By combining concepts with percepts, we can draw maps of the distribution of other percepts in distant space and time.  To know this distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the achievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without percepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations.  From maps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the slightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming our plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous practical importance on which Bergson so rightly insists.

But concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths of comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new values into life.  In their mapping function they stand to perception in general in the same relation in which sight and hearing stand to touch—­Spencer calls these higher senses only organs of anticipatory touch.  But our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of independent glory:  music and decorative art result, and an incredible enhancement of life’s value follows.  Even so does the conceptual world bring new ranges of value and of motivation to our life.  Its maps not only serve us practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast pictures is of itself an inspiring good.  New interests and incitements, and feelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused.

Abstractness per se seems to have a touch of ideality.  ROYCE’S ‘loyalty to loyalty’ is an excellent example.  ‘Causes,’ as anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their sordid particulars.  The veritable ‘cash-value’ of the idea seems to cleave to it only in the abstract status.  Truth at large, as ROYCE contends, in his Philosophy of Loyalty, appears another thing altogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe.  It transcends in value all those ‘expediencies,’ and is something to live for, whether expedient or inexpedient.  Truth with a big T is a ‘momentous issue’; truths in detail are ‘poor scraps,’ mere ’crumbling successes.’ (Op. cit., Lecture VII, especially Sec. v.)

Is, now, such bringing into existence of a new value to be regarded as a theoretic achievement?  The question is a nice one, for altho a value is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the essence of that quality is its relation to the will, and consists in its being a dynamogenic spur that makes our action different.  So far as their value-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts connect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life, so here again Bergson’s formulation seems unobjectionable.  Persons who have certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own vital careers differently.  It doesn’t necessarily follow that they understand other vital careers more intimately.