ctually underneath the skin, and
consequently, to know them alive is to have them. On the other hand, to
know _things_ is simply to have a relation to them. The same thing may
be both loved and hated, desired or spurned, by different minds at the
same time or by the same mind at different times. One, for example,
values whiskey positively, approaches, absorbs it, aims to increase its
quantity and sale; another apprehends it negatively, turns from it,
strives to oust it from the world. Then, according to these direct and
immediate valuations of whiskey, its place in the common world of the
two minds will be determined. To save or destroy it, they may seek to
destroy each other. Even similar positive valuations of the object might
imply this mutual repugnance and destruction. Thus, rivals in love: they
enhance and glorify the same woman, but as she is not otherwise
sharable, they strive to eliminate each other. Throughout the world of
values the numerical distinctness of the seats or centers of value,
whatever their identity otherwise, keeps them ultimately inimical. They
may terminate in the common object, but they originate in different
souls and they are related to the object like two magnets of like
polarity to the same piece of iron that lies between them. Most of what
is orderly in society and in science is the outcome of the adjustment of
just such oppositions: our civilization is an unstable equilibrium of
objects, through the cooeperation, antipathy, and fusion of
value-relations.

Individuals are no better off; personality is constructed in the same
way. If, indeed, the world had been made for us, we might have been
spared this warfare to man upon earth. Life might have been the obvious
irrational flow of bliss so vividly described by William James; nature
and human nature would have been one; bridging the gulf between them
would never have been the task of the tender-minded among philosophers.
Unfortunately our mere numerical difference, the mere numerical
difference of the interests which compose our egos, makes the trouble,
so that we are compelled to devote most of our lives to converting the
different into the same. The major part of our instincts serve this
function recognizably, e.g., nutrition, and the "higher powers" do so no
less, if not so obviously. Generalization is nothing more, thinking
nothing else. It is the assimilation of many instances into one form,
law, or purpose; the preservation of estab