated from what was less than themselves. The mind and spirit are
then justified in the belief that they have a source of a similar nature to themselves. One of the chief points with regard to
146 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA such a religious experience as is here sketched is the need for the conservation of these Values. Hoffding has done splendid work in his insistence on this need of conserving and furthering these Values. It is by means of this that we obtain the key which opens the door of progress for the individual and the race. In so far as the race has progressed at all, it has done so by conserving its Values and further developing them. These Values have no existence in the external world they are the ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, which form the individual as well as the collective experiences of mankind. The existence (if the term may be used here at all) of these Values is in their self-subsistence : they are, or can be, actual experiences of mankind. They do not belong to the domain of things in space, although things in space have offered their contribution towards their construction. They do not belong entirely to Time, because they include the meanings and values of what has happened in an infinite multiplicity of moments. Their parts may belong to Time. But now that
VALUES 147
the parts have become wholes the wholes are timeless in their nature. In the beautiful words of F. H. Bradley, we may say of these ideals : " Our real world of fact may, for anything we know, be one of the least pieces of reality, and there may be an indefinite number of other real worlds superior to our own. On the other hand our world is the one place in which we are able to live and work. And we can live there in no way except by making our construction of facts in space and time, and by treating this construction as the one sphere in which our life is actual. Cultiver notre jardin is the beginning, and it is in a sense the end, of wisdom. o other place but here, no other time but now, no other world but this world of our own, can be our concern. " Our world and every other possible world are from one side worthless equally. As regions of mere fact and event, the bringing into being and the maintenance of temporal existence, they all alike have no value. It counts for nothing where or when such existence is taken to have its
i 4 8 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA place. The differences of past and future, of dream and waking, 'of on earth' or elsewhere, are one and all immaterial. Our life has value only because and in so far as it realises in fact that which transcends time and existence. Goodness, beauty, and truth are all there is which in the end is real.
Their reality, appearing amid chance and change, is beyond these and is eternal. But, in whatever world they appear, that world so far is real. And yet these eternal values owe their existence to finite wills, and it is therefore only each in our own world that we can come to possess them. We must till our garden awake and in no dream to gain the fruits and flowers for which alone it is worth while to live, and which, if anywhere there are better, at least to us are everything. If this is not Heaven, it at least comes nearer to the reality of the Blessed Vision than does any stupid Utopia or flaring ew Jerusalem adored by the visionary. The fault of the visionary is his endeavour to find, now or in the past or future, as an existing place that Heaven which is no place, while he neglects those
VALUES 149 finite conditions by which alone Goodness and Beauty can in any place be realised. " c For love and beauty and delight,' it is no matter where they have shown themselves, ' there is no death nor change ' ; and this conclusion is true. These things do not die, since the Paradise in which they bloom is immortal. That Paradise is no special region nor any given particular spot in time and space. It is here, it is everywhere where any finite being is lifted into that higher life which alone is waking reality." 1 Probably no writer of our generation has expressed the transient nature of physical
and mental phenomena with such convincing power as F. H. Bradley. He has shown us that the things of sense and even the mental qualities of our individual lives are only partial Appearances of the Reality that he designates as the Absolute. The qualities of " love and beauty and delight " are the highest expressions of the spiritual reality of the universe : they constitute a new world of spiritual, eternal values. The one aim and end of the spiritual life consists in 1 Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality , pp. 468-69.
150 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA the realisation, conservation, and furtherance of these values, for in them alone are to be found the true vision of the Divine and the true meaning of life. 1 1 Bosanquet has also emphasised this truth with great power in his two important volumes: The Principle of Individuality and Value and The Value and Destiny of the Individual. Cf. also Royce, The World and the Individual (2 vols.).
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IT is evident at the present moment that fundamental changes are taking place with regard to the worth or value of things. " Fundamental changes in the actual values of mankind, giving rise to what has been well called c our anxious morality/ with its characteristic talk of creating and conserving values, have brought with them what may, without exaggeration, be described as a gradual shifting of the philosophical centre of gravity from the problem of knowledge to the problem of values. The problem of knowledge has itself become, in some quarters wholly, the problem of values." x Attention is called to this subject of Values because it has already shed a good deal of new light on some of the darkest problems of human life. The thinkers who have reflected closely 1 Urban, Valuation^ p. I. 117
ii8 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA upon the meaning of human life are agreed that it is well-nigh impossible to present that meaning by means of one general conception. Life has at least two sides the theoretical and the practical. Though the two are closely related to each other, and react upon each other, still it is necessary
to see the function and significance of each separately. And this becomes necessary because man is often prone to treat one side with respect and, more or less, to ignore the other. In connection with the theoretical side of his life man deals with Judgmentshe attempts, in understanding or interpreting anything, to bring the fact into relation with the dictates of his reason. In doing this he has to select and to reject. Some explanations seem fitter than others. If he is true to his deeper intellectual nature, he accepts the better and discards the worse. In this act, which is founded in the very structure and work of reason itself, man perceives that all things are not the same ; that there are many kinds of differences in the things he comes in contact with. These differences may be in the things themselves
VALUES 119 -at least some of the differences may be there. It is not our purpose to discuss this matter here, as the problem is one of the hardest in metaphysics, and consequently requires a long and intricate piece of work. Of one thing, however, we are certain. On the theoretical side of life things do affect the judging mind in different ways. Some seem better, some worse ; some good, some evil. It is by making such a distinction, in so far as things are interpreted by mind, that the whole of organised knowledge has come into existence. But the distinctions made on the theoretical side of life refer mainly to things that come to the mind without any change in the man's deeper
personality. The mind is face to face with the things. It takes its standpoint as an observer of the objects presented to it, and passes judgment on them. Thus " things as they are " are interpreted. ow, as we have already remarked, things do not enter into the mind as though they were a row of postage stamps of the same kind and price, but, carrying the analogy further, they may rather be likened to stamps of different
120 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA colour, size, price, and so forth. The judging mind thus assigns different worths or values to things. But these different values, we must remember, are the property of things probably only in so far as the different standards of custom or need have made them so. For instance, we have long ago decided that gold is of more value than silver; the individual now accepts this valuation because by consent or, if necessary, compulsion all individuals have to accept it. The mind has to take certain material as a kind of standard of judgment. Reason has to acquiesce in such a standard, and interpret things in reference thereto. Of course, the standards may be revised when a new need arises, just as at the present moment a great deal of " paper money" has been put into circulation in order to meet new and urgent needs. All things that present themselves to the human mind are judged ; some are valued higher than others because they mean more for the individual or for mankind, or for
both. These things which present themselves to mind are judged according to
VALUES 121 the needs which they satisfy. But the theoretical side of life does not embrace the whole need of man. Indeed, it is the practical side which exhibits the most important needs. On the practical side man is only dealing with the things which face him in so far as they contribute towards the satisfaction of his needs. He has not only to pass judgment concerning things from the theoretical side, but also from the side of the needs, motives, and ends which are present within the soul. His body needs certain things, and so does his mind, and so do some deep stirrings of the inner life. Just as on the intellectual level, so also on this deeper practical level he sees that some things are better than others for the preservation and further development of his life. The extent and worth of the demands depend upon the nature of the End which man has placed before himself. When Ends are all-inclusive, they cover what pertains to the intellectual, moral, and aesthetic nature of man. To these three aspects of consciousness there correspond needs ^ and the content of the Ought or End shows what
122 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA will make life truer, better, and happier. In the words of one lately passed away,
Otto Liebmann, " man finds himself the possessor of a logical conscience, the ideal of which is Truth ; of an aesthetic conscience whose ideal is the Beautiful ; and of a moral conscience, and its ideal is the Good." Turning to these different values, we find that the logical ideal, or value, constitutes a portion of the work of theoretical Philosophy. As already stated, the two aspects of Philosophy are indissolubly connected. Logic deals with something of far greater significance than the forms of thought. In its objective character it compels us to think the world and life in certain determined ways ; its laws place alternatives before the human mind ; its judgments imply a distinction between truth and error. It deals in this and other respects with the conceptions of the natural and the mental sciences, and its influence is felt even within the provinces of ./Esthetics, Ethics, and Religion. To obey the norms set forth by Thought is something of the greatest importance in the development of personality, although
VALUES 123 such norms may appear intellectual in their nature. Even if the function of Logic were entirely confined to the intellectual realm it would still enable the person who follows the demands of Thought and the rules of Judgment to construct some kind of valid universe within his own consciousness. Such a person would possess an individuality richer in content than one who had not made the attempt, for he would be able to select and
reject, to set before himself Ends at least in Thought. The knowledge of the right way of handling the material which is given of itself to man, or which is sought out by him, is a Value : it bestows some power on the mind, and has a relation to the will on an important side. To adopt and follow the logical process in the handling of material requires at every step an act of discrimination between the various Values of the material either for man himself or for the universe. However impersonal the material may seem, it is of importance to the individual because material is often impersonal, not because it has no connection with the individual as individual, but because it has
I2 4 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA connection with, and is of importance to, all individuals. A theory of the universe or of life, if it is true, is true for all and good for all. The individual is thus in his battle for the possession of Truth a combatant in an over-individual struggle. In other words, he is battling for the possession, in this realm, of an over-individual world which will satisfy the needs of his reason. The satisfaction of this demand of the intellectual nature of man must produce a change in him. Or, as Miinsterberg says : " What else does that mean than that we grasp the elements, the parts, the groups, perhaps the whole of the chaos, and hold every bit of our experience before us as something which is to be more than a passing dream, more than a glowing spark. To have a world means to hold up the
flying experience as something which is not to be experience only, but is to be itself. And yet what else can it mean than to tell our experience to be itself, than to impart to it a will that it is to last, that it is to remain itself, independent of our individual experience ; that it is to aim toward the
VALUES 125 preservation of its own reality ; that it is to strive for loyalty to its own nature. To make the World out of our experience means, and cannot mean anything else than, to apperceive every bit of the chaos as something which must will to be itself. . . . To be itself may mean, finally, that our bit of experience is to be preserved, is to last through ever new experiences, and is to be found again and again. The satisfaction of this demand gives us the Values of truth." 1 The same author points out further : " In the field of reality it means that we have not only the immediate acknowledgment of things, persons, and duties, but also the created values of causal, historical, and logical knowledge.'' 2 The demand for Truth is thus a demand for something over-individual that shall persist. Hoffding in his Philosophy of Religion and in his Menschliche Gedanke has emphasised this point with great force and 1 Miinsterberg, Science and Idealism, pp. 38, 39. Cf. also my article on The Philosophy of Values in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Session 191415.
2 Miinsterberg, ibid., p. 50.
126 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA originality. 1 His main point is that in connection with the reflective, affective, and active aspects of consciousness the real meaning of the development of personality lies in the conservation and enhancement of all the values which affect consciousness. Such Values are connected with the physical world and our own physical bodies, but it is now admitted by the leading psychologists of our day that the Values are not merely physical on that account. In so far as they arc physical they act as servants of the spirit of man ; they are physical means to intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic Ends. They are used by man's spirit for the purposes of spirit. Thus they undergo, by virtue of the power of spirit, a process of transformation. Their thmghood is transformed into meaning and worth. As Lloyd Morgan says : " We find, as a matter of fact, that men and women some of them civilised like ourselves, some of them with very different social 1 Hoffding's Philosophy of Religion has been translated into English, but his Menschliche Gedanke has not yet appeared in English, though there are French and German editions of this remarkable volume obtainable.
VALUES 127 notions from ours do form ideals of one kind or another, though we may often think
them very wrong-headed. These ideals may be classified, the nature of their sequence may be described, and generalisations may be reached as to their mode of development. . . . We are perhaps told that they are the natural outcome of his character and the circumstance of his life and upbringing. o doubt they are : I would not for a moment deny that in the formation of every ideal there is a chain of antecedents, the links of which we might, but often cannot, unravel. I do not deny that every man's character and personality is a synthesis of elements, the stages of which might be traced if only we had sufficient insight and knowledge. But it seems to me that of this synthesis there is a cause, which for metaphysics is the will of the individual." x The passages we have quoted could be matched by what is found in the works of a number of prominent writers. These writers are agreed that the meanings and values 1 C. Lloyd Morgan, The Interpretation of ature, p. 138.
128 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA created by the needs of the human spirit have not been brought into existence by the material world or by our own physical bodies. Such meanings and values have their existence in themselves ; they subsist in their own world a world of spirit. The proofs of such meanings and values are not to be found in anything that is external to
themselves or below themselves. They are, indeed, their own proofs. And their value consists in their setting up Ends towards which the personality may move and, consequently, become a greater and deeper personality. The world at large is not as yet ready to understand the conclusions which have been drawn by the thinkers mentioned concerning the actual meaning of the things of the spirit as against material things. But such a step constitutes an allimportant part of the education of the race. The world, if it is ever to progress to a higher level of being, must somehow realise that the presence of individual and overindividual Ends constitutes what is termed in religion " the revelation of the Divine." The revelation of the Divine is thus found,
VALUES 129 on the intellectual level, in the activity of the reasoning mind when it comes in contact with the vast material which at every moment surrounds it. Man's intellectual judgment must take up the chaos of material that is presented to it ; it must reflect upon it ; it must select and reject ; and what is selected and accepted in the light of the ideal or end of the reasoning mind constitutes a Truth. Such truth is to be conserved. It contains a spiritual reality which will make its abode in the deeper consciousness, and which will help to expand and enlarge the core of man's personality. So much as this has been made clear by the idealistic thinkers of the present. They have shown that the intellectual
nature of man cannot be ignored in his search for the deepest that will satisfy his life. Although intellectual search and satisfaction does not constitute the whole of man's nature, still it does form a fundamental part of it a part, indeed, which is most intimately connected with the other sides of his nature. To be what we know is the main object of life. But we cannot be
130 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA without knowing. If the desire to know is dismissed, a personality will emerge which is one-sided, and which may leave out of account Values which could prevent the man from drifting into all kinds of superstitions, and from running after all kinds of chimeras. Though God is more than the truths which the intellectual Judgments of man are able to form, He is not less than these. He is those intellectual Judgments; and whenever man is true to these Judgments, whenever he conserves them, intensifies and furthers them, he is dealing with a reality that is spiritual in its nature, and that will lift him to a new kind of world, and grant him a new kind of existence. But, as already seen, man's intellectual nature does not comprise the whole of his being. Although it is necessary for him to search for truth and to conserve and further whatever truth he finds, still the other aspects of his nature must also be brought to the foreground. He is not only to know but also to be. Knowing and being are indissolubly related : one reacts
on the other. Each of the aspects of con-
VALUES 131 sciousness must have its chance of entering into the foreground of life, must have its turn in the transformation, conservation, and furtherance of reality. What is in the foreground of consciousness affects, it is true, the other aspects which are in the background. When the search for truth is in the foreground something of value is filtered into the affective, conative, and religious sides of our nature. But each of these, too, must come to the foreground, because the whole of reality possible to be attained can never be viewed from any one angle of our nature any more than the whole of a mountain can be viewed from any one single standpoint. So we now pass from the ideal of Truth to that of Goodness. Truth and Goodness are inseparably connected. They differ, in the main, in the fact that the former may only call into play the intellectual portion of the personality a portion which is furthest removed from life. It is quite possible to possess some kind of insight into the nature of the ideal as goodness without being good. Just
132 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA as Judgments fall into true and false, just as some things have to be selected and others
rejected, so Ends which pertain to our moral nature involve a situation different from, and better than, the one which we occupy at the moment. Wherever in life we look we find, over against the ordinary daily life and its values, a command that has to be obeyed and whose value consists in its realisation. Everywhere such a command is presupposed, however much the individual may fail to understand the nature of it. This command is termed Duty or Moral Law. This Moral Law is differentiated from the multiplicity of relations in which man finds himself placed from day to day. Life has grown from lower to higher levels by means of individual and over-individual qualities. It has already been stated that a fundamental difference exists between the individual and the overindividual elements in human nature. In the remarks on the collective life of the Community, expressing itself as the Will of he Community, there was seen to be present a reality over-individual in its nature. The
VALUES 133 history, necessity, and value of this overindividual reality for every individual in the Community, for the preservation of the Community, for its superiority to any individual whim or caprice, has conferred upon such a reality an imperative character. It has become an Ought. It is thus differentiated from the reality of the natural world which merely is so and can be no other ; it is also differentiated from the reality of the aesthetic world because it cannot be attained
without an activity of Will, and also because it is something to be attained^ and not, as on the aesthetic level, something which is rather " given " than attained, and something which is enjoyed without effort. The self is conscious of this interval between the Ought and the Is even when it does not make an effort to traverse the interval. It is conscious that one of the main values of life consists in that which is beyond the individual, however much the individual has already realised. The self is aware that it is in becoming the content of this imperative that a main value of life consists. This is no mere theory, but the actual experience
134 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA of what the social world presents as a demand and a sanction for man to conform with. The demand and sanction are here again over-individual in their nature ; they are not the creation of any one individual, but something which has persisted and has constituted the actual evolution of the human world. The human world has thus created a reality beyond itself, greater than any individual experience, and which persists and grows though each generation passes away. Such a reality is independent of the pleasure of the individual ; and the individual is aware that he cannot withdraw from it save at the peril of losing some of the greatest values of his life. He knows that these greatest values are in the Ought and not in the Is in what should be and not in what already exists by any natural necessity. The late
R. L. ettleship expressed this truth in the following powerful manner : " I have a real conviction at times of something that is in me and about me, in the consciousness of which I am free from desire and fear something which would make it easy to
VALUES 135 accomplish the most otherwise difficult thing without any other motive except that it was the one thing worth doing." l " Such a value is beyond the grasp of the mere scientific treatment of the events in nature and in mind." 2 What should be emphasised in Ethics is not only its descriptive character but also its imperative. This work of Practical Philosophy is looked upon by some philosophers as being greatly inferior to the relation of subject and object of mind and body, and so forth. It is a province which will probably at the start not yield such an intellectual harvest as Psychology, but it will prove of incalculable benefit to the human race, and may succeed in making Philosophy a living discipline to the world at large. 3 We now pass to the cesthetic side of man's nature. In the remarks on intellectual values we found these to be mainly over-individual, and not direct, personal experiences of the 1 ettleship, Philosophical Remains^ p. 107. 2 Miinsterberg, Science and Idealism^ p. 61. 3 I am indebted in this section for some remarks from
my article on The Philosophy of Values in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Session 1914-15.
136 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA individual. It is true that these Values of Truth are the creations of the mind, and express the demands and conclusions of Thought. But it is quite possible to regard these Values as being understood by the intellectual nature of man without being possessed by his whole nature. Man needs truth, but much as he needs it, he needs something else as well he needs something, however small it may be, which is more intimately his own. It is not given to every man to follow Truth far enough to be able to construct an open systematic view of the universe and life ; and it is not given to any man to frame a closed and complete system. So both types of men require their constructions to be supplemented by something else something which is a deep need of human nature, something which cannot be expressed in words. We may also assert that when man passes from the intellectual side to the moral, even then his whole nature is not at work. His partial realisation of the Good takes place through struggle, for, without a con-
VALUES 137 stant struggle, the Good cannot be realised.
But a constant struggle, void of the consciousness of something that is actually realised thereby, cannot satisfy the whole nature of man, and cannot exhaust the reality possible for his nature to attain. There are things outside us and within us which will not allow themselves to be expressed in logical Judgments, things which mean more than the mere act of striving. In other words, we have to confess with Faust <c Ich habe keinen amen Dafiir. Gefuhl ist alles." The individual feels the need of becoming something self-subsistent in himself in the form of immediacy. The individual claims, at least in a part of his being, the right to become independent, complete in himself, " not looking for any help or addition, and fulfilling all his desires through himself. . . . Wherever an experience comes to us in perfect fulfilment of this demand, there the world has aesthetic value." l Even in this 1 Miinsterberg, Science and Idealism, p. 54. Cf. also his Eternal Values.
138 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA domain the individual is often dependent upon material from the outside, but the material affects him in a different way from what it did in the realms of Truth and Goodness. On the esthetic level the beauty of nature forms the material ; in the social world the unity, harmony, and affection of
men and women contribute the material ; and in the world of his own inner life it is the equilibrium and unity of the content and experience of his own nature that furnishes the material. The very same material which presents itself may be valued in different ways. A young man's father told me some time ago that, in spite of his son's scientific achievements, he felt that a side of the son's nature was on the point of becoming atrophied. Father and son went out often to the country together, and observed the beauty of earth, sea, and sky. The son saw nothing but his own physics and chemistry in every object, and was incapable of deriving pleasure from any landscape, however beautiful. The father found that the same material sufficed to give him strength to carry on his laborious work
VALUES 139 for the coming week in a dingy part of London. The son passed from effect to cause and from cause to effect ; the father was able to pick out from the surrounding beauty the bit which he perceived and to find it, for the time being, complete, absolute, and satisfying. And it is the same with the material in all the sciences. It may be handled analytically and synthetically from a logical standpoint, or it may be viewed in its wholeness or totality, as a complete picture is viewed. The Value that belongs to the latter sense is that of satisfaction and enjoyment. How much intellect is present in the process it is difficult to detect, but however much there is it
has to be melted into the complete feelingview which human beings are able to possess. Some are inclined to think that there is more intellect in the process than is generally allowed by many writers on ^Esthetics, for country people with a minimum of intelligence are not very capable of appreciating the landscape of their own neighbourhood a neighbourhood which may draw some of the best artists to it every
140 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA year in the early summer and the early autumn. 1 Works of sculpture, paintings, poetry, drama, and music have all had their value in the civilising and moralising processes of mankind. They are over-individual in their nature, but they differ from the intellectual and moral over-individual in that they gain an entrance into the soul in the form of immediacy. They are less difficult of apprehension than intellectual Truth, and do not require the effort which is involved in the attainment of the Good. But they are all-important Values in a world such as ours where but few can hope to attain to a view of the universe, and where rest and enjoyment are sometimes needed after toiling hard in satisfying the intellectual demands of the nature or in overcoming some of its imperfections. But there is grave danger in making ./Esthetic Values the sole Values of life. Life is meant for alternate periods of effort
1 Cf. my article on The Philosophy of Values in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Session 1914-15, pp. 22O-22.
VALUES 141 and rest effort in the realm of the intellectual, rest in the realm of the Beautiful. Consciousness is many-sided, and is exposed to a real danger if we make one side of it pre-eminent and ignore the other sides. Something of value is thus lost, and only a partial development of the nature can take place. But none of the three systems of Values already enumerated touches the whole nature of man. It is clear that he has to work in all the three spheres if his personality is to unfold and deepen. But as he cannot get his whole nature into activity in any one of these spheres, and as only one of them can occupy his nature at the same time, the final quest of life is for a unity which embraces the three and includes more than the mere addition of the three. This unity constitutes the metaphysical and religious Value of life. This level of experience means that consciousness now rests upon the final convictions it has gained from the other provinces, and actually experiences them as one. That one experience is a new experience. As each of
142 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA
the other provinces of Values was obtained by binding the multiplicity of the material into a unity, so these three unities may become convictions in which the final, absolute Values of life are to be found and experienced. Values of life are to be experienced. As one of the idealists puts it : " That which completely fulfils it (this demand of our nature) is the system of our convictions. Their immediate form is religion. If we transcend the outer world by our convictions we come to God ; if we transcend the social world we come to immortality ; if we transcend our own inner sphere and link it with religion we come to the belief in providential leading. In every one of these conceptions, the world of things and of men and of duties is developed into a system in which the logical, sesthetical, and ethical demands are unified, in which the causal events of the universe and the moral duties and the desire for happiness are no longer in conflict. Religion, too, can speak a hundred languages, as the logical, aesthetic, and ethical demands which must be harmonised
VALUES 143 may vary from man to man, from time to time. But the value of the conviction that the reality in which we live, if we knew it completely, would be perfectly harmonious in the totality of its demands, is eternal and absolute." l In the religious Values the three different
aspects of consciousness come into operation the cognitive, the affective, and the conative. On the metaphysical side the religious consciousness has constructed a theory of its own relationship to the universe, and of the ideal meaning of its own life. The Values of the three sides of man's nature are shown as the various meanings which the soul has to realise, conserve, and further develop. On doing this depends all the progress of the individual and of the world. The Values are what they are the world's determining factors which enable the mind and spirit of man to escape from the limitations of his nature to a Reality that is more inclusive and more true to the meaning of life than any single, individual standpoint it is possible to take. The final conviction 1 MUnstcrberg, Science and Idealism, p. 65.
i 4 4 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA of the individual finds in them truths that have been attained, and still greater truths to be attained ; the final conviction, further, finds " Goods " that have been realised, through effort in the direction of the goal which truth pointed out, and " Goods " which are still ahead ; the feeling-side of our nature, in its contemplation of what has been gained, which is also an earnest of more to be gained, finds itself in union with the cognitive and conative sides. Doubtless the three sides have acted and reacted on one another on the lower planes of experience. But now they come closer together ; knowing and being are experi-
enced together as one experience, and such an experience cannot but produce feelings of happiness and bliss. As much as this is even true on the metaphysical level. At the higher level the religious all the norms and standards which were seen to constitute the value of- life the Ought with all its demands are now found to be realities that proceed from a Source akin to themselves. The Values are found to possess eternal significance, and to form the very
VALUES 145 meaning and interpretation of the universe and of life. The human spirit cannot cease to ask the question, Whence have these come ? Illusions they cannot possibly be, for they alone are capable of interpreting the universe and life in final terms. All science and philosophy are only preparatory stages in the direction of such over-individual ideals, norms, and standards. It is out of the absolute value of these, then, that the idea of God arises. We shall return to this subject at a later stage of our inquiry. It is for the moment sufficient to state that the idea of God is a legitimate idea : it has been forced on man by the final thoughts, conclusions, efforts, and feelings concerning the deepest meaning of life and the universe. The Values which we have enumerated could not have originated out of nothing ; and neither could they have originated from what was less than themselves. The mind and spirit are
then justified in the belief that they have a source of a similar nature to themselves. One of the chief points with regard to
146 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA such a religious experience as is here sketched is the need for the conservation of these Values. Hoffding has done splendid work in his insistence on this need of conserving and furthering these Values. It is by means of this that we obtain the key which opens the door of progress for the individual and the race. In so far as the race has progressed at all, it has done so by conserving its Values and further developing them. These Values have no existence in the external world they are the ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, which form the individual as well as the collective experiences of mankind. The existence (if the term may be used here at all) of these Values is in their self-subsistence : they are, or can be, actual experiences of mankind. They do not belong to the domain of things in space, although things in space have offered their contribution towards their construction. They do not belong entirely to Time, because they include the meanings and values of what has happened in an infinite multiplicity of moments. Their parts may belong to Time. But now that
VALUES 147
the parts have become wholes the wholes are timeless in their nature. In the beautiful words of F. H. Bradley, we may say of these ideals : " Our real world of fact may, for anything we know, be one of the least pieces of reality, and there may be an indefinite number of other real worlds superior to our own. On the other hand our world is the one place in which we are able to live and work. And we can live there in no way except by making our construction of facts in space and time, and by treating this construction as the one sphere in which our life is actual. Cultiver notre jardin is the beginning, and it is in a sense the end, of wisdom. o other place but here, no other time but now, no other world but this world of our own, can be our concern. " Our world and every other possible world are from one side worthless equally. As regions of mere fact and event, the bringing into being and the maintenance of temporal existence, they all alike have no value. It counts for nothing where or when such existence is taken to have its
i 4 8 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA place. The differences of past and future, of dream and waking, 'of on earth' or elsewhere, are one and all immaterial. Our life has value only because and in so far as it realises in fact that which transcends time and existence. Goodness, beauty, and truth are all there is which in the end is real.
Their reality, appearing amid chance and change, is beyond these and is eternal. But, in whatever world they appear, that world so far is real. And yet these eternal values owe their existence to finite wills, and it is therefore only each in our own world that we can come to possess them. We must till our garden awake and in no dream to gain the fruits and flowers for which alone it is worth while to live, and which, if anywhere there are better, at least to us are everything. If this is not Heaven, it at least comes nearer to the reality of the Blessed Vision than does any stupid Utopia or flaring ew Jerusalem adored by the visionary. The fault of the visionary is his endeavour to find, now or in the past or future, as an existing place that Heaven which is no place, while he neglects those
VALUES 149 finite conditions by which alone Goodness and Beauty can in any place be realised. " c For love and beauty and delight,' it is no matter where they have shown themselves, ' there is no death nor change ' ; and this conclusion is true. These things do not die, since the Paradise in which they bloom is immortal. That Paradise is no special region nor any given particular spot in time and space. It is here, it is everywhere where any finite being is lifted into that higher life which alone is waking reality." 1 Probably no writer of our generation has expressed the transient nature of physical
and mental phenomena with such convincing power as F. H. Bradley. He has shown us that the things of sense and even the mental qualities of our individual lives are only partial Appearances of the Reality that he designates as the Absolute. The qualities of " love and beauty and delight " are the highest expressions of the spiritual reality of the universe : they constitute a new world of spiritual, eternal values. The one aim and end of the spiritual life consists in 1 Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality , pp. 468-69.
150 SPIRITUAL ASCE T OF MA the realisation, conservation, and furtherance of these values, for in them alone are to be found the true vision of the Divine and the true meaning of life. 1 1 Bosanquet has also emphasised this truth with great power in his two important volumes: The Principle of Individuality and Value and The Value and Destiny of the Individual. Cf. also Royce, The World and the Individual (2 vols.).
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