bsent joy can only be represented by a tinge of emotion
dyeing an image that pictures the situation in which the joy was felt;
but the suggested value being once projected into the potential world,
that land of inferred being, this projection may be controlled and
corroborated by other suggestions and associations relevant to it, which
it is the function of reason to collect and compare. A right estimate of
absent values must be conventional and mediated by signs. Direct
sympathies, which suffice for instinctive present co-operation, fail to
transmit alien or opposite pleasures. They over-emphasise momentary
relations, while they necessarily ignore permanent bonds. Therefore the
same intellect that puts a mechanical reality behind perception must put
a moral reality behind sympathy.

[Sidenote: Example of fame.]

Fame, for example, is a good; its value arises from a certain movement
of will and emotion which is elicited by the thought that one's name
might be associated with great deeds and with the memory of them. The
glow of this thought bathes the object it describes, so that fame is
felt to have a value quite distinct from that which the expectation of
fame may have in the present moment. Should this expectation be foolish
and destined to prove false, it would have no value, and be indeed the
more ludicrous and repulsive the more pleasure its dupe took in it, and
the longer his illusion lasted. The heart is resolutely set on its
object and despises its own phenomena, not reflecting that its emotions
have first revealed that object's worth and alone can maintain it. For
if a man cares nothing for fame, what value has it?

This projection of interest into excellence takes place mechanically and
is in the first instance irrational. Did all glow die out from memory
and expectation, the events represented remaining unchanged, we should
be incapable of assigning any value to those events, just as, if eyes
were lacking, we should be incapable of assigning colour to the world,
which would, notwithstanding, remain as it is at present. So fame could
never be regarded as a good if the idea of fame gave no pleasure; yet
now, because the idea pleases, the reality is regarded as a good,
absolute and intrinsic. This moral hypostasis involved in the love of
fame could never be rationalised, but would subsist unmitigated or die
out unobserved, were it not associated with other conceptions and other
habits of estimating values. For