We have seen that the center of attention or subject in the judgment-process is as such problematic--in the sense that there are certain of its observed and recognized attributes which make it in some sense relevant and useful to the purpose in hand, while yet other of its attributes (or absences of certain attributes) suggest conflicting activities. The object which one sees is certainly a stone and of convenient size for hurling at the pursuing animal. The situation has been analyzed and found to demand a missile, and this demand has led to search for and recognition of a stone. The stone, however, may be of a color suggesting a soft and crumbling texture, or its form may appear from a distance to be such as to make it practically certain to miss the mark, however carefully it may be aimed and thrown. Until these points of difficulty have been ascertained, the stone is wanting still in certain essential determinations. So far as it has been certainly determined, it prompts to the response directly suggested by one's general end of defense and escape, but there are these other indications which hold this response in check and which, if verified, will cause the stone to be let lie unused. Now, we have, in this situation of conflict or tension between opposed incitements given by the various discriminated characters of the object, the explanation of the aspect of obtrusiveness, of arbitrary resistance to and independence of one's will, which for the time being seems the unmistakable mark or coefficient of the thing's objectivity. For it is not the object as a whole that is obtrusive; indeed, clearly, there could be no obtrusiveness on the part of an "object as a whole," and in such a case there could also be no judgment. The obtrusion in the case before us is not a sense of the energy of a recalcitrant metaphysical object put forth upon a coerced and helpless human will, but simply a conscious interpretation of the inhibition of certain of the agent's motor tendencies by certain others prompted by the object's "suspicious" and as yet undetermined appearances or possible attributes. The object as amenable to use--those of its qualities which taken by themselves are unquestionable and clearly conducive to the agent's purpose--needs no attention for the moment, let us say. The attention is rather upon the dubious and to all appearance unfavorable qualities, and these for the time being make up the sum and content of the agent's knowledge of the object. On the other hand, the agent as an active self is identified with the end and with those modes of response to the object which promise to contribute directly to its realization. It is in this direction that his interest is set and he strains with all his powers of mind to move, and it is upon the self as identified with, and for the time being expressed in, the "effort of the agent's will" that the object as resistant, refusing to be misconstrued, obtrudes. One _must_ see the object and _must_ acknowledge its apparent, or in the end its ascertained, unfitness. One is "coerced." The situation is one of conflict, and it is out of the conflict that the essentially emotional experience of "resistance" emerges.[124] The more special emotions of impatience, anger, or discouragement may in a given case not be present or may be suppressed, but the emotion of objectivity will still remain.[125] On the same general principles the other of our two coefficients of reality may be explained. Let us assume that the stone in our illustration has at last been cleared of all ambiguity in its suggestion, having been taken as a missile, and that the man in flight now holds it ready awaiting the most favorable moment for hurling it at his pursuer. It will hardly be maintained that under these conditions the coefficient of the stone's reality as an object consists in its obtrusiveness, in its resistance to or coercion of the self. The stone is now regarded as a fixed and determinate feature of the situation--a condition which can be counted on, whatever else may fail. Over against other still uncertain aspects of the situation (which are now in _their_ turn real because resistant, coercive, and obtrusive) stands the stone as a reassuring fact upon and about which the agent can build up the whole plan of conduct which may, if all goes well, bring him safely out of his predicament. The stone has, so to speak, passed over to the "end" side of the situation, and although it may have to be rejected for some other means of defense, as the definition of the situation proceeds and the plan of action accordingly changes (as in some degree it probably must), nevertheless for the time being the imaged activities as stimulus to which the stone is now accepted are a fixed part of the plan and guide in further judgment of the means still undefined. The agent can hardly recur to the stone, when, after attending for a time to the bewildering perplexities of the situation, he pauses once more to take an inventory of his certain resources, without something of an emotional thrill of assurance and encouragement. In this emotional appreciation of the "solidity" and "dependability" of the object the second of our coefficients of reality consists. This might be termed the Recognition, the other the Perception, coefficient. Classifying them as emotions, because both are phenomena of tension in activity, we should group the Perception coefficient with emotions of the Contraction type, like grief and anger, and the Recognition coefficient with the Expansion emotions, like joy and triumph.
Now, in the foregoing interpretation no reference has been made to any conditions peculiar to the physical type of judgment-situation. The ground of explanation has been the feature of arrest of activity for the sake of reconstruction, and this, if our analyses have been correct, is the essence of the ethical and economic situations as well as of the physical. Can there then be found in these two spheres experiences of the same nature and emerging under the same general conditions as our Perception and Recognition coefficients of reality? If so, then our case for the objective significance and value of ethical and economic judgment is in so far strengthened. (1) In the first place, then, the object in its economic character is problematic, assuming a desire on the agent's part to apply it, as means, to some new or freshly interesting end, because it has already been, and accordingly now is, set apart for other uses and cannot thoughtlessly be withdrawn from them. Extended illustration is not needed to remind one that these established and hitherto unquestioned uses will haunt the economic conscience as obtrusively and inhibit the desired course of economic conduct with as much energy of resistance as in the other case will any of the contrary promptings of a physical object. Moreover, the Recognition coefficient may as easily be identified in this connection.
If one's scruples gain the day, in such a case one has at least a sense of comforting assurance in the conservatism of his choice and its accordance with the facts, however unreconciled in another way one may be to the deprivation that has thus seemed to be necessary. If, however, the new end in a measure makes good its case and the modes of expenditure which the "scruples" represented have been readjusted in accordance with it, then the means, no less than before the new interpretation had been placed upon them, will enjoy the status of Reality in the economic sense. They will be real now, however, not in the obtrusive way, as presenting aspects which inhibit the leading tendency in the judgment-process, but, instead, as means having a fixed and certain character in one's economic life, which, after the hesitation and doubt just now superseded, one may safely count upon and will do well to keep in view henceforth. (2) In the second place, mere mention of the corresponding ethical experiences must suffice, since only extended illustration from literature and life would be fully adequate: on the one hand, the "still small voice" of Conscience or the authoritativeness of Duty, "stern daughter of the voice of God;" and, on the other, the restful assurance with which, from the vantage-ground of a satisfying decision, one may look back in wonder at the possibility of so serious a temptation or in rejoicing over the new-won freedom from a burdensome and repressive prejudice.
This must for the present serve as positive exposition of our view as to the objective significance of the valuational types of judgment.
There are certain essential points which have as yet not been touched upon, and there are certain objections to the general view the consideration of which will serve further to explain it; but the discussion of these various matters will more conveniently follow the special analysis of the valuational judgments, to which we shall now proceed.
IV In the last analysis the ultimate motive of all reflective thought is the progressive determination of the ends of conduct. Physical judgment, or, in psychological terms, reflective attention to objects in the physical world, is at every turn directed and controlled by reference to a gradually developing purpose, so that the process may also be described as one of bringing to fulness of definition an at first vaguely conceived purpose through ascertainment and determination of the means at hand. The problematic situation in which reflection takes its rise inevitably develops in this two-sided way into consciousness of a definite end on the one side, and of the means or conditions of attaining it on the other.
It has been shown that there _may_ be involved in any finally satisfactory determination of a situation an explicit reflection upon and definition of the controlling end which is present and gives point and direction to the physical determination. But very often such is not the case. When a child sees a bright object at a distance and makes toward it, availing himself more or less skilfully of such assistance as intervening articles of furniture may afford, there is of course no consciousness on his part of any definite purpose as such, and this is to say that the child does not subject his conduct to criticism from the standpoint of the value or its ends. There is simply strong desire for the distant red ball, controlling all the child's movements for the time being and prompting a more or less critical inspection of the intervening territory with reference to the easiest way of crossing it.
The purpose is implicitly accepted, not explicitly determined, as a preliminary to physical determination of the situation. If one may speak of a development of the purpose in such a case as this, one must say that the development into details comes through judgment of the environing conditions. To change the illustration in order not to commit ourselves to the ascription of too developed a faculty of judgment to the child, this is true likewise of any process of reflective attention in the mind of an adult in which a general purpose is accepted at the outset and is carried through to execution without reflection upon its ethical or economic character as a purpose. The specific purpose as executed is certainly not the same as the general purpose with which the reflective process took its rise. It is filled out with details, or may perhaps even be quite different in its general outlines. There has necessarily been development and perhaps even transformation, but our contention is that all this has been effected in and through a process of judgment in which the conditions of action, and not the purpose itself, have been the immediate objects of determination. Upon these the attention has been centered, though of course the attention was directed to them by the purpose. To state the case in logical terms, it has been only through selection and determination of the means and conditions of action from the standpoint of predicates suggested by the general purpose accepted at the outset that this purpose itself had been rendered definite and practical and possible of execution. Probably such cases are seldom to be found in the adult experience. As a rule, the course of physical or technological judgment will almost always bring to light implications involved in the accepted purpose which must inevitably raise ethical and economic questions; and the resolution of these latter will in turn afford new points of view for further physical determination of the situation. In such processes the logical points of the problem of ethical and economic valuation come clearly into view.
In our earlier account of the matter it was more convenient to use language which implied that ethical and economic judgment must be preceded by implicit or explicit acceptance of a definite situation presented in sense-perception, and that these evaluating judgments could be carried through to their goal only upon the basis of such an inventory of fixed conditions. Thus the ultimate ethical quality of the general purpose of building a house would seem to depend upon the precise form which this purpose comes to assume after the actual presence and the quality of the means of building have been ascertained and the economic bearings of the proposed expenditure have been considered. Surely it is a waste of effort to debate with oneself upon the ethical rightness of a project which is physically impossible or else out of the question from the economic point of view. We are, however, now in a position to see that this way of looking at the matter is both inaccurate and self-contradictory. In the actual development of our purposes there is no such orderly and inflexible arrangement of stages; and if it is a waste of effort to deliberate upon a purpose that is physically impossible, it may, with still greater force, be argued that we cannot find, and judge the fitness of, the necessary physical means until we know what, precisely, it is that we wish to do. The truth is that there is constant interplay and interaction between the various phases of the inclusive judgment-process, or rather, more than this, that there is a complete and thoroughgoing mutual implication. It is indeed true that our ethical purposes cannot take form in a vacuum apart from consideration of their physical and economic possibility, but it is also true that our physical and economic problems are ultimately meaningless and impossible, whether of statement or of solution, except as they are interpreted as arising in the course of ethical conflict.
We have, then, to do, in the present division, with situations in which, whether at the outset or from time to time during the course of the reflective process, there is explicit conflict between ends of conduct.
These situations are the special province of the judgment of valuation.
Our line of argument may be briefly indicated in advance as follows: 1. The judgment of valuation, whether expressed in terms of the individual experience or in terms of social evolution, is essentially the process of the explicit and deliberate resolution of conflict between ends. As an incidental, though nearly always indispensable, step to the final resolution of such conflict, physical judgment, or, in general, the judgment of fact or existence, plays its part, this part being to define the situation in terms of the means necessary for the execution of the end that is gradually taking form. The two modes of judgment mutually incite and control each other, and neither could continue to any useful purpose without this incitement and control of the other. Both modes of judgment are objective in content and significance. At the end of the reflective process and immediately upon the verge of execution of the end or purpose which has taken form the result may be stated or apprehended in either of two ways: (1) directly, in terms of the end, and (2) indirectly, in terms of the ordered system of existent means which have been discovered, determined, and arranged.
If such final survey of the result be taken by way of preparation for action, or for whatever reason, the end will be apprehended as possessing ethical value and the means, under conditions later to be specified, as possessing economic value.
2. What then is the nature and source of this apprehension of end or means as valuable? The consciousness of end or means as valuable is an emotional consciousness expressive of the agent's practical attitude as determined in the just completed judgment of ethical or economic valuation and arising in consequence of the inhibition placed upon the activities which constitute the attitude by the effort of apprehending or imaging the valued object. Ethical and economic value are thus strictly correlative; psychologically they are emotional incidents of apprehending in the two respective ways just indicated the same total result of the inclusive complex judgment-process. Finally, as the moment of action comes on, the consciousness of the ethically valued end lapses first; then the consciousness of economic value is lost in a purely "physical," _i. e._, technological, consciousness of the means and their properties and interrelations in the ordered system which has been arranged; and this finally merges into the immediate and undifferentiated consciousness of activity as use of the means becomes sure and unhesitating.
When we say that the ends which oppose each other in an ethical situation (that is, a situation for the time being seen in an ethical aspect) are related, and the ends in an economic situation are not, we by no means wish to imply that in the one case we have in this fact of relatedness a satisfactory solution at hand which is wanting in the other. To feel, for example, that there is a direct and inherent relationship between a cherished purpose of self-culture and an ideal of social service which seems now to require the abandonment of the purpose does not mean that one yet knows just _how_ the two ends should be related in his life henceforth; and again, to say that one can see no inherent relation between a desire for books and pictures and the need of food, excepting in so far as both ends depend for their realization upon a limited supply of means, is not to say that the issue of the conflict is not of ethical significance. Such a view as we here reject would amount to a denial of the possibility of genuinely problematic ethical situations[126] and would accord with the opinion that economic judgment as such lies apart from the sphere of ethics and is at most subject only to occasional revision and control in the light of ethical considerations.
By the relatedness of the ends in a situation we mean the fact, more or less explicitly recognized by the agent, that the new, and as yet undefined, purpose which has arisen belongs in the same system with the end, or group of ends, which the standard inhibiting immediate action represents. The standard inhibits action in obedience to the impulse that has come to consciousness, and the image of the new end is, on its part, definite and impressive enough to inhibit action in obedience to the standard. The relatedness of the two factors is shown in a practical way by the fact that, in the first instance at least, they are tacitly expected to work out their own adjustment. By the process already described in outline, subject and predicate begin to develop and thereby to approach each other, and a provisional or partial solution of the problem may thus be reached without resort to any other method than that of direct comparison and adjustment of the ends involved on either side.
The standard which has been called in question has enough of congruence with the new imaged purpose to admit of at least some progress toward a solution through this method.
We can best come to an understanding of this recognition of the relatedness of the ends in ethical valuation by pausing to examine somewhat carefully into the conditions involved in the acceptance or reflective acknowledgment of a defined end of conduct as being one's own. Any new end in coming to consciousness encounters some more or less firmly established habit represented in consciousness by a sign or symbolic image of some sort, the habit being itself the outcome of past judgment-process. Our present problem is the significance of the agent's recognition of a relatedness between his new impulsive end and the end which represents the habit, and we shall best approach its solution by considering the various factors and conditions involved in the agent's conscious recognition of the established end as being such.
In any determinate end there is inevitably implied a number of groups of factual judgments in which are presented the objective conditions under which execution of the end or purpose must take place. There is in the first place a general view of environing conditions, physical and social, presented in a group of judgments (1) descriptive of the means at hand, of the topography of the region in which the purpose is to be carried out, of climatic conditions, and the like, and (2) descriptive of the habits of thought and feeling of the people with whom one is to deal, their prejudices, their tastes, and their institutions. The project decided on may, let us say, be an individual or a national enterprise, whether philanthropic or commercial, which is to be launched in a distant country peopled by partly civilized races. In addition to these groups of judgments upon the physical and sociological conditions under which the work must proceed, there will also be a more or less adequate and impartial knowledge of one's own physical and mental fitness for the enterprise, since the work as projected may promise to tax one's physical powers severely and to require, for its successful conduct, large measure of industry, devotion, patience, and wisdom.
Indeed any determinate purpose whatever inevitably implies a more or less varied and comprehensive inventory of conditions. Further illustration is not necessary for our present purpose. We may say that in a general way the conditions relevant to a practical purpose will group themselves naturally under four heads of classification, as physical, sociological, physiological, and psychological. All four classes are objective, though the last two embrace conditions peculiar to the agent as an individual over against the environment to which for purposes of his present activity he stands in a sense opposed.
Now our present interest is not so much in the enumeration and classification of possible relevant conditions in a typical situation as in the significance of these relevant conditions in the agent's apprehension of them. Perhaps this significance cannot better be described than by saying that essentially and impressively the conditions are apprehended as, taken together, _warranting_ the purpose that has been determined. We appeal, in support of this account of the matter, to an impartial introspection of the way in which the means and conditions of action stand related to the formed purpose in the moment of survey of a situation. The various details presented in the survey of a situation are apprehended, not as bare facts such as one might find set down in a scientist's notebook, but as warranting--as closely, uniquely, and vitally relevant to--the action that is about to be taken.
This, as we believe, is a fair account of the situation in even the commoner and simpler emergencies that confront the ordinary man. Quite conspicuously is it true of cases in which the purpose is a purely technological one that has been worked out with considerable difficulty and is therefore not executed until after a somewhat careful survey of conditions has been taken. It is often true likewise in cases of express ethical judgment; if the ethical phases of the reflective process have not been excessively long and difficult, our definite sense of the ethical value of the act we are about to do lapses quite easily, and the factual aspects and features of the situation as given in one or more of the four classes which we have distinguished take on an access of significance in their character of warranting, confirming, or even compelling the act determined upon. Of our ordinary sense-perception in the moments of its actual functioning no less than of conscience in its aspect of a moral perceptive faculty are the words of Bishop Butler sensibly true that "to preside and govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it."[127] I Even in cases of more serious moral difficulty this sanctioning aspect of the means and conditions of action is not overshadowed. If the situation is one in which by reason of their complexity these play a conspicuous rôle and must be surveyed, by way of preparation on the agents' part, for performance of the act, they inevitably assume, for the agent, their proper functional character. In general, the conditions presented in the system of factual judgments have a certain "rightful authority" which they seem to lend to the purpose or end with reference to which they were worked out to their present degree of factual detail. The conditions can thus seem to sanction the end because conditions and end have been worked out together. Gradual development on the one side prompts analytical inquiry upon the other and is in turn directed and advanced by the results of this inquiry. In the end the result may be read off either in terms of end or in terms of conditions and means.[128] The two readings must be in accord and the agent's apprehension of the conditions as warrant for the end is expression in consciousness of this "agreement."[129] Now in this mode of apprehension of factual conditions there is a highly important logical implication--an implication which inevitably comes more and more clearly into view with the continued exercise of judgment, even though the agent's habit of interest in the scrutiny of perplexing situations may still remain, by reason of the want of trained capacity for a broader view, limited in its range quite strictly to the physical sphere. This implication is, we shall declare at once, that of an endeavoring, striving, active principle or self which can be helped or hindered in its unfolding by particular purposes and sets of corresponding conditions--can lose or gain, through devotion to particular purposes, in the breadth, fulness, and energy of its life.
The agent's apprehension of and reference to this active principle of course varies in all degrees of explicitness, according to circumstances, from the vague awareness that is present in a simple case of physical judgment to the clear recognition and endeavor at definition that are characteristic of serious ethical crises.
That the situation should develop and bring to light this factor is what should be expected on general grounds of logic--for to say that a set of conditions warrants or sanctions or confirms a given purpose implies that our purposes can stand in need of warrant, and this would seem to be impossible apart from reference to a process whose maintenance and development in and through our purposes are assumed as being as a matter of course desirable. It is of the essence of our contention that the apprehension of the conditions of action as _warranting the end_ is a primordial and necessary feature of the situation--indeed, its constitutive feature. If our concern were with the psychological development of self-consciousness as a phase of reflective experience, we should endeavor to show that this development is mediated in the first instance by the "subjective" phenomena of feeling, emotion, and desire which find their place _in the course_ of the judgment-process.
We should then hold that, with the _conclusion_ of the judgment-process and the accompanying sense of the known conditions as reassuring and confirmatory of the end, comes the earliest possibility of a discriminative recognition of the self as having been all along a necessary factor in the process. We should hold that outside of the _process_ of reflective attention there can be no psychical or "elementary" _beginnings_ of self-consciousness, and then that, except as a development out of the experience to which we have referred as marking the _conclusion_ of the attentive process, there can be no recognized specific and in any degree definable consciousness of self.
All this, however, lies rather beside our present purpose. We wish simply to insist that it is out of the apprehension of conditions as reassuring and confirmatory, out of this "primordial germ," that the agent's definite recognition of himself as a center of development and expenditure of energy takes its rise. Here are the beginnings of the possibility of self-conscious ethical and economic valuation.
This apprehension of the means as _warranting_ is, we have held, a fact even when the means surveyed are wholly of the physical sort, and we have thereby implied that consciousness of the self as "energetic" may take its rise in situations of this type or during the physical stage in the development of a more complex total situation. It would be an interesting speculation to consider to what extent and in what way the development of the sciences of sociology and physiology may have been essentially facilitated by the emergence of this form of self-consciousness. But however the case may stand with these sciences or with the rise of real interest in them in the mind of a given individual, interest in the objective psychological conditions of a contemplated act is certainly very closely dependent upon interest in that subjective self which one has learned to know through the past exercise of judgment in definition and contemplation of conditions of the three other kinds. The more diversified and complex the array of physical and social conditions with reference to which one is to act, the more important becomes not simply a clearly articulated knowledge of these, but also a knowledge of oneself. The self that is warranted in its purpose by the surveyed conditions must hold itself in a steady and consistent attitude during the performance on pain of "falling short of its opportunity" and thereby rendering nugatory the reflective process in which the purpose was worked out. Experience abundantly shows how easily the assurance that comes with the survey of conditions may come to grief, though there may have been on the side of the conditions, so far as defined, no visible change; and in so far as self-consciousness has already emerged as a distinguishable factor in such situations, failures of the sort we here refer to are the more easily identified and interpreted. Some sudden impulse may have broken in upon the execution of the chosen purpose; there may have been an unexpected shift of interest away from that general phase of life which the purpose represented; or in any one of a number of other ways may have come about a wavering and a slackening in the resolution which marked the commencement of action. The "energetic" self forthwith (if we may so express it) recognizes that the sanction which the conditions so far as then known gave to its purpose was a misleading because an incomplete one, and it proceeds to develop within itself a new range of objective fact in which may be worked out the explanation, and thereby a method of control, of these new disturbing phenomena. The qualities of patience under disappointment, courage in encountering resistance, steadiness and self-control in sustained and difficult effort--these qualities and others of like nature come to be discriminated from each other by introspective analysis and may be as accurately measured, and in general as objectively studied, as any of the conditions to a saving knowledge and respect of which one may already have attained, and these newly determined psychological conditions will henceforth play the same part in affording sanction to one's purposes as do the rest. An ordered system of psychological categories or points of view comes to be developed, and an accurate statement of conditions of personal disposition and capacity relevant to each emergency as it arises will hereafter be worked out--over against and in tension with one's gradually forming purposes in like manner as are statements of all the other relevant objective aspects of the situation.[130] In the "energetic" self, we shall now seek to show, we have the common and essential principle of both ethical and economic valuation which marks these off from other and subordinate types of judgment. Let us determine as definitely as possible the nature and function of this principle.
The recognition of the chosen purpose as one favorable or otherwise to the self, and so the recognition of the self as capable of furtherance or retardation by its chosen purposes, is not always a feature of the state of mind which may ensue upon completed judgment. In the commoner situations of the everyday life of normal persons, as practically always in the lives of persons of relatively undeveloped reflective powers, it is quite wanting as a separate distinguished phase of the experience. In such cases it is present, if present at all, merely as the vaguely felt implicit meaning of the recognition that the known conditions sanction and confirm the purpose. Such situations yield easily to attack and threaten none of those dangers, none of those possible occasions for regret or remorse, of which complex situations make the person of developed reflective capacity and long experience so keenly apprehensive. They are disposed of with comparatively little of conscious reconstruction on either the subject or the predicate side, and when a conclusion has been reached the agent's recognition of the conditions carries with it the comfortable though too often delusive assurance of the complete and perfect eligibility of the purpose. If the question of eligibility is raised at all, the answer is given on the tacit principle that "whatever purpose is, is right." To the "plain man," and to all of us on certain sides of our lives, every purpose for which the requisite means and factual conditions are found to be at hand is, just as our purpose, therefore right.
The same experience of failure and disappointment which proves our purpose to have been, from the standpoint of enlargement and enrichment of the self, a mistaken one brings a clearer consciousness of the logic implicit in our first confident belief in the purpose, and at the same time emphasizes the need of making this logic explicit. The purpose, as warranted to us by the conditions and assembled means that lay before us, was our own, and _as our own_ was implicitly a purpose of furtherance of the self. The disappointment that has come brings this implication more clearly into view, and likewise the need of methodical procedure, not as before in the determination of _conditions_, but in the determination of purposes as such; for the essence of the situation is that the _execution_ of the purpose has brought to light some unforeseen consequence now recognized as having been all the while in