ABSTRACT
An historical survey shows that several specific groups of virtues can be distinguished, but that between them the intermediate members are evidently still lacking. The greater the variety which can here be surveyed, the closer shall one approach to the general character of the realm of values. The specific characteristic can be disclosed, as everywhere else, only by the living sense of values, or by its way of expressing itself, the response and the predicate. Among them the proposition holds necessarily, that moral values are based upon situational values, that is, that they attach to the intention which is directed to valuable situations, and that their specific character as compared with the latter is nevertheless independent of the connection. For every virtue has a different situational value in view. Of course there is a certain danger, namely, that in considering the situation one might lose sight of the virtue.
