Note 31 — Chapter V · THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE AND THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD

The distinction between value and worth must be stressed for it is capital. Value is subjective. The worth notion is the most objective conceivable. Value depends on the wants or needs of our empirical nature. That has value which satisfies our needs or wants. We possess value for one another, for the reason that each of us has wants which the others alone are capable of satisfying, as in the case of sex, of coöperation, in the vocation, etc. But value ceases when the want or need is gratified. The value which one human being has for another is transient. There are, in the strict sense, no permanent values. The value which the majority have for the more advanced and developed members of a community is small; from the standpoint of value most persons are duplicable and dispensable. Consider only the ease with which factory labor is replaced, in consequence of the prolific fertility of the human race. The custom of speaking of ethics as a theory of values is regrettable. It evidences the despair into which many writers on ethics have fallen as to the possibility of discovering an objective basis for rightness.