410 lotka: objective standakd of value 



Objective basis of subjective value. But we may go a step further. 

 While value is primarily a subjective attribute attached to certain 

 things by an individual, or by a group of individuals, we may 

 naturally expect that it should have an objective basis, just as the 

 subjective sensation "red," for example, has an objective basis in 

 light of a wavelength of about 6.6 to 0.10~* mm. 



Indeed, this is not merely a matter of conjecture, but follows as 

 an inevitable consequence of natural law. This is very clearly 

 brought out in a passage in Spencer's The Data of Ethics (section 

 34), which at the same time exposes the nature of the objective 

 basis of value. .For, remembering that a thing "valued" is by 

 our definition a thing desired, i.e., a thing whose possession gives 

 pleasure or allays pain, we can apply directly to value the argu- 

 ment of Spencer with regard to pleasure and pain : 



. . . . necessarily, throughout the animate world at large, pains 

 are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures 

 are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare, since it is an 

 inevitable deduction from the hypothesis of evolution, that races of 

 sentient creatures could have come into existence under no other 

 conditions. 



If we substitute for the word Pleasure the equivalent phrase — a feel- 

 ing which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there, and if we 

 substitute for the word Pain the equivalent phrase — a feeling which we 

 seek to get out of consciousness and to keep out : we see at once that if 

 the states of consciousness which a creature endeavors to maintain are 

 the correlatives of injurious actions, and if the states of consciousness 

 which it endeavors to expel are the correlatives of beneficial actions, it 

 must quickly disappear through persistence in the injurious and avoid- 

 ance of the beneficial. In other words, those races of beings only can 

 have survived, in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings 

 went along with activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while 

 disagreeable and habitually avoided feelings went along with activities 

 directly or indirectly destructive of life; and there must ever have been, 

 other things equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals 

 among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the 

 best, tending ever to bring about perfect adjustment.^ 



1 The same thought is expressed by Frederic Lyman Wells (Journ. Abnormal 

 Psychology, October-November, 224, 1913): "Organisms tend, in the most multi- 

 form ways, to all sorts of activities that result in pleasure. These activities 

 usually, but not necessarily, run parallel to those resulting in the objective ad- 

 vancement of the organism or its species; .... We do not clearly know the 



