ABSTRACT
The most important implication of our discussion of limitation is this: every properly applied term of evaluation has its own limits of appropriateness, and, as it approaches these limits, finds itself entering the territory of other values. Here we can talk very generally about its "background relations". The application of a value-concept, then, extends over a range of situations, at the heart of which it occurs with the greatest emphasis; towards the boundary its emphasis diminishes and dies away as respect for relative constants takes its place. This holds not only for values that crop up only once, but also for established and permanent values. So one obvious demand for limitation concerns the mutual limitation of values themselves, the reciprocal adjustment of the members of the ethical manifold. Much damage can be done when this requirement is ignored. The crude substitution for all other values of love, or even meritorious suffering (which is supposed to justify more onerous demands), brings serious abuses in its train, especially offences against justice and cleanness, as well as diverse cloudy enthusiasms in which vice may conceal itself with advantage. Another example is the seriously corrupting reduction of them
all to duty and law, although here I would reckon the theoretical damage greater than the practical: it is the thinker who is most tempted by the open sesames of Formalism.
