the subject, of his personal values to the mutations of content in the social series. Personal values, with their absolute moment, cannot be conceived merely as complementary values, Wirkungs-werthe for the subject, growing out of the harmony of his values with the social values, for the reason that their existence and development do not depend upon this harmony between the two series. The principle of limiting value (better described in the sphere of social values as Grenz-Frommen) results in a mutation of values in which three phenomenal phases may be distinguished (in the terms of Ehrenfels,[1] aufstrebende, normale, und entfrommte Werthe). Translating these terms as aspiring, normal, and out-lived values, we may describe them in the following way: An aspiring social value is one where the intensity of demand in a given social group is great, corresponding to a limited expansion, diffusion, in the social consciousness. A normal value may be described as one where the intensity of the demand and the extent of its diffusion are more nearly equal. In the outlived value, the diffusion has become so great as to cause decrease of intensity of value, and, finally, loss of value as it approaches universality. Assuming this to be a true schematic picture of the mutation of social values, it need hardly be observed that the history of any given social value is a long one, and that these three stages in social valuation may exist simultaneously in the same temporal span of the social consciousness. One group of values may be in the first stage, another relatively normal, and another, though still existent, practically outlived. Such being the case, it is clear that any individual value series, as it appears in time, may, with reference to any phenomenal value or group of values, fall wholly within one of these stages. It may be caught up in the upward movement of the curve, may live its life wholly in the normal stage, or, indeed, may live wholly within a world of outlived social values. In following out the law of the personal series, in the attainment of the personal values that constitute the ultimate sanction of the ethical life, the wider mutations of social values may be a matter of indifference. The reformer, the reactionary, the normal man may equally attain the imputed value of inner
- ↑ Ehrenfels, System der Werththeorie, Bd. II, par. 17.
