The case of the conflict between qualitatively incompatible values is the typical case of the conflict between "duty and pleasure," between "obligation and inclination," etc. Certain values present themselves as "categorical imperatives," as "absolute universals," and refuse, or tend to refuse, any compromise. Our analysis would tend to cast doubt on the "absolute absoluteness" of these values (taking absolute in the sense in which it has been used in the history of ethics, as distinguished from the sense in which I have earlier used it in this book[140]). The most significant thing about these "absolute" values from the standpoint of our present inquiry, seems to be the resistance which they offer to the "marginal process." They seem to insist that their objects be taken _in toto_ or not at all. They tend to universalize themselves, attaching to the remotest possible increment of the "supply" quite as strongly as to the initial increments. They refuse to place their objects in a scale of "diminishing utility." Such values are those which have been so fortified by habit and education that they are vital parts of the personality, and that any compromise where they are involved seems treason to the inmost self. If we wish to make precise analogies between our social and our individual values, we shall find here the nearest approach in the individual field to those fundamental legal values which determine the inmost character of the state, and which present themselves as "practical absolutes" in the legal value system, e.g., democracy, or personal liberty--or fundamental sociological values, like the "color line."