Of late I’ve been mulling over a line I’ve long remembered: “The world is so full of a number of things, / I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” It’s from Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Happy Thought” in his A Child’s Garden of Verses, published in 1885. And here’s a surprising thought: five years later Stevenson, who had moved to Hawaii, came to the defense of Fr. Damien of Molokai. Damien had come under slanderous criticism. Stevenson himself died five years later.

I’d been prompted to recall the line of verse by Arthur Lovejoy. He cites it in The Great Chain of Being (1937), his pioneering study in the history of ideas. Lovejoy painstakingly explores the concept that the universe is entirely full of every sort of existence, in a hierarchical continuity, and serves as an expression of the Creator. Implicit in the unfolding of this concept is an understanding of value, an axiology. Indeed, Thomas Aquinas suggests this connection when he writes that “Multiplicity, therefore, and variety, was needful in the creation, to the end that the perfect likeness of God might be found in things according to their measure” (Summa contra Gentiles, II, 45). Does not the psalmist tell us, “The heavens declare the glory of God”? (Psalm 19:1) And are we not, for this reason, to be glad?

Even so, different things make different people happy. For the most part, people are happy about what they care for, and what they care for they value. Scholars care about knowledge, and so they deeply value well-stocked libraries. Artists care about beauty, and so they highly value, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since we’re fast approaching the World Series, let’s note that baseball fans greatly value the Cooperstown Hall of Fame. But other examples are, well, less laudable. Junk dealers care about profits, and so they value junkyards; hoarders care about waste control, real and symbolic, and so they value their labyrinthian piles of “stuff.” And long, long ago, young Augustine cared about “street cred” in Hippo, and so he perplexingly valued low hanging fruit from a local orchard.

In light of our different and often conflicting values, psychologists encourage us to clarify our values, and it’s a worthy undertaking. But we need to ask the hard questions. Just what is a value? What kinds of value are there? At the very least, Oscar Wilde’s quip that “there are those who know the price of everything but the value of nothing” can prompt us to do so.

With a tip of the hat to the Steubenville personalist John Crosby, we can start by understanding value as goodness. As such, value is attractive, and Aristotle tells us in the Nicomachean Ethics that “Goodness is what all desire.” But wait! We’ve just said that different things make different people happy, and surely people desire different things and for different reasons. Right, and this points to there being two markedly different kinds of value, subjective value and objective value.

Subjective value comes into play when we value something simply because it suits us; we’re “comfortable” with it. Or if we value someone, it’s because he or she would “make for a good fit.” In such cases it’s the valuator that decides the value, period.

Not so with objective value. Here value comes into play because that which we value, or should value, is of worth in its own right. Scholars put a great value on knowledge, but knowledge is of value in itself. Artists put a great value on beauty, but beauty is of value in itself. Baseball fans root for the home team, but excellence in play is of value in itself. By way of contrast, junk is of value, subjective value, only if there are people who will buy and sell it. Trashing a pear tree or tagging a building are of value only if the “perps” get the attention they crave.

And what of us? We can be of merely subjective or instrumental value to some. But because we are made in the image of God, we are all of objective and intrinsic value. Sanctifying grace is neither greater nor lesser, St. Thomas teaches, since it joins man to the Highest Good. Nonetheless, God “dispenses His gifts of grace variously, in order that the beauty and perfection of the Church may result from these various degrees; even as He instituted the various conditions of things, that the universe might be perfect” (ST I-II, q. 112, art. 4). Here Thomas cites St. Paul: “To every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the giving of Christ.” After enumerating the various graces, Paul tells us that this measure is “For the perfecting of the saints [and] the edifying of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:7, 12).

Thomas’s explanation of the gifts of grace is in keeping with his account of the multiplicity and variety in creation. Now I do not think that Thomas affirms the great chain of being its classical form. The Creator is preeminently free; creation is not emanation. Even so, Thomas is assured about a judgment of value that seems problematic. Call it the case of angels and stones. He writes that “Although an angel, considered absolutely, is better than a stone, nevertheless two natures are better than one only; and therefore, a universe containing angels and other things is better than one containing angels only,” because “the perfection of the universe is attained essentially in proportion to the diversity of natures in it” (Summa contra Gentiles III, 71). Of this I am not convinced, especially if the “other things” are a single stone and a solitary slug!

To be sure, what counts as a “nature” is another hard question. With the prophet we hope, after all, for a day when

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

And the cow and the bear shall gaze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox (Isaiah 11:6-7).

Perhaps, gentle reader, we can leave the aforementioned judgment of value for another time.

In any case, it was not philosophical speculation but rather God’s amazing grace that led St. Damien to eat with the lepers and to rejoice even when he became one of them. His adventure in holiness freed him from human frailty and led him to share in God’s own life.