In psychological terms, the issue of man’s survival does not confront his
consciousness as an issue of “life or death,” but as an issue of “happiness or
suffering.” Happiness is the successful state of life, suffering is the warning
signal of failure, of death. Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body
is an automatic indicator of his body’s welfare or injury, a barometer of its
basic alternative, life or death—so the emotional mechanism of man’s
consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that
registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or
suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man’s value judgments
integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers
man’s values or threatens them, that which is for him or against
him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.
But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism
of man’s body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his
body—the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since
man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has
no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.