Every such statement meets with prompt objection. We are told that in deliberation rival goods present themselves. We are faced by competing desires and ends which are incompatible with one another. They are all attractive, seductive. How then shall we choose among them? We can choose rationally among values, the argument continues, only if we have some fixed measure of values, just as we decide the respective lengths of physical things by recourse to the fixed foot-rule. One might reply that after all there is no fixed foot-rule, no fixed foot "in itself" and that the standard length or weight of measure is only another special portion of matter, subject to change from heat, moisture and gravitational position, defined only by conditions, relations. One might reply that the foot-rule is a tool which has been worked out in actual prior comparisons of concrete things for use in facilitating further comparisons. But we content ourselves with remarking that we find in this conception of a fixed antecedent standard another manifestation of the desire to escape the strain of the actual moral situation, its genuine uncertainty of possibilities and consequences. We are confronted with another case of the all too human love of certainty, a case of the wish for an intellectual patent issued by authority. The issue after all is one of fact. The critic is not entitled to enforce against the facts his private wish for a ready-made standard which will relieve him from the burden of examination, observation and continuing generalization and test.