t from ourselves, and our
human bias, we can see in such a mechanical world no element of
value whatever. In removing consciousness, we have removed the
possibility of worth.

But it is not only in the absence of all consciousness that value
would be removed from the world; by a less violent abstraction
from the totality of human experience, we might conceive beings
of a purely intellectual cast, minds in which the transformations of
nature were mirrored without any emotion. Every event would then
be noted, its relations would be observed, its recurrence might even
be expected; but all this would happen without a shadow of desire,
of pleasure, or of regret. No event would be repulsive, no situation
terrible. We might, in a word, have a world of idea without a world
of will. In this case, as completely as if consciousness were absent
altogether, all value and excellence would be gone. So that for the
existence of good in any form it is not merely consciousness but
emotional consciousness that is needed. Observation will not do,
appreciation is required.

_Preference is ultimately irrational._

Sec. 2. We may therefore at once assert this axiom, important for all
moral philosophy and fatal to certain stubborn incoherences of
thought, that there is no value apart from some appreciation of it,
and no good apart from some preference of it before its absence or
its opposite. In appreciation, in preference, lies the root and
essence of all excellence. Or, as Spinoza clearly expresses it, we
desire nothing because it is good, but it is good only because we
desire it.

It is true that in the absence of an instinctive reaction we can still
apply these epithets by an appeal to usage. We may agree that an
action is bad, or a building good, because we recognize in them a
character which we have learned to designate by that adjective; but
unless there is in us some trace of passionate reprobation or of
sensible delight, there is no moral or aesthetic judgment. It is all a
question of propriety of speech, and of the empty titles of things.
The verbal and mechanical proposition, that passes for judgment of
worth, is the great cloak of ineptitude in these matters. Insensibility
is very quick in the conventional use of words. If we appealed
more often to actual feeling, our judgments would be more diverse,
but they would be more legitimate and instructive. Verbal
judgments are often useful instruments of thought, but it is not by