APPENDIX A. On Value
A friendly reviewer, Mr. Conrad Aiken, complains that my theory of value is not sufficiently relativistic, that it inevitably involves the surreptitious re-entrance of the ‘absolute’ value which we had been at such pains to exclude. Except for the word ‘surreptitious’ and the suggestion that the ‘absolute’ value we arrive at is the same thing as the ultimate idea discussed in Chapter VI., I agree to this. The purpose of the theory is just to enable us to compare different experiences in respect of their value; and their value, I suggest, is a quantitative matter. To put it briefly the best life is that in which as much as possible of our possible personality is engaged. And of two personalities that one is the better in which there is more which can be engaged without confusion. We all know people of unusually wide and varied possibilities who pay for their width in disorder, and we know others who pay for their order by narrowness. What the theory attempts to provide is a system of measurement by which we can compare not only different experiences belonging to the same personality but different personalities. We do not yet know how to make the measurements required. We have to use the roughest kinds of estimates and very indirect indications. But to know at least what would have to be measured if we were to reach precision and how to make the comparison is a step towards the goal. The parallel, though I am not fond of it, between the new absolutism which Relativity has reached and this quantitative way of comparing the experiences and preferences of individuals may perhaps be helpful. But whereas the physicist has measurements to work from, the psychologist as yet has none. And further, it is likely that modes of mental organisation which are at present impossible or dangerously unstable may become possible and even easy in the future with changes in social structure and material conditions. This last consideration might give any critic a nightmare. Nothing less than our whole sense of man’s history and destiny is involved in our final decision as to value.