Collective desire and feeling, when it has acquired this "common meaning," when the object of desire and feeling is consciously held in common, we may describe as Social Synergy; and the objective, over-individual values may be described as the resultants of social synergies. The introduction of this term has for its purpose the clearest possible distinction between social forces as conscious and as subconscious. It is with the former that we are here concerned.[157]
Conscious collective feeling is thus insisted upon as an essential in social values, and Professor Urban insists[158] that the value ceases to be a value as this conscious feeling wanes--even though conceding[159] that it retains the power of influencing the _felt_ values, after it has passed into the realm of "things taken for granted."
But this stressing of the conscious element of feeling--which as I have previously shown is a variable element even within the individual psychology, and has no necessary quantitative relation to the functional significance, the amount of _motivating power_, of the value--makes it really impossible for him to resolve the question of how the _strength_ of a social value is to be determined. He does, indeed, undertake something of the sort[160] (he is speaking of ethical values), making the quantity of value depend on "supply and demand," the supply depending on the number of people willing to supply a given moral act, and the intensity of their willingness to do it--extension and intention both being recognized. And demand is similarly determined. The thing seems to be nothing more than an arithmetical sum of intensities of individual feelings, or, most justly, individual values. But this leaves us no wiser than before as to the social _weight_, the social _validity_, of these social values. An infinite deal would depend, both in the case of supply and demand, on _who_ the individuals are. A demand for a given act from a poor group of fanatics, however intense, might count for little, while such a demand coming from a group with great prestige, with great social _power_, might have a very great significance. If we are trying to get an objective quantity of social value, which shall have a definite weight in determining social action--the function of social values--we are as poorly off as we were with the Austrian analysis which, in order to get an objective quantity of economic value out of individual "marginal utilities," has to assume value in the background as the validating force behind these individual elements. The error here, as there, comes from an abstraction, from centring attention upon the conspicuous conscious elements. And it comes in stressing the structure, the content, of social values, to the exclusion of their functional _power_. Here is our real problem, if we would determine the social validity of values. This lurking element of social power remains an unexplained residuum.