My subject is the place of myth in philosophy, not in religion. If I were dealing with the philosophy of religion, I should, of course, have much to say on the place of myth in theology; and what I have to say may have some bearing on this subject; but I am not dealing with particular dogmas of Christianity or of any other religion. My thesis is that when the mind communes with the world of values its natural and inevitable language is the language of poetry, symbol, and myth. And, further, that philosophy has to deal with a number of irreducible surds which cannot be rationalized. They must be accepted as given material for reason to work upon. For example, we do not know why there is a world; we cannot unify the world of what we call facts and the world of values; there are antinomies in space and time which do not seem to disappear when we put a hyphen between them. Our reason–some would say reason itself— has reached its limits. We are driven to mythologize, confessing that we have left the realm of scientific fact. We give rein to the imagination, not exactly claiming with Wordsworth that it is reason in her most exalted mood, but hoping that the creative imagination may reveal to us some of the real meaning of questions which we cannot answer.

This paper is concerned with the study of economic activity from two points of view; the first is that of the man of business, and his problem is “Of what use or value is the study of the activity to those who are actually engaged in the activity?” He has continually to grapple with individual and concrete situations and thus feels the clash between them and the abstract general pronouncements of certain economic studies: consequently he is bound to ask whether the latter have in fact any relevance for him at all.

The connection of value-experience with activity has led to the widespread modern tendency to interpret value in terms of interest. To value a thing is certainly to take an interest in it, and there can be no doubt that the value any object has for us tends to vary with the interest we take in it. The suggestion readily arises, therefore, that the value of any object simply is the interest we take in it. The difficulty with views of this type is that interest is a distinctly subjective category while value is persistently spoken of as if it were somehow objective. Indeed, the term “value” would lose the most essential element of its meaning if it could not be applied to objects of common knowledge in such a way that two people could significantly discuss the question as to whether the object A is not more valuable than the object B and each, on the basis of his own interest and experience, defend a different view. I do not think the subjectivity of value can be as easily disposed of as does Laird1 in discussing the argument, “Beauty is not in the aurora. Therefore it is in the beholder's mind.” This, he says, leads to the absurdity, “Therefore the beholder's mind is beautiful.” The apparent absurdity is due to the ambiguity of the term “beautiful.” It is applied either to an experience or to the object of that experience.

In a scientific discussion of the processes which we (or some of us) designate “vital,” attention is concentrated on an interpretation of that which happens within a relational system of physical influence. In a scientific discussion of the processes which we reflectively distinguish as “mental,” attention is directed to what occurs in a relational system of psychological reference. We should seek to distinguish each from the other in any given context where both are in evidence.

Professor Toynbee observes in his Study of History that as he walked down Whitehall one day in the spring of 1918, and passed the Board of Education offices which had been commandeered for a new department of the War Office, “improvised in order to make an intensive study of trench warfare,” he found himself repeating the passage from St. Matthew's Gospel:

Since the death of Cézanne in 1906, there has been throughout the world of European art a general reawakening of a sense of the necessity for constructive qualities in painting. Whereas our fathers were content to speak of the “composition” of a picture, in our own day it is more usual to speak of its construction. Composition, after all, is a comparatively loose and elastic term implying a generally harmonious arrangement of the massed effect of light and dark, a juxtaposition of contrasting and balanced tones, sufficiently logical in their placing as to give a general sense of repose and unity to the work as a whole. Composition was generally understood to be dependent upon instinct and good taste on the part of the painter, and, as such, it was looked upon as a thing that could not be taught by rule of thumb. Like a sense of colour, a student either had it or he had not; and, beyond attempting to guard him from glaring error, there was little that a teacher of art could do for him in this department of his training. Perspective, which is governed by definite mathematical rules, could be taught in detail as an aid to composition, but the sense of composition itself must be allowed to develop in the student according to his talent for this side of his work. Composition classes were indeed a part of his curriculum, but the criticism which a student received at such classes amounted, in practice, to little more than general advice, given by the teacher, from his ripe experience and his developed sense oftherightandwrong in this matter, to the unmatured taste of the student. It was understood that composition could not exist without a general sense of order, but it was understood in a much looser sense than is implied by the comparatively modern use of the word “construction” that has replaced it. The artist of the modern school or schools of thought (for there is no one modern school) will have none of the old happy-golucky, loose thinking in the matter of construction.