RELIGION AND SCIENCE 259 



and so a scale of moral values comes into being."* 

 Nor is it merely that values, in the strict sense, 

 are created; nor that new values come into being. 

 But with the enlargement of mind and its more per- 

 fect organization, there arises a new method of ap- 

 praising values, and so a new type of value alto- 

 gether. I mean of course the so-called absolute val- 

 ues. Absolute values are never absolute in the sense 

 of absolute completeness; they are relative to two 

 things — to external reality and to our mental powers 

 and organization.^ They are abstractions; we gen- 

 eralize the value in our minds, and at the same time 

 raise it to the highest pitch of intensity we can. An 

 interesting point arises from this way of thinking. 

 Apart from the guarantee of our own convictions, 

 the observable direction of living nature is our guar- 

 antee of right: or one had better say that it is at 

 once the guarantee and the touchstone of our con- 

 victions. But two things may be moving in the same 

 direction, and, if one be moving much slower than 

 the other, the slower may impede the faster; a pedes- 

 trian procession making eastward along Fleet Street 



*See Haldane, '21; Thouless, '23. 



•A confusion of thought easily arises here. It may be abso- 

 lutely true that 2 and 2 make 4; we may be absolutely right in 

 certain cases to tell a lie; or may find an expression of absolute 

 beauty in some one lovely thing. But we may grow to find that 

 same thing aesthetically unsatisfying; we can imagine a state of 

 society in which it would never be right to lie; while our correct 

 knowledge of elementary arithmetic is something very partial and 

 incomplete considered in relation to mathematical truth as a 

 whole. 



