Our point of view will be more adequately defined if we consider briefly the theories of social value, set forth from the angle of a general (as opposed to a specifically economic) conception of value, by Professor W. M. Urban and Gabriel Tarde. These theories contain some elements which we shall need, and our criticism of them will bring into clearer light the need for the distinctive point of view of this book. Professor Urban's conception as to the nature of value, in its individual manifestation, has been already indicated, in part, in chapter X. Stressing the organic nature of the relations of a value to other phases of the mental life, insisting on a recognition of the "presuppositions" of value, and recognizing that both feeling and desire (or desire-disposition) are involved in value--our cursory account cannot begin to do justice to the subtlety and exhaustiveness of his masterly analysis--he still insists on finding the fundamental nature of value in a phase of its _structure_ (rather than in its function), namely, in the _feeling_. From this part of his doctrine we have found it necessary to differ. When he comes to the problem of social value, he carries over the same conception of value, and he finds that social values appear when many individuals, through "sympathetic participation," _feel_ the same value. With our conclusion (chapter VIII) that we can share each other's emotional life he is in thorough accord. His argument in this connection is admirable.[154] His interest is primarily in moral social values, and he attempts no detailed treatment of economic social values, seeming to hold that the Austrian treatment of objective value is adequate.[155] Both moral and economic values are "objective and social."[156] Collective desire and feeling, when it has acquired this "common meaning," when the object of desire and feeling is consciously held in common, we may describe as Social Synergy; and the objective, over-individual values may be described as the resultants of social synergies. The introduction of this term has for its purpose the clearest possible distinction between social forces as conscious and as subconscious. It is with the former that we are here concerned.[157] Conscious collective feeling is thus insisted upon as an essential in social values, and Professor Urban insists[158] that the value ceases to be a value as this conscious feeling wanes--even though conceding[159] that it retains the power of influencing the _felt_ values, after it has passed into the realm of "things taken for granted."