A firm foundation for a value-system is automatically furnished to the self-actualizer by his philosophic acceptance of the nature of his self, of human nature, of much of social life, and of nature and physical reality. These "acceptance-values" account for a high percentage of the total of his individual value-judgments from day to day. What he approves of, disapproves of, is loyal to, opposes, or proposes, what pleases him or displeases him, can often be understood as surface derivations of this source trait of acceptance.

Not only is this foundation automatically (and universally) supplied to all SA's by their intrinsic dynamics (so that in at least this respect fully developed human nature may be universal and crosscultural); other determiners are supplied as well by these same dynamics. Among these are (a) his peculiarly comfortable relationships with reality, (b) his Gemeinschaftsgefuhl, (c) his basically satisfied condition, from which flow, as epiphenomena, various consequences of surplus, of wealth, of overflowing abundance, (d) his characteristic relations to means and ends, etc. (see above).

One most important consequence of this attitude toward the world-as well as a validation of it-is the fact that conflict and struggle, .; ambivalence and uncertainty over choice, lessen or disappear in many I areas of life. Apparently morality is largely an epiphenomenon of nonacceptance or dissatisfaction. Many "problems" are. seen to be gratuitous and fade out of existence in the atmosphere of pagan acceptance. It is not so much that the problem is solved as that it becomes clearly seen that it never was an intrinsic problem in the first place, but only a sick man-created one, e.g., card-playing, dancing, wearing short dresses,exposing the head (in some churches) or not exposing the head (in others), drinking wine, or eating some meats and not others, or eating them on some days but not on others. Not only are such trivialities deflated; the process also goes on at a more important level, e.g., the relations between the sexes, attitudes toward the structure of the body and toward its functioning, and attitudes toward death itself.

The pursuit of this finding to more profound levels has suggested to the writer that much else of what passes for morals, ethics, and values may be the gratuitous epiphenomena of the pervasive psychopathology of the "average." Many conflicts, frustrations, and threats (which force the kind of choice in which value is expressed) evaporate or resolve for | the self-actualizing person in the same way as do, let us say, conflicts | over dancing. For him the seemingly irreconcilable battle of the sexes becomes no conflict at all but rather a delightful collaboration. The "antagonistic" interests of adults and children turn out to be not so antagonistic after all. Just as with sex and age differences, so also is it with natural differences, class and caste differences, political differences, role differences, religious differences, etc. As we know, these are each fertile breeding grounds for anxiety, fear, hostility, aggression, defensiveness, and jealousy. But it begins to appear that they need not be, for our subjects' reaction to differences is much less often of this undesirable type.

To take the teacher-student relationship as a specific paradigm, our teacher-subjects behaved in a very unneurotic way simply by interpreting the whole situation differently, i.e., as a pleasant collaboration rather than as a dash of wills, of authority, of dignity, etc. The replacement of artificial dignity- which is easily threatened-with the natural simplicity which is not easily threatened, the giving up of the attempt to be omniscient and omnipotent, the absence of student-threatening authoritarianism, the refusal to regard the students as competing with each other or with the teacher, the refusal to assume the "professor" a stereotype and the insistence on remaining as realistically human as, say, a plumber or a carpenter-all of these created a classroom atmosphere | in which suspicion, wariness, defensiveness, hostility, and anxiety disappeared. So also do similar threat-responses tend to disappear in marriages, in families, and in other interpersonal situations when threat itself is reduced.

It is possible to generalize even further, for it seems possible that most or perhaps even all value dichotomies or polarities tend to disappear or resolve in self-actualizing people. These people are neither selfish nor unselfish in the ordinary sense; they are both (or neither). They are neither rationalists nor intuitionalists, neither classical nor romantic, neither self-interested nor other-interested, neither introverts nor extroverts, etc. Rather they are both. Or, to be accurate,; in them these dichotomies simply do not apply.

The principles and the values of the desperate man and of the psychologically healthy man must be different perceptions (interpretations) of the physical world, the social world, and the private psychological world, whose organization and economy are in part the responsibility of the person's value system. For the basically deprived man the world is a dangerous place, a jungle, an enemy territory populated by (a) those whom he can dominate and (b) those who can dominate him. His value system is of necessity, like that of any jungle denizen, dominated and organized by the "lower" needs, especially the creature needs and the safety needs. The basically satisfied person is in a different case. He can afford out of his abundance to take these needs and their satisfaction for granted and can devote himself to higher gratifications. This is to say that their value systems are different-in fact, must be different.

The topmost portion of the value system of the SA person is entirely unique and idiosyncratic-character-structure-expressive. This must be true by definition, for self-actualization is actualization of a self, and no two selves are altogether alike. There is only one Renoir, one Brahms, one Spinoza. Our subjects had very much in common, as we have seen, and yet, at the same time, were more completely individualized, more unmistakably themselves, less easily confounded 'with others than any average control group could possibly be. That is to say, they are simultaneously very much alike and very much unlike each other. They are more completely "individual" than any group that has ever been described and yet are also more completely socialized, more identified with humanity, than any other group yet described.