There are a number of intellectual traditions that look upon reality as a kind of hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy is the most perfect and the most real. At the bottom is the least perfect and least real.

Think about Plato, for example. Didn't he conceive of reality as a hierarchy? And at the top of the hierarchy was the form of The Good!

In that kind of a system, maybe we could speak of value being built into the nature of things - into our metaphysics.

But since the rise of natural science and positivistic philosophy this view of reality has been accepted by fewer and fewer philosophers. It is hard for us now to even understand what it means. That's a sure sign that it belongs to a different intellectual era.