For practical purposes
we think rather in terms of outer objects than of our states of
experience; nature has had need to make men but very slightly
introspective. And so it is that this derived use of our eulogistic
and disparaging terms plays a larger part than its primary application.
But the essential point to note is that "goodness" and "badness" in
the first instance refer to the fundamental cleavage between the
affective qualities of experience, and only secondarily and by metonymy
apply to objects in the physical world which affect our conscious states.
The next point to note is that our conscious experiences and activities
themselves have not only their intrinsic value, as they pass, but an
extrinsic value, as means toward future intrinsic values. Each phase
of experience has its own worth, while it lasts, and also has its results
in determining future phases with their varying degrees of worth. Our
reveries, our debauches, our sacrifices are good or bad in their
effects as well as in themselves. Thus all experience has a double
rating; acts are not only pleasant, agreeable, intrinsically desirable,
but also wise, prudent, useful, virtuous, i.e., extrinsically desirable.
These extrinsic values usually bulk much larger in the end
than the first transitory intrinsic value; but our natural tendency
is to forget them and guide our action by immediate values. Hence the
need of a continual disparagement of the latter, and the many means
men have adopted of emphasizing the importance of the former.
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