ires and impulses by myself and other men is "a piece of
insight into the true nature of things."[74] While these statements are
primarily intended to oppose the moral sense view of the judgment, they
also bear upon the question whether right is something fixed. The
phrase "insight into the true nature of things" suggests at once the
view that the nature of things is quite independent of any attitude of
human beings toward it. It is something which the seeker for moral truth
may discover but nothing which he can in any way modify. It is urged
that if we are to have any science of ethics at all what was once right
must be conceived as always right in the same circumstances.[75]

I hold no brief for the position--if any one holds the position--that in
saying "this is right" I am making an assertion about my own feelings or
those of any one else. As already stated the function of the judging
process is to determine objects, with reference to which we say "is" or
"is not." The emotional theory of the moral consciousness does not give
adequate recognition to this. But just as little as the process of the
moral consciousness is satisfied by an emotional theory of the judgment
does it sanction any conception of objectivity which requires that
values are here or there once for all; that they are fixed entities or
"a nature of things" upon which the moral consciousness may look for its
information but upon which it exercises no influence. The process of
attempting to give--or discover--moral values is a process of mutual
determination of object and agent. We have to do in morals not with a
nature of things but with natures of persons. The very characteristic of
a person as we have understood it is that he is synthetic, is actually
creating something new by organizing experiences and purposes, by
judging and choosing. Objectivity does not necessarily imply
changelessness.

Whether right is a term of fixed and changeless character depends upon
whether the agents are fixed units, either in fact or in ideal. If, as
we maintain, right is the correlate of a self confronting a world of
other persons conceived as all related in an order, the vital question
is whether this order is a fixed or a moving order. "Straight" is a term
of fixed content just because we conceive space in timeless terms; it is
by its very meaning a cross-section of a static order. But a world of
living intelligent agents in social relations is in its very
presupp