And here one profoundly important practical consideration will come to our aid, namely, the sense of our own imperfection, coupled indeed with the consciousness of inextinguishable power of moral renewal. Instead of attributing the lack of response to the hopeless dullness of the person upon whom we labor, a sense of humility, based on the knowledge of our own exceeding spiritual variability—best moments followed by worst moments, imperfect grasp on our own ideals, most imperfect fidelity in executing them—will lead us to turn upon ourselves, and far from permitting us to despair of others, will impel us rather to make ourselves more fitting instruments of spiritual influence than obviously as yet we are.[33] FOOTNOTES: [30] Say not _part_ or _element_, but _member_, to distinguish the components of the ethical manifold from such concepts as are used in mathematics and physical science. [31] The distinction between value and worth must be stressed for it is capital. Value is subjective. The worth notion is the most objective conceivable. Value depends on the wants or needs of our empirical nature. That has value which satisfies our needs or wants. We possess value for one another, for the reason that each of us has wants which the others alone are capable of satisfying, as in the case of sex, of coöperation, in the vocation, etc. But value ceases when the want or need is gratified. The value which one human being has for another is transient. There are, in the strict sense, no permanent values. The value which the majority have for the more advanced and developed members of a community is small; from the standpoint of value most persons are duplicable and dispensable. Consider only the ease with which factory labor is replaced, in consequence of the prolific fertility of the human race. The custom of speaking of ethics as a theory of values is regrettable. It evidences the despair into which many writers on ethics have fallen as to the possibility of discovering an objective basis for rightness. [32] But the verification itself is the clearer and more explicit vision of the ethical relation, as it ought to be.