realization of several opposing ends, and from a si¬ multaneous reproduction of the wills that aimed at them. Therefore, as we see, absolute ethical skepti¬ cism would not really be total absence of moral aim, but would rather be the neutrality that would result from a provisional acceptance of all the conflicting aims in the world of action. Absolute ethical skepti¬ cism, if it were actually possible without self-destruc¬ tion, would still presuppose an end, namely, the effort to harmonize in one moment all the conflicting aims in the world of life. It would not be what it had supposed itself to be. Absolute skepticism would thus be founded on absolute benevolence. Its own aim would be harmony and unity of conduct. But just for that reason is absolute skepticism self -destructive.
Possibly this result may be somewhat unexpected. But did not the very pessimism of our last chapter illustrate it? Why this pessimism? This despair of life, what was it but the sense of the hopelessness of our task? What made the task seem hopeless? And what was the task? The task was the forma¬ tion of an harmonious ideal of life. This task seemed hopeless, because we felt that the actual ideals of life among men are in deadly conflict. Our pessimism was after all not what it seemed to us to be. It was not the bare renunciation of all aims; it was the effort to satisfy them all, embittered by the sense that they were in seemingly hopeless con¬ flict. Even our pessimism had its ideal. Without its ideal it would have experienced no despair. The conflict of aims would have meant no evil. The pes¬ simistic despair was the natural outcome of our skep- THE MORAL INSIGHT ticism, solely because our skepticism was itself a real¬ ization of the aims with which men live, and of the warfare of these aims.
From the world of dead facts, we had said, you can get no ethical doctrine. Physical truth never gives moral doctrine. Therefore the world of facts seemed to stand on one side, and the world of moral aims seemed to stand on the other, no logical connec¬ tion being discoverable between them. This was our theoretical objection to the ethical doctrines that we examined. Separate as they were from the world of facts, they seemed to dwell alone, ungrounded and conflicting acts of caprice. Yet for them to pass over to the world of facts was to lose their ethical character. But now we seek to overcome our diffi¬ culty by considering, not the world of physical facts themselves, but the world of ends. And this world we consider, not now in detail, but as a whole. What highest end is suggested, we ask, to him who realizes for himself this whole world of ends? The very end, we answer, that, as first dimly seen, forced upon us our skeptical pessimism. Whoso realizes an end, his, for the time being, is that end. And since it is his end, he mentally wills to realize it in ideal perfection. But whoso realizes the various conflicting aims in the world, his are all these aims at the mo¬ ment of insight, when, so far as in him lies, he real¬ izes them, and mentally desires their success. In pro¬ portion as his realization is or can be catholic and genuine, his will becomes, for the time, these con¬ flicting wills. In him is now the warfare. He feels in his own person the bitterness of the universal 140 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY strife. And therefore it is that, in the first moment of his new insight, the pessimism comes to him. “This warfare cannot be ended,” he despairingly says. But has he thus uttered the final word? For he has not yet added the reflection that we are here insisting upon. Let him say: “ Then I too have an end, far-off and unattainable though it seems, and so my will is not aimless. I desire to realize these aims all at once. Therefore I desire their harmony. This is the one good that comes up before my fancy as above all the various conflicting individual goods of the various separate aims. This Higher Good would be attained in a world where the conflict ceased. That would be the Ideal World, where all possible aims were pursued in absolute harmony.”
Barren at first sight this reflection may appear. It may have been unexpected, but we shall certainly be disposed at first to call it fruitless. For here are the aims, and they do conflict. In the actual world there is ceaseless warfare. Only the wager of bat¬ tle can decide among the opposing ethical faiths. But now, if some idealist comes who says that his insight gives him the higher ideal of Harmony, then one may reply that his ideal is, in its confessed na¬ ture, a mere fantasy of his benevolent imagination. Such harmony never can be realized, unless indeed some day, by the aid of bigger battalions, some one of the ideals overcomes all the rest. Yet is our idealist so lightly to be answered? Can he not at once reply: “My Ideal is thus defined, and fantastic though it be, far-off though it seems, it is still an ideal towards which I can direct my efforts. For THE MORAL INSIGHT THE MORAL INSIGHT behold, made practical, brought down from its lone¬ some height, my Ideal very simply means the Will to direct my acts towards the attainment of univer¬ sal Harmony. It requires me to act with this my in¬ sight always before me. It requires me to consider all the conflicting aims that will be affected by each one of my acts, and to dispose my act with reference to them all. It sets up this new moral principle be¬ fore me, a principle perfectly catholic, and above all that skepticism which we have felt with regard to the special moral aims. This Principle is: So act as thou wouldst will to act if all the consequences of thy act for all the aims that are anywhere to be af¬ fected by this act, could be realized by thee now and in this one indivisible moment. Or more briefly put: Act always in the light of the completest insight into all the aims that thy act is to affect. This rule is no capricious one, chosen for some individual reason, but an universal maxim, since its choice de¬ pends on the general realization of all the conflicting aims of the world of life. And thus we have after all found, in the very heart of our skepticism itself, a moral doctrine. In the midst of the warfare of in¬ dividual wills, we have caught sight of an Universal Win.
II.
“ But no,” some one will say: “ All this is still mere caprice. Has it not in fact fallen already a prey to the same skepticism that pursued other moral aims? For first, you have tried to found it on a phys¬ ical fact, namely, on the fact that only by a given 142 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY effort of will one thinking being can realize the will of another. But does this tell me that I ought thus to realize the conflicting wills that are in the world? And if 1 do not, what significance has this physical fact for me? But, on the other hand, physical facts aside, is not your doctrine just your capricious deter¬ mination to respect the conflicting aims that exist in the world? ” This objection, if made, would be founded on a misunderstanding of what we have discovered. We have discovered something that has a value for us quite independently of its importance as a mere phys¬ ical fact. We set out to find a distinction between right and wrong. Our difficulty always was that, since this distinction involves the acceptance of a highest aim as the standard of judgment, and since there are numerous aims possible, we always were confused by the fact that among these manifold aims there was found no ground of choice. For to show any reason why we have chosen in a given way be¬ tween two of these aims, is to have a third aim that includes one and excludes the other. And the choice of this third aim seemed again just as accidental as the first choice would have been without this third aim to justify it. Thus our original thought of an aim, as the foundation of an ethical doctrine, had been shattered before our eyes into a spray of sepa¬ rate possible or actual aims, and we saw no way of collecting this spray again into unity. If that was the reason for our skepticism, then of course any¬ thing more that we may say about ethics must pre¬ suppose a hearer who can feel such skepticism, at THE MORAL INSIGHT least provisionally. The physical fact that he can understand the nature of our doubt is indeed presup¬ posed ere we can go further, but that is no objection to our progress. The physical fact that we have an intelligent hearer must always be presupposed by us. If one cannot feel the doubt, then he cannot undertake any ethical inquiry. We only say to him: “ If you doubt about the acceptance of a moral aim, this that we have pointed out to you is the real reason for your doubt. If now you understand your doubt, then you are actually in the state that we have described above. Your doubt has in fact a general character. It means a provisional moral skepticism, founded on an insight into the conflict of aims. This insight means skepticism because, and only be¬ cause, you are at the moment of insight yourself pos¬ sessed of the conflicting aims, yourself at war with yourself, and therefore undecided. This spray of aims into which your first pure idea of a moral aim as such has been scattered, this confused and blind¬ ing cloud of purposes, represents for you your own moral position. Divided in yourself, disunited, con¬ fused, you float cloud-like and inactive, seeking unity of aim and finding none. But if you reflect on all this, you see that in truth you occupy the position that we have above described. You really have still a highest aim. You seek unity. You desire the warfare to cease. You have an ideal. All this is, to be sure, a physical fact, dependent on your na¬ ture as voluntary being; but it is not valuable just for that reason alone, but for the reason that, in dis¬ covering this fact, you have discovered what you 144 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY \ were seeking for. You have found that you are in possession of an ideal. You cannot get away from that ideal save by repeating the very process that has brought you to it. Your moral insight is at¬ tained, and the foundation of your doctrine is no longer a particular aim that is accepted by a mere caprice of one individual, but it is the necessary aim that arises in the mind of any one who actually real¬ izes the warfare of the particular aims. It is the ideal of ideals. It is the absolute ideal that arises for you out of the consideration of the separate ideals. Each of them was relative to the mood of the man who happened to choose it; this Ideal is relative only to the insight that comprehends the whole moral world. Unable as we men are fully to realize just the actual nature of every single aim in the world of life, still we are able fully to realize cer¬ tain conflicting aims; and, realizing this conflict, we can form for ourselves the notion of that absolute realization that means, as we have seen, first the skeptical despair of our last chapter, and then, by a deeper reflection, the ideal that we have just set forth above. Thus we no longer are capriciously de¬ ciding upon the worth of physical facts as such.
W e are passing a necessary judgment upon ideals as ideals.
And we have tried to show that this our resulting ideal is not a barren one. At first sight it seems so. At first sight one says: “ This harmony is a self- contradictory dream.” But no, not self -contradictory is the dream; for, if we cannot perfectly realize this new ideal, if absolute harmony is unattainable, one THE MORAL INSIGHT can still walk in the light of the ideal. One can say: “ I will act as if all these conflicting aims were mine. I will respect them all. I will act in the light that has brought me my moral insight. And to that end I will act at each moment as one would act who saw himself about to suffer in his own person and at one time all the consequences of his act for all the aims that are to be affected by what he does.” But now the ideal becomes practical, now it ceases to be barren. It is no longer the mere wish that was at the heart of our skepticism, a wish gloomy, in¬ active, terrified at the warfare that is in the world. It is a cool determination. It says: “ This disease of conflicting aims cannot now be cured, but it shall be dealt with. These aims are as my own. I will deal with them as such. I will work for their har¬ mony.” If one doubts this ideal, then he doubts the very foundation of ethical doubt itself. But this is not all that our absolute ideal accomplishes. Not merely for the moment of insight does this ideal give an aim; but it extends itself to the other moments of life. It says: “ The highest good would be realiz¬ able only in case not merely the aim of this moment of insight itself, but the aims of all the conflicting wills in the world, were brought into conformity to this insight. The highest good would be attainable if all the conflicting wills realized fully one another. For then, not abandoning each its own aim, each would have added thereto, through insight, the aims of the others. And all the world of individuals would act as one Being, having a single Universal Will. Harmony would in fact be attained.” There- 146 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY fore our ideal has another precept to give us. It says: “ Act in such wise as to extend this moral in¬ sight to others.” Here is a definite practical aim, and it justifies us in saying to all the conflicting wills: “You should respect one another.” For so in fact they all would do if they had the moral insight. And to have it, as we now see, is the prerequisite to the attainment of the highest good, namely, this ideal Harmony that we seek at the moment of moral insight.
III.
III.
We fear that such general discussion of what we have called the moral insight may seem, at first sight, too abstract to be real. We hasten to a more con¬ crete study of this insight. Leaving those more ab¬ stract aims that have been used as the foundation of moral systems, let us study our moral insight as it applies to the special aims that come into conflict when a man is dealing with his neighbor. Let us see how just the considerations that we have applied to the conflict of ethical aims in general apply di¬ rectly to the conflict, between selfishness and unself¬ ishness, which we so long and so vainly considered in the last chapter. This warfare of selfishness and unselfishness is indeed not the deepest of moral problems, and to solve the problem here involved is not, as some have supposed, to define forthwith the Highest Good. Yet we shall do well to fix our minds for the time on this special problem.
Why is selfishness easier to me than unselfishness? Because it is easier for me to realize my own future, THE MORAL INSIGHT and my own desire about it, than to realize the desires of my neighbor. My will is the datum; his the dimly- conceived, remote fact. Hence it seems to me obvious that his will must be to me less significant than my own. Therefore he and I are often in deadly war¬ fare, just because 1 realize his will not in its inner nature, but as a foreign power, and because he deals even so with me. We stand over against each other like two moral systems, condemning and fight¬ ing each the other. Now, however, there often ap¬ pear disinterested moralists, who try to patch up our differences. We have seen how and why they have so often failed. They tell me that my neighbor and I shall give each other much more selfish delight if we stop fighting and begin cooperating. But that wise advice in no way touches the root of the diffi¬ culty between us. If we did cooperate for this rea¬ son, we should still be two foreign powers, virtually discordant. And whenever it happened that either of us could do better by oppressing or by crushing the other than by continuing to cooperate with him, he not only would do so, but, so far as we have seen, must do so. Another moralist hopes that if we keep on cooperating long enough, we may evolve into purely unselfish beings some day. The hope is a pious one, but gives us no sufficient reason why we ought to cooperate unselfishly now, when in fact we are selfish. Yet another moralist asks us to reflect on the nature of our emotions of pity and sympathy for each other. We reply that these feelings are in¬ determinate in character, and may lead us to do any¬ thin <r or nothing for each other. So all these mor- 148 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY alists leave my neighbor and me just where we were. If it is to our personal advantage to fight, we shall do so; otherwise we may by chance remain for a while in practical harmony; but, throughout, our moral aims will remain what they were, selfish and conflicting.
Forsaking these unsatisfactory attempts to found a moral doctrine concerning one’s duty to one’s neighbor, let us try to do what Schopenhauer so haltingly suggested, namely, to see what moral in¬ sight as moral insight, and not as pity or as far¬ sighted egoism, tells us about the moral relations of selfishness and unselfishness. If a man not merely pities but knows his neighbor’s will, what moral ideal does he get? We affirm that insight into the reality of the neighbor’s will, insight that considers his will as it is in itself, and that accordingly repeats it in us, gives us a position above the struggle of self and neighbor, and lets us see the higher ideal of Harmony, whose precept is: Adas a being would ad who included thy will and thy neighbor's will in the unity of one life, and who had therefore to suffer the consequences for the aims of both that will fol¬ low from the ad of either. This insight is not the mere emotion of pity nor yet sympathy, but some¬ thing different from these, namely, something that involves the realization, and therefore the reproduc¬ tion in us, of the opposing will of the neighbor. This insight therefore deprives each will in its separate¬ ness of its absolute significance, and commands that we should act with an equal reference to both.’ It says not merely, “ Love thy neighbor as thyself,” THE MORAL INSIGHT but, “ In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou wert at once thy neighbor and thyself I “ Treat these two lives as one life.”
W e must try to show how this insight leads to this result. We must try so to bring home the insight to the reader that he shall in his person accomplish the act of which we speak, and so come to accept the ideal upon which we are insisting. It is in him¬ self that he is to experience this ideal, or else he will not be able or willing to accept it. We can only suggest the way. And so we shall try forthwith to suggest what is the nature of that common imper¬ fect realization of our neighbor’s life which does not lead to the moral insight, and then to dwell upon this insight itself.
IV.
IV.
The common sense, imperfect recognition of our neighbor implies rather realization of the external aspect of his being, as that part of him which affects us, than realization of his inner and peculiar world of personal experience. Let us show this by example. First, take my realization of the people whom I com¬ monly meet but do not personally very well know, e. g. the conductor on the railway train when I travel. He is for me just the being who takes my ticket, the official to whom I can appeal for certain advice or help if I need it. That this conductor has an inner life, like mine, this I am apt never to realize at all. He has to excite my pity or some other spe¬ cial human interest in me ere I shall even begin to try to think of him as really like me. On the whole, 150 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY * he is for me realized as an automaton. But still fre¬ quently I do realize him in another way, but how?
X note very likely that he is courteous or surly, and I like or dislike him accordingly. Now courtesy and discourtesy are qualities that belong not to automata at all. Hence I must somehow recognize him in this case as conscious. But what aspect of his conscious¬ ness do I consider? Not the inner aspect of it as such, but still the outer aspect of his conscious life, as a power affecting me; that is what I consider. He treats me so and so, and he does this deliberately; therefore I judge him. But what I realize is his de¬ liberate act, as something important to me. It sel¬ dom occurs to me to realize fully how he feels; but I can much more easily come to note how he is dis¬ posed. The disposition is his state viewed as a power affecting me.
Now let one look over the range of his bare ac¬ quaintanceship, let him leave out his friends, and the people in whom he takes a special personal interest; let him regard for the first the rest of his world of fellow-men: his butcher, his grocer, the policeman that patrols his street, the newsboy, the servant in his kitchen, his business rivals whom he occasionally talks to, the men whose political speeches he has heard or read, and for whom he has voted, with some notion of their personal characters, — and then all the rest of the outside world, the Turks or the In¬ dians, the men of historic fame, Napoleon, Cicero, Caesar, the imaginary people in fictions that have excited little of his stronger emotional interest: how does he conceive of all these people? Are they not THE MORAL INSIGHT one and all to him ideal or real ways of behavior towards himself or other people, outwardly effective beings, rather than realized masses of genuine inner life, of sentiment, of love, or of felt desire? Does he not naturally think of each of them rather as a way of outward action than as a way of inner volition? His butcher, his newsboy, his servant, — are they not for him industrious or lazy, honest or deceitful, polite or uncivil, useful or useless people, rather than self- conscious people? Is any one of these alive for him in the full sense, — sentient, emotional, and other¬ wise like himself; as perhaps his own son, or his own mother or wife seems to him to be? Is it not rather the kind of behavior of these beings towards him which he realizes? Is it not rather in general their being for him, not for themselves, that he con¬ siders in all his ordinary life, even when he calls them conscious? And this being for him is what he calls their dispositions. They are all good fellows or bad fellows, good-humored or surly, hateful or ad¬ mirable. They may appear even sublime or ideal beings, as a Caesar might to a student of history. Yet their inner life need not therefore be realized. They remain powers, ways of acting, dispositions, wonderful examples of energy. They are still seen from without. Not their inner, volitional nature is realized, but their manner of outward activity; not what they are for themselves, but what they are for others.