These are simple instances, but the conduct of life is throughout an attempt to organise impulses so that success is obtained for the greater number or mass of them, for the most important and the weightiest set. And here we come face to face again with the problem of value. How shall we decide which among these are more important than: others, and how shall we distinguish different organisations as yielding more or less value one than another? At this point we need to be on our guard not to smuggle in any peculiar ethical, non-psychological, idea under some disguise, under ‘important’ or ‘fundamental’, for example. Among those who reject any metaphysical view of value it has become usual to define value as capacity for satisfying feeling and desire in various intricate ways.[19] For the purpose of tracing in detail the very subtle and varied modes in which people actually value things, a highly intricate treatment is indispensable, but here a simpler definition will suffice. We may start from the fact that impulses may be divided into appetencies and aversions, and begin by saying that anything is valuable which satisfies an appetency or ‘seeking after.’ The term ‘desire’ would do as well if we could avoid the implication of accompanying conscious beliefs as to what is sought and a further restriction to felt and recognised longings. The term ‘want’ used so much by economists has the same disadvantages. Appetencies may be, and for the most part are, unconscious, and to leave out those which we cannot discover by introspection would involve extensive errors. For the same reason it is wiser not to start from feeling. Appetencies then, rather than felt appetencies or desires, shall be our starting-point. The next step is to agree that apart from consequences anyone _will actually prefer_ to satisfy a greater number of equal appetencies rather than a less. Observation of people’s behaviour, including our own, is probably sufficient to establish this agreement. If now we look to see what consequences can intervene to upset this simple principle, we shall find that only interferences, immediate or remote, direct: or indirect, with other appetencies, need to be considered. The only _psychological_ restraints upon appetencies are other appetencies.[20] We can now extend our definition. Anything is valuable which will satisfy an appetency without involving the frustration of some equal or _more important_ appetency; in other words, the only reason which can be given for not satisfying a desire is that more important desires will thereby be thwarted. Thus morals become purely prudential, and ethical codes merely the expression of the mast general scheme of expediency[21] to which an individual or a race has attained. But we have still to say what ‘important’ stands for in this formulation. (Cf. p. 51).