As preliminary to a criticism of Professor Seligman's doctrine, certain distinctions must be made. Values may be relative in Professor Seligman's sense without being relative in the sense in which the English School uses the term: the English School thought only of the relations among, say, a _unit_ of wheat and a unit of corn, a unit of woolen goods, a unit of wine, etc.: Professor Seligman is thinking of the _total stocks_ of these various commodities. Assume, for simplicity, that the stocks of all commodities were doubled, and that the demand curves for all the commodities have the same shape, and that form is the rectangular hyperbola,[190] so that the absolute value of each unit of each commodity would be exactly cut in half. The English School would say that there had been no change in the values of the units; Professor Seligman would say that there had been no change in the value of the _stocks_, but would concede at once that every unit has had its value cut in half.[191]
Another distinction must be made. There is, to be sure, at any given time, a pretty definitely limited[192] amount of social _productive energy_. This energy can be distributed among only a limited number of products. Hence, there can be only a limited number of objects to receive value from the mental energies of society. But does it follow from this that what we may call the social energy of value-giving is a limited thing? Or, granted that it is limited, does it necessarily follow that the limits are fixed and rigid? Cannot circumstances arise which will make it vary in amount? If a new want arises, does it necessarily follow that all the old wants become less intense in the exact degree that the new want is intense? Must a quantum of value be withdrawn from the old objects precisely equal to that which is attached to the new object? This doctrine is deliberately affirmed, so far, at least, as the individual is concerned, in the article on "Worth"[193] in Baldwin's _Dictionary of Philosophy_, etc.:--
The struggle for existence among dispositions, which are at once the objects of ethical valuation and the source of value reactions, springs out of the nervous conditions of these dispositions. While there dwells in each the tendency to utmost activity under the given conditions, yet, since the valuing subject is master of only a limited energy of valuation, i.e., nervous energy, the increase of value of any given disposition must necessarily cause others to decrease. In any case increase of values is always relative.