The Super-State and the 'Eternal Values'

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Excerpt from The Super-State and the 'Eternal Values': Being the Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford on Wednesday, March 15, 1916These instrumental values are contrasted with others which are pursued for their own sake, or are worthy of being so pursued, such as moral satisfaction, artistic creation, scientific discovery. To the person who pursues them, these have independent or 'absolute' value. They are not merely of use, as means to securing something else, but they are pursued as ends, through the instrumentality of other things used as means.Again, further, there is the distinction between 'individual and over-individual' values.Over-individual values are those which are not defined, exhausted, or even comprehended from the point of view of individual desire, interest, or gratification, while individual values are those which appeal to individuals and gratify them only. Things having over-individual value may appeal to individuals, certainly, but their worth does not terminate with individuals. Their worth or value resides in the fact that they survive individual use, holding, increasing, transmitting, and transmuting the values which individuals find in them: they remain above, beyond, 'over' the individual. The home, the family, the race, suggest themselves. This great University has for the nation and for the world, as well as for each of its students, a value which is 'overindividual' and in so far 'eternal'. For while its cultural content forms and satisfies individuals, it grows and expands withal, from generation to generation. So social institutions generally, the school, the club, the church, have over-individual value.These are distinctions, thus briefly stated, to which all may freely subscribe.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.