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 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
 
 THE 
 
 NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 BY 
 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 
 
 ALFORD PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Rtoerjrtbe prcaj* Cambridge
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BT GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published November, 1903
 
 A. F. P. 
 
 BONITATE SINGULARI MULTI8 DILECTAE 
 
 VENUSTATE LITTERIS CON81LIIS PRAESTANTI 
 
 NUPER E DOMO ET GAUDIO MEO EREPTAE
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE substance of these chapters was de- 
 livered as a course of lectures at Harvard 
 University, Dartmouth and Wellesley Col- 
 leges, Western Reserve University, the Uni- 
 versity of California, and the Twentieth Cen- 
 tury Club of Boston. A part of the sixth 
 chapter was used as an address before the 
 Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and an- 
 other part before the Philosophical Union of 
 Berkeley, California. Several of these audi- 
 ences have materially aided my work by their 
 searching criticisms, and all have helped to 
 clear my thought and simplify its expression. 
 Since discussions necessarily so severe have 
 been felt as vital by companies so diverse, I 
 venture to offer them here to a wider audi- 
 ence. 
 
 Previously, in "The Field of Ethics," I 
 marked out the place which ethics occupies
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 among the sciences. In this book the first 
 problem of ethics is examined. The two vol- 
 umes will form, I hope, an easy yet serious in- 
 troduction to this gravest and most perpetual 
 of studies.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 
 
 I. Difficulties of the investigation 3 
 
 II. Gains to be expected 8 
 
 III. Extrinsic goodness 10 
 
 IV. Imperfections of extrinsic goodness 15 
 
 V. Intrinsic goodness 16 
 
 VI. Relations of the two kinds 19 
 
 VII. Diagram 22 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 
 
 I. Enlargement of the diagram 31 
 
 II. Greater and lesser good 36 
 
 III. Higher and lower good 37 
 
 IV. Order and wealth 40 
 
 V. Satisfaction of desire 44 
 
 VI. Adaptation to environment 46 
 
 VII. Definitions 61 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 I. The four factors of personal goodness .... 67 
 
 II. Unconsciousness 60 
 
 III. Reflex action . 65
 
 x CONTENTS 
 
 IV. Conscious experience 68 
 
 V. Self-consciousness 69 
 
 VI. Its degrees 75 
 
 VII. Its acquisition 77 
 
 VIII. Its instability 80 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 
 
 I. Consciousness a factor 89 
 
 II. (A) The intention 92 
 
 III. (1) The end, aim, or ideal 93 
 
 IV. (2) Desire 96 
 
 V. (3) Decision 101 
 
 VI. (B) The volition 102 
 
 VII. (1) Deliberation 104 
 
 VIII. (2) Effort 106 
 
 IX. (3) Satisfaction 113 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 
 
 1. Reflex influence of self-direction 119 
 
 II. Varieties of change 120 
 
 III. Accidental change 122 
 
 IV. Destructive change 122 
 
 V. Transforming change 125 
 
 VI. Development 126 
 
 VII. Self-development 130 
 
 VIII. Method of self-development 133 
 
 IX. Test of self-development 137 
 
 X. Actual extent of personality 139 
 
 XI. Possible extent of personality 144 
 
 XII. Practical consequences 146
 
 CONTENTS xi 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 
 
 I. Difficulties of the conception 151 
 
 II. It is impossible 154 
 
 III. It is a sign of degradation 155 
 
 IV. It is needless 156 
 
 V. It is irrational 158 
 
 VI. Its frequency 159 
 
 VII. Definition 164 
 
 VIII. Its rationality 166 
 
 IX. Distinguished from culture 173 
 
 X. Its self-assertion 175 
 
 XI. Its incalculability 179 
 
 XII. Its positive character 183 
 
 XIII. Conclusion 185 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 
 
 I. Summary of the preceding argument .... 191 
 
 II. Spirit superior to nature 193 
 
 III. Naturalistic tendency of the fine arts .... 195 
 
 IV. Naturalistic tendency of science and philosophy 200 
 V. Naturalism in social estimates 202 
 
 VI. Self-consciousness burdensome 204 
 
 VII. Impossibility of full conscious guidance . . . 207 
 
 VIII. Advantages of unconscious action 210 
 
 \ 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 
 
 I. Advantage of conscious guidance 219 
 
 II. Example of piano-playing 224
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 III. The mechanization of conduct 226 
 
 IV. Contrast of the first and third stages .... 233 
 V. The cure for self-consciousness 238 
 
 VI. The revision of habits 239 
 
 VII. The doctrine of praise 240 
 
 VIII. The propriety of praise . 246
 
 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 
 
 IN undertaking the following discussion I 
 foresee two grave difficulties. My reader may 
 well feel that goodness is already the most 
 familiar of all the thoughts we employ, and 
 yet he may at the same time suspect that there 
 is something about it perplexingly abstruse 
 and remote. Familiar it certainly is. It at- 
 tends all our wishes, acts, and projects as 
 nothing else does, so that no estimate of its 
 influence can be excessive. When we take a 
 walk, read a book, make a dress, hire a ser- 
 vant, visit a friend, attend a concert, choose a 
 wife, cast a vote, enter into business, we al- 
 ways do it in the hope of attaining something 
 good. The clue of goodness is accordingly a 
 veritable guide of life. On it depend actions
 
 4 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 far more minute than those just mentioned. 
 "We never raise a hand, for example, unless 
 with a view to improve in some respect our 
 condition. Motionless we should remain fo' 
 ever, did we not believe that by placing the 
 hand elsewhere we might obtain something 
 which we do not now possess. Consequently 
 we employ the word or some synonym of it 
 during pretty much every waking hour of our 
 lives. Wishing some test of this frequency 
 I turned to Shakespere, and found that he 
 uses the word "good" fifteen hundred times, 
 and its derivatives "goodness," "better," and 
 " best," about as many more. He could not 
 make men and women talk right without in- 
 cessant reference to this directive conception. 
 But while thus familiar and influential when 
 mixed with action, and just because of that 
 very fact, the notion of goodness is bewilder- 
 ingly abstruse and remote. People in general 
 do not observe this curious circumstance. 
 Since they are so frequently encountering 
 goodness, both laymen and scholars are apt 
 to assume that it is altogether clear and re- 
 quires no explanation. But the very reverse 
 is the truth. Familiarity obscures. It breeds] 
 instincts and not understanding. So inwoven
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 5 
 
 has goodness become with the very web of 
 life that it is hard to disentangle. We cannot 
 easily detach it from encompassing circum- 
 stance, look at it nakedly, and say what in 
 itself it really is. Never appearing in practi- 
 cal affairs except as an element, and always 
 intimately associated with something else, we 
 are puzzled how to break up that intimacy and 
 give to goodness independent meaning. It is 
 as if oxygen were never found alone, but only 
 in connection with hydrogen, carbon, or some 
 other of the eighty elements which compose 
 our globe. We might feel its wide influence, 
 but we should have difficulty in describing 
 what the thing itself was. Just so if any 
 chance dozen persons should be caUed on to 
 say what they mean by goodness, probably 
 not one could offer a definition which he would 
 be willing to hold to for fifteen minutes. 
 
 It is true, this strange state of things is not 
 peculiar to goodness. Other familiar concep- 
 tions show a similar tendency, and just about 
 in proportion, too, to their importance. Those 
 which count for most in our lives are least! 
 easy to understand. What, for example, do 
 we mean by love? Everybody has experi- 
 enced it since the world began. For a cen-
 
 6 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 tury or more, novelists have been fixing our 
 attention on it as our chief concern. Yet no- 
 body has yet succeeded in making the matter 
 quite plain. What is the state? Socialists 
 are trying to tell us, and we are trying to tell 
 them ; but each, it must be owned, has about 
 as much difficulty in understanding himself 
 as in understanding his opponent, though the 
 two sets of vague ideas still contain reality 
 enough for vigorous strife. Or take the very 
 simplest of conceptions, the conception of 
 force that which is presupposed in every 
 species of physical science ; ages are likely to 
 pass before it is satisfactorily defined. Now 
 the conception of goodness is something of 
 this sort, something so wrought into the total 
 framework of existence that it is hidden 
 from view and not separately observable. We 
 know so much about it that we do not under- 
 stand it. 
 
 For ordinary purposes probably it is well not 
 to seek to understand it. Acquaintance with 
 the structure of the eye does not help seeing. 
 To determine beforehand just how polite we 
 should be would not facilitate human inter- 
 course. And possibly a completed scheme of 
 goodness would rather confuse than ease our
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 1 
 
 daily actions. Science does not readily con- 
 nect with life. For most of us all the time, 
 and for all of us most of the time, instinct is 
 the better prompter. But if we mean to be 
 ethical students and to examine conduct sci- 
 entifically, we must evidently at the outset 
 come face to face with the meaning of good- 
 ness. I am consequently often surprised on 
 looking into a treatise on ethics to find no 
 definition of goodness proposed. The author 
 assumes that everybody knows what goodness 
 is, and that his own business is merely to 
 point out under what conditions it may be 
 had. But few readers do know what good- 
 ness is. One suspects that frequently the 
 authors of these treatises themselves do not, 
 and that a hazy condition of mind on this 
 central subject is the cause of much loose talk 
 afterwards. At any rate, I feel sure that no- 
 thing can more justly be demanded of a writer 
 on ethics at the beginning of his undertaking 
 than that he should attempt to unravel the 
 subtleties of this all-important conception. 
 Having already in a previous volume marked 
 out the Field of Ethics, I believe I cannot 
 wisely go on discussing the science that I love, 
 until I have made clear what meaning I every-
 
 8 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 where attach to the obscure and familiar word 
 good. This word being the ethical writer's 
 chief tool, both he and his readers must learn 
 its construction before they proceed to use it. 
 To the study of that curious nature I dedicate 
 this volume. 
 
 II 
 
 To those who join in the investigation I 
 cannot promise hours of ease. The task is an 
 arduous one, calling for critical discernment 
 and a kind of disinterested delight in study- 
 ing the high intricacies of our personal struc- 
 ture. My readers must follow me with care, 
 and indeed do much of the work themselves, 
 I being but a guide. For my purpose is not\ 
 so much to impart as to reveal. Wishing 
 merely to make people aware of what has 
 always been in their minds, I think at the 
 end of my book I shall be able to say, " These 
 readers of mine know now no more than they 
 did at the beginning." Yet if I say that, I 
 hope to be able to add, " but they see vastly 
 more significance in it than they once did, 
 and henceforth will find the world interesting 
 in a degree they never knew before." In 
 attaining this new interest they will have ex-
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 9 
 
 perienced too that highest of human pleasures,! 
 the joy of clear, continuous, and energetic) 
 thinking. Few human beings are so inert 
 that they are not ready to look into the dark 
 places of their minds if, by doing so, they 
 can throw light on obscurities there. 
 
 I ought, however, to say that I cannot 
 promise one gain which some of my readers 
 may be seeking. In no large degree can I 
 induce in them that goodness of which we 
 talk. Some may come to me in conscious 
 weakness, desiring to be made better. But 
 this I do not undertake. My aim is a scien- 
 tific one. I am an ethical teacher. I want 
 to lead men to understand what goodness is, 
 and I must leave the more important work of 
 attracting them to pursue it to preacher and 
 moralist. Still, indirectly there is moral gain 
 to be had here. One cannot contemplate long 
 such exalted themes without receiving an im- 
 pulse, and being lifted into a region where 
 doing wrong becomes a little strange. When, 
 too, we reflect how many human ills spring 
 from misunderstanding and intellectual ob- 
 scurity, we see that whatever tends to illu- 
 minate mental problems is of large conse- 
 quence in the practical issues of life.
 
 10 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 In considering what we mean by goodness, 
 we are apt to imagine that the term applies 
 especially, possibly entirely, to persons. It 
 seems as if persons alone are entitled to be 
 called good. But a little reflection shows 
 that this is by no means the case. There are 
 about as many good things in the world as 
 good persons, and we are obliged to speak of 
 them about as often. The goodness which 
 we see in things is, however, far simpler and 
 more easily analyzed than that which appears 
 in persons. It may accordingly be well in 
 these first two chapters to say nothing what- 
 ever about such goodness as is peculiar to 
 persons, but to confine our attention to those 
 phases of it which are shared alike by persons 
 and things. 
 
 Ill 
 
 How then do we employ the word "good "? 
 I do not ask how we ought to employ it, but 
 how we do. For the present we shall be 
 engaged in a psychological inquiry, not an 
 ethical one. We need to get at the plain 
 facts of usage. I will therefore ask each 
 reader to look into his own mind, see on what 
 occasions he uses the word, and decide what
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 11 
 
 meaning he attaches to it. Taking up a few 
 of the simplest possible examples, we will 
 through them inquire when and why we call 
 things good. 
 
 Here is a knife. When is it a good knife ? 
 Why, a knife is made for something, for 
 cutting. Whenever the knife slides evenlyN 
 through a piece of wood, unimpeded by any- 
 thing in its own structure, and with a minimum 
 of effort on the part of him who steers it, when \ 
 there is no disposition of its edge to bend or 
 break, but only to do its appointed work effec- 
 tively, then we know that a good knife is a,t^\ 
 work. Or, looking at the matter from anotherX 
 point of view, whenever the handle of the 
 knife neatly fits the hand, following its lines 
 and presenting no obstruction, so that it is a 
 pleasure to use it, we may say that in these ^\ 
 respects also the knife is a good knife. That 
 is, the knife becomes good through adaptation 
 to its work, an adaptation realized in its cleav- 
 age of the wood and in its conformity to 
 hand. Its goodness always has reference to\ 
 something outside itself, and is measured by I " 
 its performance of an external task. A sim- 
 ilar goodness is also found in persons. When 
 we call the President of the United States
 
 12 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 good, we mean that he adapts himself easily 
 and efficiently to the needs of his people. 
 He detects those needs before others fully 
 feel them, is sagacious in devices for meeting 
 them, and powerful in carrying out his patri- 
 otic purposes through whatever selfish oppo- 
 sition. The President's goodness, like the 
 knife's, refers to qualities within him only so 
 far as these are adjusted to that which lies 
 beyond. 
 
 Or take something not so palpable. What 
 glorious weather ! When we woke this morn- 
 ing, drew aside our curtains and looked 
 out, we said " It is a good day ! " And of 
 what qualities of the day were we thinking? 
 We meant, I suppose, that the day was well 
 fitted to its various purposes. Intending to 
 go to our office, we saw there was nothing to 
 hinder our doing so. We knew that the 
 streets would be clear, people in amiable mood, 
 business and social duties would move forward 
 easily. Health itself is promoted by such sun- 
 shine. In fact, whatever our plans, in calling 
 the day a good day we meant to speak of it 
 as excellently adapted to something outside 
 itself. 
 
 This signification of goodness is lucidly
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 13 
 
 put in the remark of Shakespere's Portia, 
 " Nothing I see is good without respect." 
 We must have some respect or end in mind 
 in reference to which the goodness is reck- 
 oned. Good always means good for. That 
 little preposition cannot be absent from our 
 minds, though it need not audibly be uttered. 
 The knife is good for cutting, the day for 
 business, the President for the blind needs 
 of his country. Omit the for, and goodness 
 ceases. To be bad or good implies external 
 reference. To be good means to further 
 something, to be an efficient means; and the 
 end to be furthered must be already in mind 
 before the word good is spoken. 
 
 The respects or ends in reference to which 
 goodness is calculated are often, it is true, ob- 
 scure and difficult to seize if one is unfamiliar 
 with the currents of men's thoughts. I some- 
 times hear the question asked about a mer- 
 chant, "Is he good?" a question natural 
 enough in churches and Sunday-schools, but 
 one which sounds rather queer on " 'change." 
 But those who ask it have a special respect in 
 mind. I believe they mean, " Will the man 
 meet his notes ? " In their mode of thinking 
 a merchant is of consequence only in financial
 
 14 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 life. When they have learned whether he is 
 capable of performing his functions there, 
 they go no farther. He may be the most 
 vicious of men or a veritable saint. It will 
 make no difference in inducing commercial 
 associates to call him good. For them the 
 word indicates solely responsibility for busi- 
 ness paper. 
 
 A usage more curious still occurs in the 
 nursery. There when the question is asked, 
 " Has the baby been good ? " one discovers 
 by degrees that the anxious mother wishes to 
 know if it has been crying or quiet. This 
 elementary life has as yet not acquired posi- 
 tive standards of measurement. It must be 
 reckoned in negative terms, failure to dis- 
 turb. Heaven knows it does not always at- 
 tain to this. But it is its utmost virtue, 
 quietude. 
 
 In short, wherever we inspect the usage of 
 the word good, we always find behind it an 
 implication of some end to be reached. Good 
 is a relative term, signifying promotive of, 
 conducive to. The good is the useful, and 
 it must be useful for something. Silent or 
 spoken, it is the mental reference to something 
 else which puts all meaning into it. So Ham-
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 15 
 
 let says, " There 's nothing either good orj 
 bad, but thinking makes it so." If I have in 
 mind A as an end sought, then X is good. 
 But if B is the end, X is bad. X has no 
 goodness or badness of its own. No new 
 quality is added to an object or act when it 
 becomes good. 
 
 IV 
 
 But this result is disappointing, not to say 
 paradoxical. To call a thing good only with 
 reference to what lies outside itself would be 
 almost equivalent to saying that nothing is 
 good. For if the moment anything becomes 
 good it refers all its goodness to something 
 beyond its own walls, should we ever be able 
 to discover an object endowed with goodness 
 at all ? The knife is good in reference to 
 the stick of wood ; the wood, in reference to 
 the table ; the table, in reference to the writ- 
 ing; the writing, in reference to a reader's 
 eyes ; his eyes, in reference to supporting his 
 family where shall we ever stop ? We can 
 never catch up with goodness. It is always 
 promising to disclose itself a little way be- 
 yond, and then evading us, slipping from 
 under our fingers just when we are about to
 
 16 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS 
 
 touch it. This meaning of goodness is self- 
 contradictory. 
 
 And it is also too large. It includes more 
 in goodness than properly belongs there. If 
 we call everything good which is good for, 
 everything which shows adaptation to an end, 
 then we shall be obliged to count a multitude 
 of matters good which we are accustomed to 
 think of as evil. Filth will be good, for it pro- 
 motes fevers as nothing else does. Earth- 
 quakes are good, for shaking down houses. 
 It is inapposite to urge that we do not want 
 fevers or shaken houses. Wishes are provided 
 no place in our meaning of good. Goodness 
 merely assists, promotes, is conducive to any 
 result whatever. It marks the functional char- 
 acter, without regard to the desirability of 
 that which the function effects. But this is 
 unsatisfactory and may well set us on a search 
 for supplementary meanings. 
 
 V 
 
 When we ask if the Venus of Milo is a 
 good statue, we have to confess that it is good 
 beyond almost any object on which our eyes 
 have ever rested. And yet it is not good for 
 anything ; it is no means for an outside end.
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 17 
 
 Rather, it is good in itself. This possibility 
 that things may be good in themselves was 
 once brought forcibly to my attention by a 
 trivial incident. Wandering over my fields 
 with my farmer in autumn, we were surveying 
 the wrecks of summer. There on the ploughed 
 ground lay a great golden object. He pointed 
 to it, saying, " That is a good big pumpkin." 
 I said, " Yes, but I don't care about pump- 
 kins." "No," he said, "nor do I." I said, 
 " You care for them, though, as they grow 
 large. You called this a good big one." 
 " No ! On the contrary, a pumpkin that is 
 large is worth less. Growing makes it coarser. 
 But that is a good big pumpkin." I saw there 
 was some meaning in his mind, but I could 
 not make out what it was. Soon after I heard 
 a schoolboy telling about having had a " good 
 big thrashing." I knew that he did not like 
 such things. His phrase could not indicate 
 approval, and what did it signify ? He coupled 
 the two words good and big ; and I asked my- 
 self if there was between them any natural con- 
 nection? On reflection I thought there was. If 
 you wish to find the full pumpkin nature, here 
 you have it. All that a pumpkin can be is set 
 forth here as nowhere else. And for that mat-
 
 18 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 ter, anybody who might foolishly wish to ex 
 plore a thrashing would find all he sought in 
 this one. In short, what seemed to he intended 
 was that all the functions constituting the 
 things talked about were present in these in- 
 stances and hard at work, mutually assisting 
 one another, and joining to make up such 
 a rounded whole that from it nothing was 
 omitted which possibly might render its or- 
 ganic wholeness complete. 
 
 Here then is a notion of goodness widely un- 
 like the one previously developed. Goodness 
 now appears shut up within verifiable bounds 
 where it is not continuaUy referred to some- 
 thing which lies beyond. An object is here 
 reckoned not as good for, but as good in it- 
 self. The Venus of Milo is a good statue not 
 through what it does, but through what it 
 is. And perhaps it may conduce to clearness 
 if we now give technical names to our two 
 contrasted conceptions and call the former 
 extrinsic goodness and the latter intrinsic. 
 Extrinsic goodness will then signify the ad-\ 
 justment of an object to something which lies 
 outside itself ; intrinsic will say that the many 
 powers of an object are so adjusted to one 
 another that they cooperate to render the ob-
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 19 
 
 ject a firm totality. Both will indicate rela- 
 tionship; but in the one case the relations 
 considered are extra se, in the other inter se. 
 Goodness, however, will everywhere point to 
 organic adjustment. 
 
 If this double aspect of goodness is as clear 
 and important as I believe it to be, it must 
 have left its record in language. And in fact 
 we find that popular speech distinguishes 
 worth and value in much the same way as 
 I have distinguished intrinsic and extrinsic 
 goodness. To say that an object hasy#alu is 
 to declare it of consequence in **pfpirftnp,p tn 
 something other than itself. To speak of its 
 wjjrjth is to call attention to what its own 
 nature involves. In a somewhat similar fash- 
 ion Mr. Bradley distinguishes the extension 
 and harmony of goodness, and Mr. Alexander 
 the right and the perfect. 
 
 VI 
 
 When, however, we have got the two sorts 
 of goodness distinctly parted, our next busi- 
 ness is to get them together again. Are they 
 in fact altogether separate ? Is the extrinsic 
 goodness of an object entirely detachable from 
 its intrinsic ? I think not. They are invari-
 
 20 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 ably found together. Indeed, extrinsic good- 
 ness would be impossible in an object which 
 did not possess a fair degree of intrinsic. 
 How could a table, for example, be useful for 
 holding a glass of water if the table were not 
 well made, if powers appropriate to tables 
 were not present and mutually cooperating ? 
 Unless equipped with intrinsic goodness, the 
 table can exhibit no extrinsic goodness what- 
 ever. And, on the other hand, intrinsic good- 
 ness, coherence of inner constitution, is always 
 found attended by some degree of extrin- 
 sic goodness, or influence over other things. 
 Nothing exists entirely by itself. Each ob- 
 ject has its relationships, and through these 
 is knitted into the frame of the universe. 
 
 Still, though the two forms of goodness are 
 thus regularly united, we may fix our atten- 
 tion on the one or the other. According as 
 we do so, we speak of an object as intrinsi- 
 cally or extrinsically good. For that matter, 
 one of the two may sometimes seem to be 
 present in a preponderating degree, and to 
 determine by its presence the character of the 
 object. In judging ordinary physical things, 
 I believe we usually test them by their ser- 
 viceability to us by their extrinsic goodness,
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 21 
 
 that is rather than bother our heads with 
 asking what is their inner structure, and how 
 full of organization they may be. Whereas, 
 when we come to estimate human beings, we 
 ordinarily regard it as a kind of indignity to 
 assess primarily their extrinsic goodness, i. e., 
 to ask chiefly how serviceable they may be 
 and to ignore their inner worth. To sum up 
 a man in terms of his labor value is the moral 
 error of the slaveholder. 
 
 If, however, we seek the highest point to 
 which either kind of excellence may be car- 
 ried, it will be found where each most fully 
 assists the other. But this is not easy to im- 
 agine. When I set a glass of water on the table, 
 the table is undoubtedly slightly shaken by 
 the strain. If I put a large book upon it, the 
 strain of the table becomes apparent. Putting 
 a hundred pound weight upon it is an experi- 
 ment that is perilous. For the extrinsic good- 
 ness of the table is at war with the intrinsic ; 
 that is, the employment of the table wears it 
 out. In doing its work and fitting into the 
 large relationships for which tables exist, its 
 inner organization becomes disjointed. In 
 time it will go to pieces. We can, however, 
 imagine a magic table, which might be con-
 
 22 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 solidated by all it does. At first it was a little 
 weak, but by upholding the glass of water 
 it grew stronger. As I laid the book on 
 it, its joints acquired a tenacity which they 
 lacked before ; and only after receiving the 
 hundred pound weight did it acquire the full 
 strength of which it was capable. That would 
 indeed be a marvelous table, where use and in- 
 ner construction continually helped each other. 
 Something like it we may hereafter find pos- 
 sible in certain regions of personal goodness, 
 but no such perpetual motion is possible to 
 things. For them employment is costly. 
 
 VII 
 
 I have already strained my readers' atten- 
 tion sufficiently by these abstract statements 
 of matters technical and minute. Let us 
 stop thinking for a while and observe. I will 
 draw a picture of goodness and teach the eye 
 what sort of thing it is. We have only to fol- 
 low in our drawing the conditions already laid 
 down. We agreed that when an object was 
 good it was good for something ; so that if 
 A is good, it must be good for B. This in- 
 strumental relation, of means to end, may well 
 be indicated by an arrow pointing out the direc-
 
 THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 23 
 
 tion in which the influence moves. But if B 
 is also to be good, it too must be connected 
 by an arrow with another object, C, and this 
 in the same way with D. The process might 
 evidently be continued forever, but will be 
 
 sufficiently shown in the A a 
 
 three stages of Figure 1. 
 Here the arrow always ex- 
 presses the extrinsic good- 
 ness of the letter which lies 
 
 behind it, in reference to 
 
 the letter which lies before. 
 
 Fig- * 
 
 But drawing our diagram 
 in this fashion and finding a little gap be- 
 tween D and A, the completing mind of man 
 longs to fill up that gap. We have no war- 
 rant for doing anything of the sort ; but let 
 us try the experiment and see what effect will 
 
 follow. Under the new ar- A 
 
 rangement we find that not 
 only is D good for A, but 
 that A, being good for B 
 and for C, is also good for 
 D. To express these facts 
 in full it would be neces- ^ " w 
 
 rig. 2. 
 
 sary to put a point on 
 
 each end of the arrow connecting A and D.
 
 24 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS 
 
 But the same would be true of the relation 
 between A and B ; that is, B, being good for 
 C and for D, is also good for A. Or, as 
 similar reasoning would hold throughout the 
 figure, all the arrows appearing there should 
 be supplied with heads at both ends. And 
 there is one further correction. A is good 
 for B and for C ; that is, A is good for C. 
 The same relation should also be indicated be- 
 tween B and D. So that to render our diagram 
 complete it would be necessary to supply it with 
 two diagonal arrows having double heads. It 
 would then assume the following form. 
 
 Here is a picture of in- 
 trinsic goodness. In this 
 figure we have a whole re- 
 presented in which every 
 part is good for every other 
 part. But this is merely 
 . 3 a pictorial statement of 
 
 the definition which Kant 
 once gave of an organism. By an organism, 
 he says, we mean that assemblage of active 
 and differing parts in which each part is both 
 means and end. Extrinsic goodness, the re- 
 lation of means to end, we have expressed in 
 our diagram by the pointed arrow. But as
 
 25 
 
 soon as we filled in the gap between D and 
 A each arrow was obliged to point in two 
 directions. We had an organic whole instead 
 of 'a lot of external adjustments. In such a 
 whole each part has its own function to per- 
 form, is active ; and all must differ from one 
 another, or there would be mere repetition 
 and aggregation instead of organic supple- 
 mentation of end by means. An organism 
 has been more briefly defined, and the curious 
 mutuality of its support expressed, by saying 
 that it is a unit made up of cooperant parts. 
 And each of these definitions expresses the 
 notion of intrinsic goodness which we have 
 already reached. Intrinsic goodness is the 
 expression of the fullness of function in the 
 construction of an organism. 
 
 I have elsewhere (The Field of Ethics, p. 
 122) explained the epoch-making character in 
 any life of this conception of an organism. 
 Until one has come in sight of it, he is a child. 
 When once he begins to view things organic .* 
 cally, he is at least in outline a scientific! v 
 an artistic, a moral man. Experience there 
 becomes coherent and rational, and the dis- 
 jointed modes of immaturity, ugliness, and 
 sin no longer attract. At no period of the
 
 26 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 world's history has this truly formative con- 
 ception exercised a wider influence than to- 
 day. It is accordingly worth while to depict 
 it with distinctness, and to show how fully it 
 is wrought into the very nature of goodness.
 
 REFERENCES ON THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF 
 GOODNESS 
 
 Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. ii. ch. ii. 
 Bradley's Appearance and Reality, ch. xxv. 
 Sidgwick's Methods, bk. i. ch. ix. 
 Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. iii. 
 Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iv. ch. ii. 
 Ladd's Philosophy of Conduct, ch. iii. 
 Kant's Practical Reason, bk. i. ch. ii. 
 The Meaning of Good, by G. L. Dickinson.
 
 n 
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
 
 n 
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 
 
 OUR diagram of goodness, as drawn in the 
 last chapter, has its special imperfections, and 
 through these cannot fail to suggest certain 
 erroneous notions of goodness. To these I 
 now turn. The first of them is connected 
 with its own mode of construction. It will 
 he rememhered that we arbitrarily threw a*, 
 arrow from D to A, thus making what was, 
 hitherto an end become a means to its own 
 means. Was this legitimate ? Does any such 
 closed circle exist ? 
 
 It certainly does not. Our universe con- 
 tains nothing that can be represented by that 
 figure. Indeed if anywhere such a self-suffi- 
 cing organism did exist, we could never know 
 it. For, by the hypothesis, it would be alto- 
 gether adequate to itself and without rela- 
 tions beyond its own bounds. And if it were
 
 32 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 thus cut off from connection with everything 
 except itself, it could not even affect our 
 knowledge. It would he a closed universe 
 within our universe, and be for us as good as 
 zero. We must own, then, that we have no 
 acquaintance with any such perfect organism, 
 while the facts of life reveal conditions widely 
 unlike those here represented. 
 
 What these conditions are becomes appa- 
 rent when we put significance into the letters 
 hitherto employed. Let our diagram become 
 a picture of the organic life of John. Then 
 A might represent his physical life, B his 
 business life, C his civil, D his domestic ; and 
 we should have asserted that each of these 
 several functions in the life of John assists 
 all the rest. His physical health favors his 
 commercial and political success, while at the 
 same time making him more valuable in the 
 domestic circle. But home life, civic eminence, 
 and business prosperity also tend to confirm 
 'his health. In short, every one of these fac- 
 tors in the life of John mutually affects and 
 is affected by all the others. 
 
 But when thus supplied with meaning, Fig- 
 ure 3 evidently fails to express all it should 
 say. B is intended to exhibit the business
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 
 
 33 
 
 life of John. But this is surely not lived 
 alone. Though called a function of John, it 
 is rather a function of the community, and he 
 merely shares it. I had no right to confine 
 to John himself that which plainly stretches 
 beyond him. Let us correct the figure, then, 
 by laying off another beside it to repre- 
 sent Peter, one of those who shares in the 
 business experience of John. This common 
 business life 
 of theirs, B, A * 
 we may say, 
 enables Pe- 
 ter to grat- 
 ify his own 
 adventurous 
 disposition, 
 E; and this 
 tastes, F. But 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 again stimulates his scientific 
 
 Peter's eminence in science 
 commends him so to his townsmen that he 
 comes to share again C, the civic life of John. 
 Yet as before in the case of John, each of 
 Peter's powers works forward, backward, and 
 across, constructing in Peter an organic 
 whole which still is interlocked with the life 
 of John. Each, while having functions of 
 his own, has also functions which are shared 
 with his neighbor.
 
 34 
 
 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 Nor would this involvement of functions 
 pause with Peter. To make our diagram 
 really representative, each of the two individ- 
 uals thus far drawn would need to be sur- 
 rounded by a multitude of others, all sharing in 
 some degree the functions of their neighbors. 
 Or rather each individual, once connected 
 with his neighbors, would find all his functions 
 affected by all those possessed by his entire 
 
 group. For 
 fear of mak- 
 ing my figure 
 unintelligible 
 through its 
 fullness of re- 
 lations, I have 
 
 sent out arrows in all direc- 
 tions from the letter A only; 
 but in reality they would 
 run from all to all. And I 
 have also thought that we 
 persons affect one another 
 quite as decidedly through the wholeness of 
 our characters as we do through any interlock- 
 ing of single traits. Such totality of relation- 
 ship I have tried to suggest by connecting the 
 centres of each little square with the centres 
 
 H 
 
 Fig. 5.
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 35 
 
 of adjacent ones. John as a whole is thus 
 shown to be good for Peter as a whole. 
 
 We have successively found ourselves obliged 
 to broaden our conception until the goodness 
 of a single object has come to imply that of a 
 group. The two phases of goodness are thus 
 seen to be mutually dependent. Extrinsic 
 goodness or serviceability, that where an ob- 
 ject employs an already constituted wholeness 
 to further the wholeness of another, cannot 
 proceed except through intrinsic goodness, or 
 that where fullness and adjustment of func- 
 tions are expressed in the construction of an 
 organism. Nor can intrinsic goodness be 
 supposed to exist shut up to itself and parted 
 from extrinsic influence. The two are merely 
 different modes or points of view for assessing 
 goodness everywhere. Goodness in its mosti 
 elementary form appears where one object is] 
 connected with another as means to end. But, 
 the more elaborately complicated the relation 1 
 becomes, and the richer the entanglement of 
 means and ends internal and external in 
 the adjustment of object or person, so much 
 ampler is the goodness. Each object, in order 
 to possess any good, must share in that of the 
 universe.
 
 36 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 II 
 
 But the diagram suggests a second ques- 
 tion. Are all the functions here represented 
 equally influential in forming the organism ? 
 Our figure implies that they are, and I see 
 no way of drawing it so as to avoid the im- 
 plication. But it is an error. In nature our 
 powers have different degrees of influence. 
 We cannot suppose that John's physical, com- 
 mercial, domestic, and political life will have 
 precisely equal weight in the formation of his 
 being. One or the other of them will play 
 a larger part. Accordingly we very properly 
 speak of greater goods and lesser goods, 
 meaning by the former those which are more 
 largely contributory to the organism. In our 
 physical being, for example, we may inquire 
 whether sight or digestion is the greater good ; 
 and our only means of arriving at an answer 
 would be to stop each function and then note 
 the comparative consequence to the organism. 
 Without digestion, life ceases ; without sight, 
 it is rendered uncomfortable. If we are con- 
 sidering merely the relative amounts of bod- 
 ily gain from the two functions, we must call 
 digestion the greater good. In a table, excel-
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 37 
 
 lence of make is apt to be a greater good than 
 excellence of material, the character of the 
 carpentry having more effect on its durability 
 than does the special kind of wood employed. 
 The very doubts about such results which 
 arise in certain cases confirm the truth of the 
 definition here proposed ; for when we hesi- 
 tate, it is on account of the difficulty we find 
 in determining how far maintenance of the 
 organism depends on the one or the other of 
 the qualities compared. The meaning of the 
 terms greater and lesser is clearer than their 
 application. A function or quality is counted 
 a greater good in proportion as it is believed 
 to be more completely of the nature of a 
 means. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Another question unsettled by the diagram 
 is so closely connected with the one just ex- 
 amined as often to be confused with it. It 
 is this : yft fl- 
 
 rank, or grade? TMj arfi nflt ? and this 
 qualitative difference is indicated by the terms 
 higher and lower, as the quantitative differ- 
 ence was by greater and less. But differ- 
 ences of rank are more slippery matters than
 
 38 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 difference of amount, and easily lend them- 
 selves to arbitrary and capricious treatment. 
 Tn ordinary speech we are apt to employ the 
 words high and low as mere signs of approval 
 or disapproval. We talk of one occupation, 
 enjoyment, work of art, as superior to another, 
 and mean hardly more than that we like it 
 better. Probably there is not another pair of 
 terms current in ethics where the laudatory 
 usage is so liable to slip into the place of the 
 descriptive. Our opponent's ethics alwaysi 
 seem to embody low ideals, our own to bej 
 of a higher type. Accordingly the terms 
 should not be used in controversy unless we 
 have in mind for them a precise meaning 
 other than eulogy or disparagement. 
 
 And such a meaning they certainly may pos- 
 sess. As the terjfr greater good is employed to 
 indicate the degree in which a Quality .ser vfis 
 
 I ' ' <l I _ __ V 
 
 as_a means, so may the higher good nhow 
 the degree in which it is &U- end. Digestion, 
 which was just now counted a greater good 
 than sight, might still be rightly reckoned 
 a lower ; for while it contributes more largely 
 to the constitution of the human organism, it 
 on that very account expresses less the pur- 
 poses to which that organism will be put. It
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 39 
 
 is true we have seen how in any organism 
 every power is both means and end. It would 
 be impossible, then, to part out its powers, 
 and call some altogether great and others 
 altogether high. But though there is pur- 
 pose in all, and construction in all, certain are 
 more markedly the one than the other. Some 
 express the superintending functions ; others, 
 the subservient. Some condition, others are 
 conditioned by. In man, for example, the 
 intellectual powers certainly serve our bodily 
 needs. But that is not their principal office ; 
 rather, in them the aims of the entire human 
 being receive expression. To abolish the dis- 
 tinction of high and low would be to try to 
 obliterate from our understanding of the world 
 all estimates of the comparative worth of its 
 parts ; and with these estimates its rational 
 order would also disappear. Such attempts 
 have often been made. In extreme polytheism 
 there are no superiors among the gods and no 
 inferiors, and chaos consequently reigns. A 
 similar chaos is projected into life when, as in 
 the poetry of Walt Whitman, all grades of 
 importance are stripped from the powers of 
 man and each is ranked as of equal dignity 
 with every other.
 
 40 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 That there is difficulty in applying the dis- 
 tinction, and determining which function is 
 high and which low, is evident. To fix the 
 purposes of an object would often be presump- 
 tuous. With such perplexities I am not con- 
 cerned. I merely wish to point out a perfectly 
 legitimate and even important signification of 
 the__tgnna_Jbigh and k>w, quite apart from 
 their popular employment as laudatory or de- 
 preciative epithets. It surely is not amiss to 
 call the legibility of a book a higher good 
 than its shape, size, or weight, though in each 
 of these some quality of the book is expressed. 
 
 IV 
 
 A further point of possible misconception 
 in our diagram is the number of factors re- 
 presented. As here shown, these are but four. 
 They might better be forty. The more richly 
 functional a thing or person is, the greater 
 its goodness. Poverty of powers is every- 
 where a form of evil. For how can there be 
 largeness of organization where there is little to 
 organize ? Or what is the use of organization 
 except as a mode of furnishing the smoothest 
 and most compact expression to powers? 
 Wealth and order are accordingly everywhere
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 41 
 
 the double traits of goodness, and a chief 
 test of the worth of any organism will be the 
 diversity of the powers it includes. Through- 
 out my discussion I have tried to help the 
 reader to keep this twofold goodness in 
 mind by the use of such phrases as " fullness 
 of organization." 
 
 Yet it must be confessed that between the 
 two elements of goodness there is a kind of 
 opposition, needful though both are for each 
 other. Order has in it much that is repressive ; 
 and wealth in the sense of fecundity of 
 powers is, especially at its beginning, apt to 
 be disorderly. When a new power springs* 
 into being, it is usually chaotic or rebellious J 
 It has something else to attend to besides bring- 
 ing itself into accord with what already exists. 
 There is violence in it, a lack of sobriety, and 
 only by degrees does it find its place in the 
 scheme of things. This is most observable in 
 living beings, because it is chiefly they who 
 acquire new powers. But there are traces of 
 it even among things. A chemical acid and 
 base meeting, are pretty careless of everything 
 except the attainment of their own action. 
 Human beings are born, and for some time 
 remain, clamorous, obliging the world around
 
 42 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 to attend more to them than they to it. There 
 is ever a confusion in exuberant life which 
 bewilders the onlooker, even while he admits 
 that life had better be. 
 
 The deep opposition between these con 
 trasted sides of goodness is mirrored in the 
 conflicting moral ideals of conservatism and 
 radicalism, of socialism and individualism, 
 whicn have never been absent from the soci- 
 eties of men, nor even, I believe, from those of 
 animals. Conservatism insists on unity and 
 order; radicalism on wealthy life, diversified 
 powers, particular independence. Either, left 
 to itself, would crush society, one by empty- 
 ing it of initiative, the other by splitting it 
 into a company of warring atoms. Ordinarily 
 each is dimly aware of its need of an oppo- 
 nent, yet does not on that account denounce 
 him the less, or less eagerly struggle to expel 
 him from provinces asserted to be its own. 
 
 By temperament certain classes of the com- 
 munity are naturally disposed to become cham- 
 pions of the one or the other of these sup- 
 plemental ideals. Artists, for the most part, 
 incline to the ideal of abounding life, exult in 
 each novel manifestation which it can be made 
 to assume, and scoff at order as Philistinism.
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 43 
 
 Moralists, on the other hand, lay grievous 
 stress on order, as if it had any value apart 
 from its promotion of life. Assuming that 
 sufficient exuberance will come, unfosteredby 
 morality, they shut it out from their charge, 
 make duty to consist in checking instinct, and 
 devote themselves to pruning the sprouting 
 man. But this is absurdly to narrow ethics, 
 whose true aim is to trace the laws involved 
 in the construction of a good person. In such 
 construction the supply of moral material, and 
 the fostering of a wide diversity of vigorous 
 powers, is as necessary as bringing these powers 
 into proper working form. Richness of char* 
 acter is as important as correctness. The 
 world's benefactors have often been one-side^ 
 and faulty men. None of us can be complete j 
 and we had better not be much disturbed ovei 
 the fact, but rather set ourselves to gro^w 
 strong enough to carry off our defects. 
 
 Because ethics has not always kept its eyes 
 open to this obvious duality of goodness it ha? 
 often incurred the contempt of practical men. 
 The ethical writers of our time have done bet- 
 ter. They have come to see that the goodness 
 of a person or thing consists in its being ai 
 richly diversified as is possible up to the limit
 
 ucu\J7cu> 
 
 WVY\ ^M. vft, v 
 
 44 5THB NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 of harmonious working, and also in being or- 
 derly up to the Limit of repression of powers. 
 Beyond either of these limits evil begins. 
 What I have expressed in my diagram as the 
 fullest organization is intended to lie within 
 
 them. 
 
 V 
 
 It remains to compare the view of good- 
 ness here presented with two others which have 
 met with wide approval. The competence of 
 my own will be tested by seeing whether it 
 can explain these, or they it. Goodness is 
 sometimes defined as that which satisfies de- 
 sire. Things are not good in themselves, but 
 only as they respond to human wishes. A 
 certain combination of colors or sounds is good, 
 because I like it. A republic we Americans 
 consider the best form of government because 
 we believe that this more completely than any 
 other meets the legitimate desires of its peo- 
 ple. I know a little boy who after tasting 
 with gusto his morning's oatmeal would turn 
 for sympathy to each other person at table 
 with the assertive inquiry, " Good ? Good ? 
 Good ? " He knew no good but enjoyment, 
 and this was so keen that he expected to find it 
 repeated in each of his friends. It is true we
 
 CuWLc&u) UHA&, ^^r* ?fe- 
 $o/uu a- cAn<u<yy v\ft*S i 
 
 ^ 
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 45 
 
 often call actions good which are not immedi- 
 ately pleasing ; for example, the cutting off 
 of a leg which is crushed past the possibility 
 of cure. But the leg, if left, will cause still 
 more distress or even death. In the last an-| V 
 
 I ' ' .r o n 
 
 alysis the word good will be found everywhere! 
 to refer to some satisfaction of human desire.'' 
 If we count afflictions good, it is because we 
 believe that through them permanent peace 
 may best be reached. And rightly do those 
 name the Bible the Good Book who think that 
 it more than any other has helped to alleviate 
 the woes of man. 
 
 With this definition I shall not quarrel. 
 So far as it goes, it seems to me not incorrect. 
 In all good I too find satisfaction of desire. 
 Only, though true, the definition is in my 
 judgment vague and inadequate. For we shall 
 still need some standard to test the goodness of 
 desires. They themselves may be good, and 
 some of them are better than others. It is 
 good to eat candy, to love a friend, to hate a 
 foe, to hear the sound of running water, to 
 practice medicine, to gather wealth, learning, 
 or postage stamps. But though each of these 
 represents a natural desire, they cannot all be 
 counted equally good. They must be tried by
 
 
 46 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS 
 
 some standard other than themselves. For de- 
 sires are not detachable facts. Each is signifi- 
 cant only as a piece of a life. In connection 
 with that life it must be judged. And when 
 we ask if any desire is good or bad, we really 
 inquire how far it may play a part in company 
 with other desires in making up a harmonious 
 existence. By its organic quality, accordingly, 
 we must ultimately determine the goodness of 
 whatever we desire. If it is organic, it cer- 
 tainly will satisfy desire. But we cannot re- 
 verse this statement and assert that whatever 
 satisfies desire will be organically good. My 
 own mode of statement is, therefore, clearer 
 and more adequate than the one here exam- 
 ined, because it brings out fully important 
 considerations which in this are only implied. 
 //Whatever contributes to the solidity and wealth 
 of an organism is, from the point of view of 
 \that organism, good. 
 
 VI 
 
 A second inadequate definition of goodnessi 
 is that it is adaptation to environment. This I 1 - 
 is a far more important conception than the 
 preceding ; but again, while not untrue, is 
 still, in my judgment, partial and ambiguous.
 
 When its meaning is made clear and exact, it 
 seems to coincide with my own ; for it points 
 out that nothing can be separately good, but 
 becomes so through fulfillment of relations. 
 Each thing or person is surrounded by man 
 others. To them it must fit itself. Bern 
 but a part, its goodness is found in servin 
 that whole with which it is connected. Tha 
 is a good oar which suits well the hands of 
 the rower, the row-lock of the boat, and the 
 resisting water. The white fur of the polar 
 bear, the tawny hide of the lion, the camel's 
 hump, giraffe's neck, and the light feet of the 
 antelope, are all alike good because they adapt 
 these creatures to their special conditions of 
 existence and thus favor their survival. Nor 
 is there a different standard for moral man. 
 His actions which are accounted good arc 
 called so because they are those through 
 which he is adapted to his surroundings, fitted 
 for the society of his fellows, and adjusted 
 with the best chance of survival to his encom- 
 passing physical world. 
 
 While I have warm approval for much that 
 appears in such a doctrine, I think those 
 who accept it may easily overlook certain im- 
 portant elements of goodness. At best it is
 
 48 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 a description of extrinsic goodness, for it sep- 
 arates the object from its environment and 
 makes the response of the former to an exter- 
 nal call the measure of its worth. Of that 
 inner worth, or intrinsic goodness, where full- 
 ness and adjustment of relations go on within 
 and not without, it says nothing. Yet I have 
 shown how impossible it is to conceive one of 
 these kinds of goodness without the other. 
 
 But a graver objection still or rather the 
 same objection pressed more closely is this. 
 The present definition naturally brings up the 
 picture of certain constant and stable sur- 
 roundings enclosing an environed object which 
 is to be changed at their demand. No such 
 state of things exists. There is no fixed en- 
 vironment. It is always fixable. Every envfc 
 ronment is plastic and derives its character!, 
 at least partially, from the environed objecti 
 Each stone sends out its little gravitative and 
 chemical influence upon surrounding stones, 
 and they are different through being in its 
 neighborhood. The two become mutually af- 
 fected, and it is no more suitable to say that 
 the object must adapt itself to its environment 
 than that the environment must be adapted to 
 its object.
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 
 
 Indeed, in persons this second form of state- 
 ment is the more important ; for the forcing 
 of circumstances into accordance with humai 
 needs may be said to be the chief business oi 
 human life. The man who adapts himself to" 
 his ignorant, licentious, or malarial surround- 
 ings, is not a type of the good man. Of 
 course disregard of environment is not good 
 either. Circumstances have their honorable 
 powers, and these require to be studied, re- 
 spected, and employed. Sometimes they are 
 so strong as to leave a person no other course 
 than to adapt himself to them. He cannot 
 adapt them to himself. Plato has a good story 
 of how a native of the little village of Seri- 
 phus tried to explain Themistocles by means 
 of environment. " You would not," he said 
 to the great man, " have been eminent if you 
 had been born in Seriphus." " Probably not," 
 answered Themistocles, " nor you, if you had 
 been born in Athens." 
 
 The definition we are discussing, then, is 
 not true indeed it is hardly intelligible 
 if we take it in the one-sided way in which it 
 is usually announced. The demand for adap- 
 tation does not proceed exclusively from en- 
 vironment, surroundings, circumstance. The
 
 50 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 stone, the tree, the man, conforms these to it- 
 self as truly as it is conformed to them. There 
 is mutual adaptation. Undoubtedly this is im- 
 plied in the definition, and the petty employ- 
 ment of it which I have been attacking would 
 be rejected also by its wiser defenders. But 
 when its meaning is thus filled out, its vague- 
 ness rendered clear, and the mutual influence 
 which is implied becomes clearly announced, 
 the definition turns into the one which I have 
 offered. Goodness is the expression of the 
 largest organization. Its aim is everywhere 
 to bring object and environment into fullest 
 cooperation. We have seen how in any organic 
 relationship every part is both means and end. 
 Goodness tends toward organism ; and so far 
 as it obtains, each member of the universe re- 
 ceives its own appropriate expansion and dig- 
 nity. The present definition merely states the 
 great truth of organization with too objective 
 an emphasis ; as that which found the satis- 
 faction of desire to be the ground of good- 
 ness over-emphasized the subjective side. The 
 one is too legal, the other too aesthetic. Yet 
 each calls attention to an important and sup- 
 plementary factor in the formation of good- 
 ness.
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 51 
 
 VII 
 
 In closing these dull defining chapters, in 
 which I have tried to sum up the notion of 
 goodness in general a conception so thin 
 and empty that it is equally applicable to 
 things and persons it may be well to gather 
 together in a single group the several defini- 
 tions we have reached. 
 
 Intrinsic goodness expresses the fulfillment 
 of function in the construction of an organ- 
 ism. 
 
 By an organism is meant such an assem- 
 blage of active and differing parts that in it 
 each part both aids and is aided by all the 
 others. 
 
 Extrinsic goodness is found when an object 
 employs an already constituted wholeness to 
 further the wholeness of others. 
 
 A part is good when it furnishes that and 
 that only which may add value to other parts. 
 
 A greater good is one more largely con- 
 tributory to the organism as its end. 
 
 A higher good is one more fully expressive 
 of that end. 
 
 Probably, too, it will be found convenient 
 to set down here a couple of other definitions
 
 52 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 which will hereafter be explained and em- 
 ployed. A good act is the expression of self- 
 hoojiassfiEKice. By an ideal we mean a mental 
 picture of a better state of existence than we 
 feel has actually been reached.
 
 REFERENCES ON MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOOD- 
 NESS 
 
 Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. iii. ch. i. 10. 
 Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. bk. i. ch. i. 2. 
 Mackenzie's Manual of Ethics, ch. v. 13 & ch. vii. 2. 
 Janet's Theory of Morals, ch. iii. 
 Dewey's Outlines of Ethics, Ixvii. 
 Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. 3-
 
 m 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
 
 ra 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 IN the preceding chapters I have examined 
 only those features of goodness -which are 
 common alike to persons and to things. 
 Goodness was there seen to be the expres- 
 sion of function in the construction of an 
 organism. That is, when we ask if any be- 
 ing, object, or quality is good, we are really 
 inquiring how organic it is, how much it con- 
 tributes of riches or solidity to some whole 
 or other. There must, then, be as many 
 varieties of goodness as there are modes of 
 constructing organisms. A special set of 
 functions will produce one kind of organism, 
 a different set another ; and each of these will 
 express a peculiar variety of goodness. If, 
 then, into the construction of a person condi- 
 tions enter which are not found in the making 
 of things, these conditions will render personal
 
 58 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 goodness to some extent unlike the goodness 
 of everything else. 
 
 Now I suppose that in the contacts of life 
 we all feel a marked difference between per- 
 sons and things. We know a person when 
 we see him, and are quite sure he is not a 
 thing. Yet if we were called on to say pre- 
 cisely what it is we know, and how we know 
 it, we should find ourselves in some difficulty. 
 No doubt we usually recognize a human being 
 by his form and motions, but we assume that 
 certain inner traits regularly attend these out- 
 ward matters, and that in these traits the real 
 ground of difference between person and thing 
 is to be found. How many such distinguish- 
 ing differences exist ? Obviously a multitude ; 
 but these are, I believe, merely various mani- 
 festations of a few fundamental character- 
 istics. Probably all can be reduced to four, 
 they are sfjf -consciousness, sj3ldm^tiQn,l 
 self-development, and self-sacrifice. Wherever * 
 these four traits are found, we feel at once 
 that the being who has them is a person. 
 Whatever creature lacks them is but a thing, 
 and requires no personal attention. I might 
 say more. These four are so likely to go 
 together that the appearance of one gives
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 59 
 
 confidence of the rest. If, for example, we 
 discover a being sacrificing itself for another, 
 even though we have not previously thought 
 of it as a person, it will so stir sympathy that 
 we shall see in it a likeness to our own kind. 
 Or, finding a creature capable of steering itself, 
 of deciding what its ends shall be, and adjust- 
 ing its many powers to reach them, we can- 
 not help feeling that there is much in such a 
 being like ourselves, and we are consequently 
 indisposed to refer its movements to mechanic 
 adjustment. 
 
 If, then, these are the four conditions of 
 personality, the distinctive functions by which 
 it becomes organically good, they will evidently 
 need to be examined somewhat minutely be- 
 fore we can rightly comprehend the nature 
 of personal goodness, and detect its separation 
 from goodness in general. Such an exami- 
 nation will occupy this and the three succeed- 
 ing chapters. But I shall devote myself exclu- 
 sively to such features of the four functions 
 as connect them with ethics. Many interest- 
 ing metaphysical and psychological questions 
 connected with them I pass by.
 
 60 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 II 
 
 There is no need of elaborating the asser- 
 tion that a person is a conscious being. To 
 this all will at once agree. More important 
 is it to inspect the stages through which we 
 rise to consciousness, for these are often over- 
 looked. People imagine that they are self- 
 conscious through and through, and that they 
 always have been. They assume that the en- 
 tire life of a person is the expression of con- 
 sciousness alone. But this is erroneous. To 
 a large degree we are allied with things. 
 While self-consciousness is our distinctive 
 prerogative, it is far from being our only 
 possession. Rather we might say that all 
 which belongs to the under world is ours too, 
 while self-consciousness appears in us as a 
 kind of surplusage. No doubt it is by the 
 distinctive traits, those which are not shared 
 with other creatures, that we define our 
 special character ; but these are not our sole 
 endowment. Our life is grounded in uncon-j 
 sciousness, and with this, as students of) 
 personal goodness, we must first make ac-J 
 quaintance. 
 
 Yet how can we become acquainted with
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 61 
 
 it ? How grow conscious of the unconscious ? 
 
 o 
 
 We can but mark it in a negative way and 
 call it the absence of consciousness. That is 
 all. We cannot be directly aware of ourselves 
 as unconscious. Indeed, we cannot be quite 
 sure that the physical things about us, even or- 
 ganic objects, are unconscious. If somebody 
 should declare that the covers of this book are 
 conscious, and respond to everything wise or 
 f oolish which the writer puts between them, 
 there would be no way of confuting him. All 
 I could say would be, " I see no signs of it." 
 My readers occasionally give a response and 
 show that they do or do not agree with what 
 I say. But the volume itself lies in stolid pas- 
 sivity, offering no resistance to whatever I 
 record in it. Since, then, there is no evidence 
 in behalf of consciousness, I do not unwar- 
 rantably assume its presence. I save my belief 
 for objects where it is indicated, and indicate 
 its absence elsewhere by calling such objects 
 unconscious. 
 
 But if in human beings consciousness ap- 
 pears, what are its marks, and how is it known? 
 Ought we not to define it at starting? I be- 
 lieve it cannot be defined. Definition is taking 
 an idea to pieces. But there are no pieces in
 
 62 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 the idea of consciousness. It is elementary, 
 something in which all other pieces begin. 
 That is, in attempting to define consciousness, 
 I must in every definition employed really 
 assume that my hearer is acquainted with it 
 already. I cannot then define it without cov- 
 ert reference to experience. I might vary the 
 term and call it awaredness, internal observa- 
 tion, psychic response. I might say it is that 
 which accompanies all experience and makes 
 it to be experience. But these are not defi- 
 nitions. A simple way to fix attention on iti 
 is to say that it is what we feel less and less! 
 as we sink into a swoon. What this is, I can-* 
 not more precisely state. But in swoon or 
 sleep we are all familiar with its diminution or 
 increase, and we recognize in it the very color 
 of our being. After my friend's remark I am 
 in a different state from that in which I was 
 before. Something has affected me which 
 may abide. This is not the case with a stone 
 post, or at least there are no signs of it there. 
 The post, then, is unconscious. We call our- 
 selves conscious. 
 
 In unconsciousness our lives began, and 
 from it they have not altogether emerged. Yet 
 unconsciousness is a matter of degree. We
 
 'SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 63 
 
 may be very much aware, aware but slightly, 
 vanishingly, not at all. Even though we 
 never existed unconsciously, we may fairly 
 assume such a blank terminus in order the 
 better to figure the present condition of our 
 minds. They show sinking degrees moving 
 off in that direction ; when we think out the 
 series, we come logically to a point where 
 there is no consciousness at all. 
 
 Such a point analogy also inclines us to 
 concede. In our body we come upon uncon- 
 scious sections. This body seems to have 
 some connection with myself ; yet of its large 
 results only, and not of its minuter opera- 
 tions, can I be distinctly aware. In like 
 manner it is held that within the mind pro- 
 cesses cumulate and rise to a certain height 
 before they cross the threshold of conscious- 
 ness. Below that threshold, though actual 
 processes, they are unknown to us. The teach 
 ing of modern psychology is that all menta 
 action is at the start unconscious, requiring 
 a certain bulk of stimulus in order to emerge 
 into conditions where we become aware of it. 
 The cumulated result we know; the minute 
 factors which must be gathered together to 
 form that result, we do not know. I do not
 
 64 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 pronounce judgment on this psychological 
 question. I state the belief merely in order 
 to show how probable it is that our conscious 
 life is superposed upon unconscious condi- 
 tions. 
 
 In conduct itself I believe every one will 
 acknowledge that his moments of conscious- 
 ness are like vivid peaks, while the great mass 
 of his acts even those with which he is 
 most familiar occur unconsciously. When 
 we read a word on the printed page, how 
 much of it do we consciously observe ? Mod- 
 ern teachers of reading often declare that 
 detailed consciousness is here unnecessary or 
 even injurious. Better, they say, take the 
 word, not the letter, as the unit of conscious- 
 ness. But taking merely the letter, how 
 minutely are we conscious of its curvatures ? 
 Somewhere consciousness must stop, resting 
 on the support of unconscious experiences. 
 Matthew Arnold has declared conduct to be 
 three fourths of life. If we mean by conduct 
 consciously directed action, it is not one fourth. 
 \Yet however fragmentary, it is that which 
 tenders all the rest significant.
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 65 
 
 in 
 
 Just above our unconscious mental modifi- 
 cations appear the reflex actions, or instincts. 
 Here experience is translated into action be- 
 fore it reaches consciousness ; that is, though 
 the actions accomplish intelligent ends, there 
 is no previous knowledge of the ends to be 
 accomplished. A flash of light falls on my eye, 
 and the lid closes. It seems a wise act. 
 The brilliant light is too fierce. It might 
 damage the delicate organ. Prudently, there- 
 fore, I draw the small curtain until the light 
 has gone, then raise it and resume communi- 
 cation with the outer world. My action seems 
 planned for protection. In reality there was 
 no plan. Probably enough I did not perceive 
 the flash ; the lid, at any rate, would close 
 equally well if I did not. In falling from 
 a height I do not decide to sacrifice my arms 
 rather than my body, and accordingly stretch 
 them out. They stretch themselves, without 
 intention on my part. How anything so blind 
 yet so sagacious can occur will become clearer 
 if we take an illustration from a widely differ- 
 ent field. 
 
 To-day we are all a good deal dependent
 
 66 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 on the telephone ; though, not being a patient 
 man, I can seldom bring myself to use it. 
 It has one irritating feature, the central office, 
 or perhaps I might more accurately say, the 
 central office girl. Whenever I try to com- 
 municate with my friend, I must first call up 
 the central office, as it is briefly called and 
 longly executed. Not until attention there 
 has been with difficulty obtained can I come 
 into connection with my friend ; for through 
 a human consciousness at that mediating point 
 every message must pass. In that central of- 
 fice are accordingly three necessary things ; 
 viz., an incoming wire, a consciousness, and an 
 outgoing wire ; and I am helpless till all these 
 three have been brought into cooperation. 
 Really I have often thought life too short 
 for the performance of such tasks. And ap- 
 parently our Creator thought so at the begin- 
 ning, when in contriving machinery for us he 
 dispensed with the hindering factor of a cen- 
 tral office operator. For applied to our previ- 
 ous example of a flash of light, the incoming 
 message corresponds to the sensuous report of 
 the flash, the outgoing message to the closure 
 of the eye, and the unfortunate central office 
 girl has disappeared. The afferent nerve
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 67 
 
 reports directly to the efferent, without pass- 
 ing the message through consciousness. A 
 fortune awaits him who will contrive a similar 
 improvement for the telephone. A special 
 sound sent into the switch-box must automat- 
 ically, and without human intervention, oblige 
 an indicated wire to take up the uttered 
 words. The continuous arc thus established, 
 without employment of the at present neces- 
 sary girl, will exactly represent the exquisite 
 machinery of reflex action which each of us 
 bears about in his own brain. Here, as in 
 our improved telephone, the announcement 
 itself establishes the connections needful for 
 farther transmission, without employing the 
 judgment of any operating official. 
 
 By such means power is economized and 
 action becomes extremely swift and sure. 
 Promptness, too, being of the utmost impor- 
 tance for protective purposes, creatures which 
 are rich in such instincts have a large practi- 
 cal advantage over those who lack them. It 
 is often assumed that brutes alone are instinc- 
 tive, and that man must deliberate over each 
 occasion. But this is far from the fact. Prob- 
 ably at birth man has as many instincts as 
 any other animal. And though as conscious-
 
 68 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 ness awakes and takes control, some of these 
 become unnecessary and fall away, new ones 
 as will hereafter be shown are continually 
 established, and by them the heavy work of 
 life is for the most part performed. Personal 
 goodness cannot be rightly understood till 
 we perceive how it is superposed on a broad 
 reflex mechanism. 
 
 IV 
 
 But higher in the personal life than un- 
 consciousness, higher than the reflex instincts, 
 are the conscious experiences. By these, we 
 for the first time became aware of what is 
 going on within us and without. Messages 
 sent from the outer world are stopped at a 
 central office established in consciousness, 
 looked over, and deciphered. We judge 
 whether they require to be sent in one direc- 
 tion or another, or whether we may not rest 
 in their simple cognizance. Every moment 
 we receive a multitude of such messages. 
 They are not always called for, but they come 
 of themselves. My hand carelessly falling on 
 the table reports in terms of touch. A per- 
 son near me laughs, and I must hear. I see 
 the flowers on the table ; smell reports them
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 69 
 
 too; while taste declares their leaves to be 
 bitter and pungent. All this time the inner 
 organs, with the processes of breathing, blood 
 circulation, and nervous action, are announc- 
 ing their acute or massive experiences. Con- 
 tinually, and not by our own choice, our minds 
 are affected by the transactions around. Sen- 
 sations occur 
 
 " The eye, it cannot choose but see ; 
 We cannot bid the ear be still ; 
 Our bodies feel, where'er they be, 
 Against or with our will." 
 
 These itemized experiences thus pouring in 
 upon our passive selves are found to vary end- 
 lessly also in degree, time, and locality. Through 
 such variations indeed they become itemized. 
 " Therefore is space and therefore time," says \ 
 Emerson, " that men may know that things \ 
 are not huddled and lumped, but sundered \ 
 and divisible." 
 
 V 
 
 Have we not, then, here reached the highest 
 point of personal life, self -consciousness ? No, 
 that is a peak higher still, for this is but con- 
 sciousness. Undoubtedly from consciousness 
 self-consciousness grows, often appearing by
 
 70 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 degrees and being extremely difficult to dis- 
 criminate. Yet the two are not the same. 
 Possibly in marking the contrast between them 
 I may be able to gain the collateral advantage 
 of ridding myself of those disturbers of ethi- 
 cal discussion, the brutes. Whenever I am 
 nearing an explanation of some moral intricacy 
 one of my students is sure to come forward 
 with a dog and to ask whether what I have 
 said shows that dog to be a moral and respon- 
 sible being. So I like to watch afar and ban- 
 ish the brutes betimes. Perhaps if I bestow 
 a little attention on them at present, I may 
 keep the creatures out of my pages for the 
 future. 
 
 Many writers maintain that brutes differ 
 from us precisely in this particular, that whil 
 they possess consciousness they have not self 
 consciousness. A brute, they say, has just 
 such experiences as I have been describing : he 
 tastes, smells, hears, sees, touches. All this 
 he may do with greater intensity and precision 
 than we. But he is entirely wrapped up in these 
 separate sensations. The single experience 
 holds his attention. He knows no other self 
 than that ; or, strictly speaking, he knows no 
 self at all. It is the experience he knows, and
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 71 
 
 not himself the experiencer. We say, " The 
 cat feels herself warm ; " but is it quite so ? 
 Does she feel herself, or does she feel warm ? 
 Which ? If we may trust the writers to whom 
 I have referred, we ought rather to say, " The 
 cat feels warm " than that " she feels herself 
 warm ; " for this latter statement implies a 
 distinction of which she is in no way aware. 
 She does not set off her passing moods in con- 
 trast to a self who might be warm or cold, 
 active or idle, hungry or satiated. The expe- 
 rience of the instant occupies her so entirely 
 that in reality the cat ceases to be a cat and 
 becomes for the moment just warm. So it is 
 in all her seeming activities. When she chases 
 a mouse we rightly say, " She is chasing a 
 mouse," for then she is nothing else. Such 
 a state of things is at least conceivable. We 
 can imagine momentary experiences to be so 
 engrossing that the animal is exclusively occu- 
 pied with them, unable to note connections 
 with past and future, or even with herself, 
 their perceiver. Through very fullness of 
 consciousness brutes may be lacking in self 
 consciousness. 
 
 Whether this is the case with the brutes or 
 not, something quite different occurs in us. 
 
 1
 
 72 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 No particular experience can satisfy us; we 
 accordingly say, not " I am an experience/' 
 but " I have an experience." To be able to 
 throw off the bondage of the moment is the 
 distinctive characteristic of a person. When 
 Shelley watches the skylark, he envies him 
 his power of whole-heartedly seizing a momen- 
 tary joy. Then turning to himself, and feel- 
 ing that his own condition, if broader, is on 
 that very account more liable to sorrow, he 
 cries, 
 
 " We look before and after, 
 And pine for what is not." 
 
 That is the mark of man. He looks before 
 and after. The outlook of the brute, if the 
 questionable account which I have given of 
 hun is correct, is different. He looks to the 
 present exclusively. The momentary experi- 
 ence takes all his attention. If it does not, 
 he too in his little degree is a person. Could 
 we determine this simple point in the brute's 
 psychology, he would at once become avail- 
 able for ethical material. At present we can- 
 not use him for such purposes, nor say whether 
 he is selfish or self-sacrificing, possessed of 
 moral standards and accountable, or driven by 
 subtle yet automatic reflexes. The obvious
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 73 
 
 facts of him may be interpreted plausibly in 
 either way, and he cannot speak. Till he 
 can give us a clearer account of this central 
 fact of his being, we shall not know whether 
 he is a poor relation of ours or is rather akin 
 to rocks, and clouds, and trees. I incline to the 
 former guess, and am ready to believe that 
 between him and us there is only a difference 
 of degree. But since in any case he stands 
 at an extreme distance from ourselves, we 
 may for purposes of explanation assume that 
 distance to be absolute, and talk of him as 
 having no share in the prerogative announced 
 by Shelley. So regarded, we shall say of him 
 that he does not compare or adjust. He does 
 not organize experiences and know a single 
 self running through them all. Whenever 
 an experience takes him, it swallows his self 
 a self, it is true, which he never had. 
 
 It is sometimes assumed that Shelley was 
 the first to announce this weighty distinction. 
 Philosophers of course were familiar with it 
 long ago, but the poets too had noticed it 
 before the skylark told Shelley. Burns says 
 to the mouse : 
 
 " Still thou art blest, compared wi' me ! 
 The present only toucheth thee :
 
 74 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 But, och ! I backward cast my e'e 
 
 On prospects drear ! 
 An' forward tho' 1 caiina see, 
 
 I guess an' fear." 
 
 This looking backward and forward which 
 is the ground of man's grandeur, is also, 
 Burns thinks, the ground of his misery ; for 
 in it is rooted his self -consciousness, something 
 widely unlike the itemized consciousness of 
 the brute. Shakespere, too, found in us the 
 same distinctive trait. Hamlet reflects how 
 God has made us "with such discourse, 
 looking before and after." We possess dis- 
 course, can move about intellectually, and are 
 not shut up to the moment. But ages be- 
 fore Shakespere the fact had been observed. 
 Homer knew all about it, and in the last 
 book of the Odyssey extols Halitherses, the 
 son of Master, as one " able to look before and 
 after." MacrroptS^? 6 yap oto? opa Trpocro-a) 
 /cat 67rurcrft>. This is the mark of the wise 
 man, not merely marking off person from 
 brute, but person from person according to 
 the degree of personality attained. It is char- 
 acteristic of the child to show little foresight, 
 little hindsight. He takes the present as it 
 comes, and lives in it. We who are more
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 75 
 
 mature and rational contemplate him with 
 the same envy we feel for the skylark and 
 the mouse, and often say, " Would I too could 
 so suck the joys of the present, without re- 
 flecting that something else is coming and 
 something else is gone." 
 
 VI 
 
 Yet after becoming possessed of self-con- 
 sciousness, we do not steadily retain it. States 
 of mind occur where the self slips out, though 
 vivid consciousness remains. As I sit in my 
 chair and fix my eye on the distance, a day-* 
 dream or reverie comes over me. I see a pic- 
 ture, another, another. Somebody speaks and 
 I am recalled. " Why, here I am ! This is 
 I." I find myself once more. I had lost 
 myself paradoxical yet accurate expression. 
 We have many such to indicate the disappear- 
 ance of self-consciousness at moments of ela- 
 tion. " I was absorbed in thought," we say ; 
 the I was sucked out by strenuous attention 
 elsewhere. " I was swept away with grief," 
 i. e. y I vanished, while grief held sway. " I 
 was transported with delight," " I was over- 
 whelmed with shame," and perhaps most 
 beautiful of all these fragments of poetic
 
 76 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 psychology, " I was beside myself with 
 terror," I felt myself to be near, but was 
 still parted ; through the fear I could merely 
 catch glimpses of the one who was terri- 
 fied. 
 
 These and similar phrases suggest the ^in- 
 stability of self-consciousness. It is not fixedj 
 once and forever, but varies continually and! 
 within a wide range of degree. We like td 
 think that man possesses full self-conscious- 
 ness, while other creatures have none. Our 
 minds are disposed to part off things with 
 sharpness, but nature cares less about sharp 
 divisions and seems on the whole to prefer 
 subtle gradations and unstable varieties. So 
 the self has all degrees of vividness. Of it 
 we never have an experience barely. It is 
 always in some condition, colored by what it 
 is mixed with. I know myself speaking or 
 angry or hearing ; I know myself, that is, in 
 some special mood. But never am I able to 
 sunder this self from the special mass of con- 
 sciousness in which it is immersed and to 
 gaze upon it pure and simple. At times that 
 mass of consciousness is so engrossing that 
 hardly a trace of the self remains. At times 
 the sense of being shut up to one's self is pos-
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 77 
 
 itively oppressive. Between the two extremes 
 there is endless variation. When we call self- 
 consciousness the prerogative of man we do 
 not mean that he fully possesses it, but only 
 that he may possess it, may possess it more 
 and more ; and that in it, rather than in the 
 merely conscious life, the significance of his 
 being is found. 
 
 VII 
 
 Probably we are born without it. We 
 know how gradually the infant acquires a 
 mastery of its sensuous experience ; and it is 
 likely that for a long time after it has ob- 
 tained command of its single experiences it 
 remains unaware of its selfhood. In a classic 
 passage of " In Memoriam " Tennyson has 
 stated the case with that blending of witchery^ 
 and scientific precision of which he alone] 
 among the poets seems capable : 
 
 " The baby, new to earth and sky, 
 
 What time his tender palm is prest 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 Has never thought that ' this is I.' 
 
 u But as he grows he gathers much, 
 And learns the use of ' I ' and ' me,' 
 And finds ' I am not what I see, 
 And other than the things I touch.'
 
 78 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 " So rounds be to a separate mind, 
 
 From whence clear memory may begin, 
 As tbro' the frame that binds him in 
 His isolation grows defined." 
 
 Until he has separated his mind from the ob- 
 jects around, and even from his own conscious 
 states, he cannot perceive himself and obtain 
 clear memory. No child recalls his first year, 
 for the simple reason that during that year he 
 was not there. Of course there was experi- 
 ence during that year, there was conscious- 
 ness; but the child could not discriminate 
 himself from the crowding experiences and so 
 reach self -consciousness. At what precise 
 time this momentous possibility occurs can- 
 not be told. Probably the time varies widely 
 in different children. In any single child it 
 announces itself by degrees, and usually so 
 subtly that its early manifestations are hardly 
 perceptible. Occasionally, especially when 
 long deferred, it breaks with the suddenness 
 of an epoch, and the child is aware of a new 
 existence. A little girl of my acquaintance 
 turned from play to her mother with the cry, 
 " Why, mamma, little girls don't know that 
 they are." She had just discovered it. In 
 a famous passage of his autobiography, Jean
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 79 
 
 Paul Richter has recorded the great change in 
 himself : " Never shall I forget the inward 
 experience of the birth of self-consciousness. 
 I well remember the time and place. I stood 
 one afternoon, a very young child, at the 
 house-door, and looked at the logs of wood 
 piled on the left. Suddenly an inward con- 
 sciousness, *I am a Me,' came like a flash 
 of lightning from heaven, and has remained 
 ever since. At that moment my existence 
 became conscious of itself, and forever." 
 
 The knowledge that I am an I cannot be 
 conveyed to me by another human being, 
 nor can I perceive anything similar in him. 
 Each must ascertain it for himself. Accord- 
 ingly there is only one word in every language 
 which is absolutely unique, bearing a different 
 meaning for every one who employs it. That 
 is the word I. For me to use it in the sense 
 that you do would prove that I had lost my 
 wits. Whatever enters into my usage is out 
 of it in yours. Obviously, then, the meaning 
 of this word cannot be taught. Everything 
 else may be. What the table is, what is a 
 triangle, what virtue, heaven, or a spherodac- 
 tyl, you can teach me. What I am, you can- 
 not; for no one has ever had an experience
 
 80 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 corresponding to this except myself. People 
 in speaking to me call me John, Baby, or Ned, 
 an externally descriptive name which has sub- 
 stantially a common meaning for all who see 
 me. When I begin to talk I repeat this 
 name imitatively, and thinking of myself as 
 others do. I speak of myself in the third per- 
 son. Yet how early that reference to a third 
 person begins to be saturated with self-con- 
 sciousness, who can say? Before the word 
 " I " is employed, " Johnny " or " Baby " may 
 have been diverted into an egoistic signifi- 
 cance. All we can say is that " I " cannot be 
 rightly employed until consciousness has risen 
 to self-consciousness. 
 
 VIII 
 
 And when it has so risen, its unity and 
 coherence are by no means secure. I have 
 already pointed out how often it is lost in 
 moments when the conscious element becomes 
 particularly intense. But in morbid condi- 
 tions too it sometimes undergoes a disruption 
 still more peculiar. Just as disintegration 
 may attack any other organic unit, so may it 
 appear in the personal life. The records of 
 hypnotism and other related phenomena show
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 81 
 
 cases where self-consciousness appears to be 
 distributed among several selves. These curi- 
 ous experiences have received more attention 
 in recent years than ever before. They do 
 not, however, belong to my field, and to con- 
 sider them at any length would only divert 
 attention from my proper topic. But they 
 deserve mention in passing in order to make 
 plain how wayward is self -consciousness, 
 how far from an assured possession of its 
 unity. 
 
 This unity seems temporarily suspended on 
 occasion of swoon or nervous shock. An in- 
 teresting case of its loss occurred in my own 
 experience. Many years ago I was fond of 
 horseback riding ; and having a horse that was 
 unusually easy in the saddle, I persisted in 
 riding him long after my groom had warned 
 me of danger. He had grown weak in the 
 knees and was inclined to stumble. Riding! 
 one evening, I came to a little bridge. I re-, 
 member watching the rays of the sunset as I 
 approached it. Something too of my college 
 work was in my mind, associated with the 
 evening colors. And then well, there was 
 no " then." The next I knew a voice was 
 calling, " Is that you ? " And I was surprised
 
 82 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 to find that it was. I was entering my own 
 gateway, leading my horse. I answered 
 blindly, " Something has happened. I must 
 have been riding. Perhaps I have fallen." 
 I put my hand to my face and found it 
 bloody. I led my horse to his post, entered 
 the house, and relapsed again into uncon- 
 sciousness. When I came to myself, and was 
 questioned about my last remembrance, I re- 
 called the little bridge. We went to it the 
 next day. There lay my riding whip. There in 
 the sand were the marks of a body which had 
 been dragged. Plainly it was there that the 
 accident had occurred, yet it was three quar- 
 ters of a mile from my house. When thrown, 
 I had struck on my forehead, making an ugly 
 hole in it. Two or three gashes were on 
 other parts of the head. But I had appar- 
 ently still held the rein, had risen with the 
 horse, had walked by his side till I came to 
 four corners in the road, had there taken the 
 proper turn, passed three houses, and entep 
 ing my own gate then for the first time be- 
 came aware of what was happening. 
 
 What had been happening ? About twenty 
 minutes would be required to perform this 
 elaborate series of actions, and they had been
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 83 
 
 performed exactly as if I had been guiding 
 them, while in reality I knew nothing about 
 them. Shall we call my conduct unconscious 
 cerebration? Yes, if we like large words 
 which cover ignorance. I do not see how we 
 can certainly say what was going on. Per- 
 haps during all this time I had neither con- 
 sciousness nor self-consciousness. I may have 
 been a mere automaton, under the control of 
 a series of reflex actions. The feeling of the 
 reins in my hands may have set me erect. 
 The feeling of the ground beneath my feet 
 may have projected these along their way ; 
 and all this with no more consciousness than 
 the falling man has in stretching out his hands. 
 Or, on the contrary, I may have been sepa- 
 rately conscious in each little instant; but in 
 the shaken condition of the brain may not 
 have had power to spare for gluing together 
 these instants and knitting them into a whole. 
 It may be it was only memory which failed. 
 I cite the case to show the precarious character 
 of self-consciousness. It appears and disap- 
 pears. Our life is glorified by its presence, 
 and from it obtains its whole significance. 
 Whatever we are convinced possesses it we 
 certainly declare to be a person. Yet it is a
 
 84 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 gradual acquisition, and must be counted ra- 
 ther a goal than a possession. Under it, as 
 the height of our being, are ranged the three 
 other stages, consciousness, reflex action, 
 and unconsciousness.
 
 REFERENCES ON SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 James's Psychology, ch. x. 
 
 Royce's Studies of Good and Evil, ch. vi.-ix. 
 
 Terrier's Philosophy of Consciousness, in his Philosophical 
 
 Remains. 
 
 Calkins's Introduction to Psychology, bk. ii. 
 Wundt's Human and Animal Psychology, lect. xxvii.
 
 r\r 
 
 SELF-DIRECTION
 
 IV 
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 
 
 * 
 
 I 
 
 IN the last chapter I began to discuss the 
 nature of goodness distinctively personal. 
 This has its origin in the differing constitu- 
 tions of persons and things. Into the making 
 of a person four characteristics enter which 
 are not needed in the formation of a thing. 
 The most fundamental of these I examined. 
 Persons and things are unlike in this, that 
 each force which stirs within a self-conscious 
 person is correlated with all his other forces. 
 So great and central is this correlation that a 
 EggggiLJflin aft j } " T hayp a oxpomaaa^" not 
 as, possibly, the brutes " I am an expe- 
 rience." Yet although a person tends thus 
 to be a'n organic whole, he did not begin his 
 existence in conscious unity. Probably the 
 early stages of our life are to be sought rather 
 in the regions of unconsciousness. Rising out
 
 90 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 of unconscious conditions into 
 
 those ingenious provisions for our security 
 at times when we have no directing powers 
 of our own we gradually pass into condi-* 
 tions of consciousness, where we are able to 
 seize the single experience and to be absorbed 
 in it. Out of this emerges by degrees an ap- 
 prehension of ourselves contrasted with our 
 experiences. Even, however, when this self- 
 consciousness is once established, it may on 
 vivacious or morbid occasions be overthrown. 
 It by no means attends all the events of our 
 lives. Yet it marks all conduct that can be 
 called good. Goodness which is distinctively 
 personal must in some way express the forma4 
 tion and maintenance of a self-conscious lif e. j 
 But more is needed. A person fashioned 
 in the way described would be aware of him- 
 self, aware of his mental changes, perhaps 
 aware of an objective order of things produ- 
 cing these changes, and still might have no real 
 share himself in what was going on. We can 
 at least imagine a being merely contempla- 
 tive. He sits as a spectator at his own drama. 
 Trains of associated ideas pass before his in- 
 terested gaze ; a multitude of transactions oc- 
 cur in his contemplated surroundings ; but he
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 91 
 
 is powerless to intervene. He passively be- 
 holds, and does nothing. If such a state of 
 things can be imagined, and if something like 
 it occasionally occurs in our experience, it does 
 not represent our normal condition. Our life 
 is no mere affair of vision. Self-consciousness 
 counts as a factor. Through it changes arise 
 both without and within. I accordingly en- 
 title this fourth chapter Self -direction. In it 
 I propose to consider how our life goes forth 
 in action ; for in fact wherever self-consciousH 
 ness appears, there is developed also a centre] 
 of activity, and an activity of an altogether 
 peculiar kind. 
 
 It is well known that in interpreting these 
 facts of action the judgment of ethical writers 
 is divided. Libertarians and defrgrminista are 
 here at issue. Into their controversy I do not 
 desire to enter. I mean to attempt a brief 
 summary of those facts relating to human ac- 
 tion which are tolerably weh 1 agreed upon by 
 writers of both schools. In these there are 
 intricacies enough. To raise the hand, to 
 wave it in the air, to lay it on the table again, 
 would ordinarily be reckoned simple matters. 
 Yet operations so simple as these I shall show 
 pass through half a dozen steps, though they
 
 92 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 are ordinarily performed so swiftly that we 
 do not notice their several parts. In life 
 much is knitted together which cannot be un- 
 derstood without dissection. In such dissec- 
 tion I must now engage. As a good peda- 
 gogue I must discuss operations separately 
 which in reality get all their meaning through 
 being found together. Against the necessary 
 distortions of such a method the reader must 
 be on his guard. 
 
 II 
 
 In the total process of self-direction there 
 are evidently two main divisions, a mental 
 purpose must be formed, and then this purpose 
 must be sent forth into the outer world. It 
 is there accepted by those agencies of a physi- 
 cal sort which wait to do our bidding. The 
 formation of the mental purpose I will, for 
 the sake of brevity, call the infonti op ; and 
 to the sending of it forth I will give the 
 name volition. That these terms are not 
 always confined within these limits is plain. 
 But I shall not force their meaning unduly by 
 employing them so, and I need a pair of 
 terms to mark the great contrasted sides of 
 self-direction. The intention (A) shall desig-
 
 SELF-DIEECTION 93 
 
 nate the subjective side. But those objective 
 adjustments which fit it to emerge and seek 
 in an outer world its full expression I shall 
 call the volition (B). 
 
 For the present, then, regarding entirely the 
 former, let us see how an intention arises, 
 how self-consciousness sets to work in stirring 
 up activity. To gain clearness I shall distin- 
 guish three subordinate stages, designating 
 them by special names and numerals. 
 
 Ill 
 
 At the start we are guided by an end or 
 ideal of what we would bring about. To a 
 being destitute of self -consciousness only a 
 single sort of action is at any moment possi- 
 ble. When a certain force falls upon it, it 
 meets with a fixed response. Or, if the caus- 
 ative forces are many, what happens is but 
 the well-established resultant of these forces 
 operating upon a being as definite in nature 
 as they. Such a being contemplates no future 
 to be reached through motions set up within 
 it. Its motions do not occur for the sake of 
 realizing in coming time powers as yet but 
 half -existent. It is not guided by ideals. 
 Its actions set forth merely what it steadily is,
 
 94 THE NATURE OF GOODNZSS 
 
 not what it might be. Something like the 
 opposite of all this shapes personal acts. A 
 person has imagination. He contemplates 
 future events as possible before they occur, 
 and this contemplation is one of the very 
 factors which bring them about. For exam- 
 ple : while writing here, I can emancipate my 
 thought from this present act and set myself 
 to imagining my situation an hour hence. At 
 that time I perceive I may be still at my 
 writing-desk, I may be walking the streets, I 
 may be at the theatre, or calling on my friend. 
 A dozen, a hundred, future possibilities are 
 depicted as open to me. On one or another of 
 these I fix my attention, thereby giving it a 
 causal force over other present ideas, and ren 
 dering its future realization likely. 
 
 So enormously important is imagination! 
 By it we effect our emancipation from the! 
 present. Without this p^w * to summon pic4 
 tures of situations which at present are 
 not, w^usfajuTfT ng freairtly lilrfi thn thin^n nr 
 brjites-alfeady-dcscribcd . For in the thing a 
 determined sequence follows every impulse. 
 There is no ambiguous future disclosed, no 
 variety of possibilities, no alternatives. Pre- 
 sent things under definite causes have but a
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 95 
 
 single issue; and if the account given of the 
 brute is correct, his condition is unlike that 
 of things only in this respect, that in him 
 curious automatic springs are provided which 
 set him in appropriate motion whenever he is 
 exposed to harm, so enabling him suitably to 
 face a future of which, however, he forms no 
 image. In both brutes and things there is 
 entire limitation to the present. This is not 
 the case with a person. He takes the future 
 into his reckoning, and over him it is at least 
 as influential as the past. A person, through 
 imagination laying hold of future possibilities, 
 has innumerable auxiliary forces at his com- 
 mand. Choice appears. A depicted future 
 thus held by attention for causal purposes 
 is no longer a mere idea ; it becomes an ideal. 
 But in order to transform the depicted fu- 
 ture from an idea to an ideal, I must conceive 
 it as rooted in my nature, and in some degree 
 dependent on my power. Attracted by the 
 brilliancy of the crescent moon, I think what 
 sport it would be to hang on one of its horns 
 and kick my heels in the air. But no, that 
 remains a mere picture. It will not become 
 an ideal, for it has no relation to my structure 
 and powers. But there are other imaginable
 
 96 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 futures, going to Europe, becoming a physi- 
 cian, writing a book, buying a house, which, 
 though not fully compatible with one another, 
 still represent, each one of them, some capac- 
 ity of mine. Attention to one or the other of 
 these will make it a reality in my life. They 
 are competing ideals, and because of such 
 competition my future is uncertain. The am- 
 biguous future is accordingly a central char- 
 acteristic of a person. He can imagine all 
 sorts of states of himself which as yet have 
 no existence, and one of these selected as an 
 ideal may become efficient. This first stagey 
 then, in the formation of the purpose, where 
 various depicted future possibilities are sum- 
 moned for assessment, may be called our 
 fashioning of an ideal. 
 
 IV 
 
 But a second stage succeeds, the stage of 
 desire. Indeed, though I call it a second, it 
 is really but a special aspect of the first ; for 
 the ideal which I form always represents some 
 improvement in myself. An ideal which did 
 not promise to better me in some way would 
 be no ideal at all. It would be quite inoper- 
 ative. I never rise from my chair except with 
 
 I
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 97 
 
 the hope of being better off. Without this, 
 I should sit forever. But I feel uneasiness in 
 my present position, and conceive the pos- 
 sibility of not being constrained ; or I think 
 of some needful work which remains unex- 
 ecuted as long as I sit here, and that work 
 undone I perceive will leave my life less satis- 
 factory than it might be. And this imagined 
 betterment must always be in some sense my 
 own. If it is a picture of the gains of some 
 one else quite unconnected with myself, it will 
 not start my action. 
 
 But it will be objected that we do often 
 act unselfishly and in behalf of other persons. 
 Indeed we do. Perhaps our impulses are 
 more largely derived from others than from 
 ourselves, yet from desire our own share is 
 never quite eliminated. I give to the poor, 
 But it is because I hate poverty ; or because 
 I am attracted by the face, the story, or the 
 supposed character of him who receives ; or 
 because I am unable to separate my interests 
 from those of humanity everywhere. Jn^somei 
 subtle form the I-element enters. Leave it 
 out, and the action would lose its value and 
 become mechanical. What I did would be no 
 expression of self-conscious me. And such
 
 98 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 undoubtedly is the case with much of our 
 conduct. The reflex actions, described hi the 
 last chapter, and many of our habits too, con- 
 tain no precise reference to our self. Intelli- 
 gent, purposeful, moral conduct, however, is 
 everywhere shaped by the hope of improving 
 the condition of him who acts. We do not 
 act till we find something within or about us 
 unsatisfactory. If contemplating myself in 
 my actual conditions I could pronounce them 
 all good, creation would for me be at an end. 
 To start it, some sense of need is required. 
 Accordingly I have named desire as the sec- 
 ond stage in the formation of a purpose, for 
 desire is precisely this sense of disparity be- 
 tween our actual self and that possible bet- 
 tered self depicted in the ideal. 
 
 Popular speech, however, does not here state 
 the matter quite fully. We often talk as if our 
 desires were for other things than ourselves. 
 We say, for example, " I want a glass of 
 water." In reality it is not the water I want. 
 That is but a fragment of my desire. It is 
 water plus self. Only so is the desire fully 
 uttered. Beholding my present self, my 
 thirsty and defective self, I perceive a side 
 of myself requiring to be bettered. Accord-
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 99 
 
 ingly, among imagined pictures of possible 
 futures I identify myself with that one which 
 represents me supplied with water. But it isi 
 not water that is the object of my desire, it ia 
 myself as bettered by water. Since, however, 
 this betterment of self is a constant factor of 
 all desire, we do not ordinarily name it. We 
 say, " I desire wealth, I desire the success of 
 my friend, or the freedom of my country," 
 omitting the important and never absent por- 
 tion of the desire, the betterment of self. 
 
 Of course a stage in the formation of the 
 purpose so important as desire receives a 
 multitude of names. Perhaps the simplest is 
 appetite. In appetite I do not know what I 
 want. I am blindly impelled in a certain 
 direction. I do not perceive that I have a 
 suffering self, nor know that this particular 
 suffering would be bettered by that particular 
 supply. Appetite is a mere instinct. In the 
 mechanic structure of my being it is planned 
 that without comprehension of the want I 
 shall be impelled to the source of supply. But 
 when appetite is permeated with a conscious- 
 ness of what is lacking, I apprehend it as a 
 need. Through needs we become persons. 
 The capacity for dissatisfaction is the sublime
 
 100 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 thing in man. We can know our poor estate. 
 We can say, That which I am I would not be. 
 Passing the blind point of appetite, we come 
 into the region of want or need ; if we then 
 can discern what is requisite to supply this 
 need, we may be said to have a desire. That 
 desire, if specific and urgent, we call a wish. 
 All these varieties of desire include the 
 same two factors : on the one hand a recog- 
 nition of present defect in ourselves, on the 
 other imagination of possible bettered condi- 
 tions. Diminish either, and personal power 
 is narrowed. The richer a man's imagination, 
 and the more abundant his pictures of possi- 
 ble futures, the more resourceful he becomes. 
 Pondering on desire as rooted in the sense 
 of defect, we may feel less regret that our 
 age is one not easily satisfied. Never were 
 there so many discontents, because there were 
 never so many aspirations. It is true therd 
 may be a devilish discontent or a divine one.) 
 There is a discontent without definite aims, 
 one which merely rejects what is now pos- 
 sessed; and there is one which seeks what is 
 wisely attainable. Yet after ah 1 , it is a small 
 price to pay for aspiration that it is often at- 
 tended by vagueness and unwisdom.
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 101 
 
 But before the formation of the purpose is 
 complete it must pass through a third stage, 
 the stage of decision. Ideals and desires are 
 not enough, or rather they are too many ; for 
 there may be a multitude of them. Certain 
 ideals are desired for supplying certain of my 
 wants, others for supplying others. But on 
 examination these many desirable ideals will 
 often prove conflicting; all cannot be attained, 
 or at least not all at once. Among them I 
 must pick and choose, reducing and ordering 
 their number. This process is decision. Start- 
 ing with my ambiguous future, imagination 
 brings multifold possibilities of good before 
 me. But before these can be allowed to issue 
 miscellaneously into action, comparison and 
 selection reduce them to a single best. I ac- 
 cordingly assess the many desirable but com- 
 peting ideals and see which of them will on 
 the whole most harmoniously supplement my 
 imperfections. On that I fasten, and the in- 
 tention is complete. 
 
 All this is obvious. But one part of the 
 process, and perhaps the most important part, 
 is apt to receive less attention than it deserves.
 
 102 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 In decision we easily become engrossed with 
 the single selected ideal, and do not so fully 
 perceive that our choice implies a rejection 
 of all else. Yet this it is this cutting off 
 which rightly gives a name to the whole 
 operation. The best is arrived at only by a 
 process of exclusion in which we successively 
 cut off such ideals as do not tend to the 
 largest supply of our contemplated defects. 
 Walking by the candy-shop, and seeing the 
 tempting chocolates, I feel a strong desire for 
 them. My mouth waters. I hurry into the 
 shop and deposit my five-cent piece. In the 
 evening I find that by spending five cents for 
 the chocolates I am cut off from obtaining 
 my newspaper, a loss unconsidered at the 
 time. But to decide for anything is to decide 
 against a multitude of other things. Taking 
 is still more largely leaving. The full exteni 
 of this negative decision often escapes oui 
 notice, and through the very fact of choosing 
 a good we blindly neglect a best. 
 
 VI 
 
 Here, then, are the three steps in the forma- 
 tion of the purpose, the ideal, thajiejsire, 
 and the jdecision, each earlier one preparing
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 103 
 
 the way for that which is to follow. But an 
 intention is altogether useless if it pauses here. 
 It was formed to be sent forth, to be entrusted 
 to forces stretching beyond the intending 
 mind. The laws of nature are to take it in 
 charge. The Germans have a good proverb : 
 " A stone once thrown belongs to the devil." 
 When once it parts from our hands, it is no 
 longer ours. It is taken up, for evil or for 
 good, by agencies other than our own. If we 
 mistake the agency to which we intrust it, 
 enormous mischief may ensue, and we shall be 
 helpless. These agencies, accordingly, need 
 careful scrutiny before being called on to work 
 their will. The business of scrutinizing them 
 and of turning over the purpose to their keep- 
 ing, forms the second half (B) of self-direc- 
 tion. In contrast with (A), the formation of 
 the purpose or the intention, this may be 
 called the realization of the purpose, or voli- 
 tion. Volition, it is true, is often employed 
 more comprehensively, but we shall do the 
 term no violence if we confine its meaning to 
 the discharge of our subjective purpose into 
 the objective world. Volition then will also, 
 under our scheme, have three subordinate 
 stages.
 
 104 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 VII 
 
 The first of them I will call delibg^ation, in 
 order to approximate it as closely as possible 
 to the preceding decision. Having now my 
 purpose decisively formed, I have to ask my- 
 self what physical means will best carry it out. 
 I summon before my mind as complete a list 
 as possible of nature's conveyances, and judge 
 which of them will with the greatest efficiency 
 and economy execute my intention. Here I 
 am at a friend's house, but I have decided to 
 go to my own. I must compare, then, the 
 different modes of getting there, so as to pick 
 out just that one which involves the least ex- 
 penditure and the most certain result. One 
 way occurs to me which I have never tried 
 before, a swift and interesting way. I might 
 go by balloon. In that balloon I could sail at 
 my ease over the tops of the houses and across 
 the beautiful river. When the tower of Me- 
 morial Hall comes in sight, I could pull a cord 
 and drop gently down at my own door, hav- 
 ing meanwhile had the seclusion and exalta- 
 tion of an unusual ride. What a delightful 
 experience ! But there is one disadvantage. 
 Balloons are not always at hand. I might be
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 105 
 
 obliged to wait here for hours, for days, before 
 getting one. I dismiss the thought of a bal- 
 loon. It does not altogether suit my purpose. 
 
 Or, I might call a carriage. So I should 
 secure solitude and a certain speed, but should 
 pay for these with noise, jolting, and more 
 money than I can well spare. There would 
 be waiting, too, before the carriage comes. 
 Perhaps I had better ask my friend to lend 
 me his arm and to escort me home. In this 
 there would be dignity and a saving of my 
 strength. We could talk by the way, and I 
 always find him interesting. But should I be 
 willing to be so much beholden to him, and 
 would not the wind to-day make our walk and 
 talk difficult? Better postpone till summer 
 weather. And after all there is Boston's most 
 common mode of locomotion right at hand, 
 the electric car. Strange it was not thought 
 of before ! The five-cent piece saved from 
 the chocolates will carry me, swiftly, safely, 
 and with independence. 
 
 It is in this way that we go through the 
 process of deliberation. All the possible 
 means of effecting our purpose are summoned 
 for judgment. The feasibility of each is ex- 
 amined, and the cost involved in its employ-
 
 106 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 merit. Comparison is made between the ad- 
 vantages offered by different agencies; and 
 oftentimes at the close we are in a sad puzzle, 
 finding these advantages and disadvantages 
 so nearly balanced. One, however, is finally 
 judged superior in fitness. To this we tie our- 
 selves, making it the channel for our out-go. 
 The whole process, then, in its detailed com- 
 parison and final fixation, is identical with that 
 to which I have given the name of decision, 
 except that the comparisons of decision refer 
 to inner facts, those of deliberation to outer. 
 
 VIII 
 
 We now reach the climax of the whole pro- 
 cess, efforj;, the actual sending forth through 
 the deliberately chosen channel of the ideal 
 desired and decided on. To it all the rest 
 is merely preliminary, and in it the final move 
 is made which commits us to the deed. About 
 it, therefore, we may well desire the completest 
 information. To tell the truth, I have none 
 to give, and nobody else has. The nature of the 
 operation is substantially unknown. Though 
 something which we have been performing all 
 day long, we and all our ancestors, no one 
 of us has succeeded in getting a good sight
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 107 
 
 of what actually takes place. Our purposes 
 are prepared as I have described, and then 
 those purposes something altogether mental 
 change on a sudden to material motions. 
 How is the transmutation accomplished? How 
 do we pass from a mental picture to a set of 
 motions in the physical world ? What is the 
 bridge connecting the two? The bridge is 
 always down when we direct our gaze upon 
 it, though firm when any act would cross. 
 
 Nor can we trace our passage any more 
 easily in the opposite direction. When my 
 eyes are turned on my watch, for example, 
 the vibrations of light striking its face are re- 
 flected on the pupil of my eye. There the little 
 motions, previously existing only in the sur- 
 rounding ether, are communicated to my optic 
 nerve. This vibrates too, and by its motion 
 excites the matter of my brain, and then 
 well, I have a sensation of the white face of 
 my watch. But what was contained in that 
 then is precisely what we do not understand. 
 Incoming motions may be transmuted into 
 thought; or, as in effort, outgoing thought 
 may be transmuted into motion. But alike in 
 both cases, on the nature of that transmuta- 
 tion, the very thing we most desire to know,
 
 108 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 we get no light. In regard to this crucial 
 point no one, materialist or idealist, can offer 
 a suggestion. We may of course, in fault of 
 explanation, restate the facts in clumsy circum- 
 locution. Calling thought a kind of motion, 
 we may say that in action it propagates itself 
 from the mind through the brain into the 
 outer world ; while in the apprehension of an 
 idea motions of the outer world pass into the 
 brain, and there set up those motions which 
 we know as thought. But after such explana- 
 tions the mystery remains exactly where it 
 was before. How does a " mental motion " 
 come out of a bodily motion, or a bodily from 
 a mental ? It is wiser to acknowledge a mys- 
 tery and to mark the spot where it occurs. 
 
 This marking of the spot may, however, 
 illuminate the surrounding territory. If we 
 cannot explain the nature of the crucial act, 
 it may still be well to study its range. How 
 widely is effort exercised ? We should natu- 
 rally answer, as widely as the habitable globe. 
 I can sit in my office in Boston and carry 
 on business in China. When I touch a but- 
 ton, great ships are loaded on the opposite 
 side of the earth and cross the intervening 
 oceans to work the bidding of a person they
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 109 
 
 have never seen. Perhaps some day we may 
 send our volition beyond the globe and enter 
 into communication with the inhabitants of 
 Mars. It would seem idle, then, to talk about 
 the limitations of volition and a restricted 
 range of will. But in fact that will is re- 
 stricted, and its range is much narrower than 
 the globe. For when we consider the matter 
 with precision, it is not exactly I who have 
 operated in China. I operate only where I am. 
 In touching the button my direct agency 
 ceases. It is true that connected with that but- 
 ton are wires conducting to a wide variety of 
 consequences. But about the details of that 
 conduction I need know nothing. The wire 
 will work equally well whether I understand 
 or do not understand electricity. Its working 
 is not mine, but its own. The pressure of my 
 finger ends my act, which is then taken up 
 and carried forward by automatic and mechan- 
 ical adjustments requiring neither supervision 
 nor consciousness on my part. We might 
 then more accurately say that my direct voli- 
 tion is circumscribed by my own body. My 
 finger tips, my lips, my nodding head are the 
 points where I part with full control, though 
 indefinitely beyond these I can forecast changes
 
 110 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 which the automatic agencies, once set astir, 
 will induce. 
 
 Am I niggardly in thus confining the action 
 of each of us within his own body? Is the 
 range of volition thus marked out too narrow ? 
 On the contrary, it is probably still too wide. 
 We are as powerless to direct our bodies as 
 we are to manage affairs in China. This, at 
 least, is the modern psychological doctrine of 
 effort. It is now believed that volition is en- 
 tirely a mental affair, and is confined to the 
 single act of attention. It is alleged that when 
 I attend to an ideal, fixing my mind fully upon 
 it, the results are altogether similar to what 
 occurred on my touching the button. Every 
 idea tends to pass automatically into action 
 through agencies about which I know as little 
 as I do about ocean telegraphs. This physical 
 frame of mine is a curious organic mechanism, 
 in which reflex actions and instincts do their 
 blind work at a hint from me. I am said to 
 raise my arm. But never having been a stu- 
 dent of anatomy and physiology, I have not 
 the least idea how the rise was effected ; and 
 if I am told that nerves excite muscles, and 
 these in turn contract like cords and pull 
 the arm this way or that, the rise will not be
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 111 
 
 accomplished a bit better for the information. 
 For, as in electric transmission, it is not I who 
 do the work. My part is attention. The rest 
 is adapted automatism. When I have driven 
 everything else out of my mind except the 
 picture of the rising arm, it rises of itself, 
 the after-effects on nerves and muscles being 
 apprehended by me as the sense of effort. 
 
 We cannot, then, exercise our will with a 
 wandering mind. So long as several ideas 
 are conflictingly attended to, they hinder 
 each other. This we verify in regrettable ex- 
 periences every day. On waking this morn- 
 ing, for example, I saw it was time to get up. 
 But the bed was comfortable, and there were 
 interesting matters to think of. I meant to 
 get up, for breakfast was waiting, and there 
 was that new book to be examined, and that 
 letter to be written. How long would this 
 require, and how should the letter be planned ? 
 But I must get up. Possibly those callers 
 may come. And shall I want to see them ? 
 It is really time to get up. What a curi- 
 ous figure the pattern of the paper makes, 
 viewed in this light ! The breakfast bell ! 
 Out of my head go all vagrant reflections, and 
 suddenly, before I can notice the process, I
 
 112 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 find myself in the middle of the floor. That 
 is the way. From wavering thoughts nothing 
 comes. But suddenly some sound, some sight, 
 some significant interest, raises the depicted 
 act into exclusive vividness of attention, and 
 our part is done. The spring has been touched, 
 and the physical machinery, of which we 
 may know little or nothing, does its work. 
 There it stands ready, the automatic machin- 
 ery of this exquisite frame of ours, waiting for 
 the unconf used signal, our only part in the 
 performance, then automatically it springs 
 to action and pushes our purpose into the 
 outer world. Such at least is the fashion- 
 able teaching of psychologists to-day. Voli- 
 tion is full attention. It has no wider scope. 
 With bodily adjustments it does not meddle. 
 These move by their own mechanic law. Of 
 real connection between body and mind we 
 know nothing. We can only say that such 
 parallelism exists that physical action occurs on 
 occasion of complete mental vision. 
 
 No doubt this theory leaves much to be 
 desired in the way of clearness. What is 
 meant by fixing the attention exclusively ? 
 Is unrelated singleness possible among our 
 mental pictures ? Or how narrowly must the
 
 SELF-DIEECTION 113 
 
 field of attention be occupied before these 
 strange springs are set in motion? At the 
 end of the explanation do not most of the 
 puzzling problems of scope, freedom, and se- 
 lection remain, existing now as problems about 
 the nature and working of attention instead 
 of, as formerly, problems about the emergence 
 of the intention into outward nature? No 
 doubt these classical problems puzzle us still. 
 But a genuine advance toward clarity is made 
 when we confine them within a small area by 
 identifying volition with mental attention. 
 Nor will it be anything to the point to say, 
 " But I know myself as a physical creature 
 to be involved in effort. The strain of voli- 
 tion is felt in my head, in my arm, through- 
 out my entire body." Nobody denies it. 
 After we have attended, and the machinery is 
 set in motion, we feel its results. The physi- 
 cal changes involved in action are as appre- 
 hensible in our experience as are any other 
 natural facts, and are remembered and antici- 
 pated in each new act. 
 
 IX 
 
 Only one stage more remains, and that is 
 an invariable one, the stage of satisfaction.
 
 114 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS 
 
 It is fortunately provided that pleasure shall 
 attend every act. Pleasure probably is no- 
 thing else but the sense that some one of our 
 functions has been appropriately exercised, 
 Every time, then, that an intention has been 
 taken up in the way just described, carried 
 forth into the complex world, and there con- 
 ducted to its mark, a gratified feeling arises. 
 " Yes, I have accomplished it. That is good. 
 I felt a defect, I desired to remove it, and 
 betterment is here." We cannot speak a 
 word, or raise a hand, perhaps even draw a 
 breath, without something of this glad sense 
 of life. It may be intense, it may be slight 
 or middling ; but in some degree it is always 
 there. For through action we realize ou? 
 powers. This seemingly fixed world is found 
 to be plastic in our hands. We modify it. 
 We direct something, mean something. No 
 longer idle drifters on the tide, through our 
 desires we bring that tide our way. And in 
 the sense of self-directed power we find a 
 satisfaction, great or small according to the 
 magnitude of our undertaking. 
 
 In such a catalogue of the elements of ac- 
 tion as has just been given there is something 
 uncanny. Can we not pick up a pin without
 
 SELF-DIRECTION 115 
 
 going through all six stages ? Should we ever 
 do anything, if to do even the simplest we 
 were obliged to do six things ? Have I not 
 made matters needlessly elaborate? No, I 
 have not unduly elaborated. We are made 
 just so complex. Yet as a good teacher I 
 have falsified. For the sake of clearness I 
 have been treating separately matters which 
 go together. There are not six operations, 
 there is but one. In this one there are six 
 stages ; that is, there are six points of view 
 from which the single operation may advanta- 
 geously be surveyed. But these do not exist 
 apart. They are all intimately blended, each 
 affecting all the rest. Because of our dull 
 faculties we cannot understand, though we 
 can work, them en bloc. He who would 
 render them comprehensible must commit the 
 violence of plucking them asunder, holding 
 them up detachedly, and saying, " Of such 
 diverse stuff is our active life composed." 
 But in reality each gets its meaning through 
 connection with all the others. Life need not 
 terrify because for purposes of verification it 
 must be represented as so intricate an affair. 
 It is I who have broken up its simplicity, and 
 it belongs to my reader to put it together 
 again.
 
 REFERENCES ON SELF-DIRECTION 
 
 James's Psychology, ch. xxvi. 
 
 Sigwart's Der Begriffi des Wollen's, iu his Kleine Schriften. 
 
 A. Alexander's Theories of the Will. 
 
 Miinsterberg's Die Willenshandlung. 
 
 Holding's Psychology, ch. vii.
 
 V 
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT
 
 H 
 
 .
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 
 
 X 
 
 CONCEIVABLY a being such as has been 
 described might advance no farther. Con- 
 scious he might be, observant of everything 
 going on within him and without ; occupied 
 too with inducing the very changes he ob- 
 serves, and yet with no aim to enlarge him- 
 self or improve the world through any of the 
 changes so induced. Complete within himself 
 at the beginning, he might be equally so at 
 the close, his activity being undertaken for 
 the mere sake of action, and not for any bene- 
 ficial results following in its train. Still, even 
 such a being would be better off while acting 
 than if quiet, and by his readiness to act 
 would show that he felt the need of at least 
 temporary betterment. In actual cases the 
 need goes deeper. 
 
 A being capable of self-direction ordinarily
 
 120 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 has capacities imperfectly realized. Changing 
 other things, he also changes himself ; and it 
 becomes a part of his aim in action to make 
 these changes advantageous, and each act 
 helpfully reactive. Accordingly the aim at 
 self -development regularly attends self -direc- 
 tion. I could not, therefore, properly discuss 
 my last topic without in some measure an- 
 ticipating this. Every ideal of action, I was 
 obliged to say, includes within it an aim at 
 some sort of betterment of the actor. Our 
 business, then, in the present chapter is not 
 to announce a new theme, but simply to ren- 
 der explicit what before was implied. Wei 
 must detach from action the influence which 
 it throws back upon us, the actors. We must I 
 make this influence plain, exhibit its method, 
 and show wherein it differs from other pro- 
 cesses in some respects similar. 
 
 n 
 
 The most obvious fact about self-develop- 
 ment is that it is a species of change, and that 
 change is associated with sadness. Heraclitus, 
 the weeping philosopher of the Greeks, dis- 
 covered this fact five hundred years before 
 Christ. "Nothing abides," he said, "all is
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 121 
 
 fleeting." We stand in a moving tide, unable 
 to bathe twice in the same stream ; before we 
 can stoop a second time the flood is gone. 
 In every age this is the common theme of 
 lamentation for poet, moralist, common man 
 and woman. All other causes of sadness are 
 secondary to it. As soon as we have compre- 
 hended anything, have fitted it to our lives 
 and learned to love it, it is gone. 
 
 Such is the aspect which gVia.pgft ordinarily 
 presents. |t is tied up with grief . We regard 
 what is precious as stable ; and yet we are 
 obliged to confess that nothing on earth is 
 stable nothing among physical things, and 
 just as little among mental and spiritual things. 
 But there are many kinds of change. We are 
 apt to confuse them with one another, and in so 
 doing to carry over to the nobler sorts thoughts 
 applicable only to the lower. In beginning, 
 then, the discussion of self-development, I 
 think it will conduce to clearness if I offer a 
 conspectus of all imaginable changes. I will 
 set them in groups and show their different 
 kinds, exhibiting first those which are most 
 elementary, then those more complex, and 
 finally those so dark and important that they 
 pass over into a region of mystery and para- 
 dox.
 
 Ill 
 
 Probably all will agree that the simplest 
 possible change is the accidental sort, that 
 where only relations of space are altered. My 
 watch, now lying in the middle of the desk, 
 is shifted to the right side, is laid in its case, 
 or is lost in the street. I call these changes 
 accidental, because they in no way affect the 
 nature of the watch. They are not really 
 changes in it, but in its surroundings. The 
 watch still remains what it was before. To 
 the same group we might refer a large number 
 of other changes where no inner alteration is 
 wrought. The watch is now in a brilliant 
 light ; I lay my hand on it, and it is in dark- 
 ness. Its place has not been changed, but 
 that of the light has been. Many of the com- 
 monest changes in life are of this sort. Uhej 
 are accidental AY^nftnnn ghangftg- In I * 
 them, through all its change, the thing abides. 
 There is no necessary alteration of its nature. 
 
 IV 
 
 But unhappily this is not the only species 
 of change. It is not that which has brought 
 a wail from the ages, when men have seen
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 123 
 
 what they prize slip away. The commoni _ 
 root of sorrow has been destructive change.] ^ 
 Holding the watch in my hand, I may drop it 
 on the floor; and at once the crystal, which 
 has been so transparently protective, is gone. 
 If the floor is of stone, the back of the watch 
 may be wrenched away, the wheels of its deli- 
 cate machinery jarred asunder. Destruction 
 has come upon it, and not merely an extra- 
 neous accident. In consequence of altered 
 surroundings, dissolution is wrought within. 
 Change of a lamentable sort has come. What 
 before was a beautiful whole, organically con- 
 stituted in the way described in my first two 
 chapters, has been torn asunder. What we 
 formerly beheld with delight has disappeared. 
 And let us not accept false comfort. We 
 often hear it said that, after all, destruction is 
 an illusion. There is no such thing. What 
 is once in the world is here forever. No par- 
 ticle of the watch can by any possibility be 
 lost. And what is true of the watch is true 
 of things far higher, of persons even. When 
 persons decay and die, may not their destruc- 
 tion be only in outward seeming ? We cannot 
 imagine absolute cessation. As well imagine an 
 absolute beginning. There is no loss. Every-
 
 124 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 thing abides. Only to our apprehension do de- 
 structive changes occur. We are all familiar 
 with consolation of this sort, and how in- 
 wardly unsatisfactory it is ! For while it is 
 true that no particle of the watch is destroyed, 
 it is precisely those particles which were in our 
 minds of little consequence. Almost equally 
 well they might have been of gold, silver, or 
 steel. The precious part of the watch was the 
 organization of its particles, and that is gone. 
 The face and form of my friend can indeed 
 be blotted out in no single item. But I care 
 nothing for its material items. The totality 
 may be wrecked, and it is that totality to which 
 my affections cling. And so it is in the world 
 around maj;erial.remains, organic wholeness 
 
 ^ ^^""^^^^^. ^B^3i "" 
 
 goes. It is almost a sarcasm of nature that 
 she counts our precious things so cheap, while 
 the bricks and mortar of which these are 
 made matters on which no human affection 
 can fasten she holds for everlasting. The 
 lamentations of the ages, then, have not erred. 
 Something tragic is involved in the framework 
 of the universe. In order to abide, divulsion 
 must occur. Destruction of organism is going 
 on all around us, and ever will go on. Things 
 must unceasingly be torn apart. One ..mjght
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 125 
 
 tcall this destructive and lamentable change 
 \;he only steadfast feature of the world. 
 
 Yet after all, and often in this very process 
 of divulsion, we catch glimpses of a nobler 
 sort of change. For there is a third species 
 to which I might perhaps give the name of 
 transforming change. When, for example, a 
 certain portion of oxygen and a certain portion 
 of hydrogen, each having its own distinctive 
 qualities, are brought into contact with one 
 another, they utterly change. The qualities 
 of both disappear, and a new set of qualities 
 takes their place. The old ones are gone, 
 gone, but not lost ; for they have been trans- 
 formed into new ones of a predetermined and 
 constant kind. Only a single sort of change 
 is open to these elements when in each other's 
 presence, and in precisely that way they will 
 always change. In so changing they do not, 
 it is true, fully keep their past ; but a fixed 
 relation to it they do keep, and under certain 
 conditions may return to it again. The trans- 
 forming changes of chemistry, then, are of a 
 different nature from those of the mechanic 
 destruction just described. In those the
 
 126 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 ruined organism leaves not a wrack behind. 
 In chemic change something definite is held, 
 something that originally was planned and 
 can be prophesied. An end is attained : the 
 fixed combination of just so much oxygen with 
 just so much hydrogen for the making of the 
 new substance, water. Here change is pro- 
 ductive, and is not mere waste, as in organic 
 destruction. Something, however, is lost 
 the old qualities ; for these cannot be restored 
 except through the disruption of the new sub- 
 stance, the water in which they are combined. 
 
 VI 
 
 But there is a more peculiar change of a 
 higher order still, that which we speak of as 
 development, evolution, growth. This sort 
 of change might be described as movement 
 toward a mark. When the seed begins to be 
 transformed in the earth, it is adapted not 
 merely to the next stage ; but that stage has 
 reference to one farther on, and that to still 
 others. It would hardly be a metaphor to 
 declare that the whole elm is already prophe- 
 sied when its seed is laid in the earth. For 
 though the entire tree is not there, though in 
 order that the seed may become an elm it
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 127 
 
 must have a helpful environment, still a cer- 
 tain plan of movement elmwards is, we may 
 say, already schemed in the seed. Here ac- 
 cordingly, change far from being a loss 
 is a continual increment and revelation. And 
 since the later stages successively disclose the 
 meaning of those which went before, these 
 later stages might with accuracy be styled the 
 truth of their predecessors, and those be ac- 
 counted in comparison trivial and meaningless 
 until thus changed. This sort of change car- 
 ries its past along with it. In the destructive 
 changes which we were lamenting a moment 
 ago, the past was lost and the new began as an 
 independent affair. Even in chemic change 
 this was true to a certain extent. Yet there, 
 though the past was lost, a future was prophe- 
 sied. In the case of development the future, 
 so far from annihilating the past, is its exhibi- 
 tion on a larger scale. The full significance 
 of any single stage is not manifest until the 
 final one is reached. 
 
 I suppose when we arrive at this thought 
 of change as expressing development, our lam- 
 entation may well turn to rejoicing. Possibly 
 this may be the reason why the gloom which 
 is a noticeable feature of the thought of many
 
 128 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 preceding centuries has in our time somewhat 
 disappeared. While our ambitions are gener- 
 ally wider, and we might seem, therefore, more 
 exposed to disappointment, I think the last 
 half of the century which has closed has been 
 a time of large hopefulness. Perhaps it has 
 not yet gone so far as rejoicing, for failure 
 and sorrow are still by no means extirpated. 
 But at least the thoughts of our day have 
 become turned rather to the future than the 
 past, a result which has attended the wider 
 comprehension of development. To call de- 
 velopment the discovery of our century would, 
 however, be absurd. Aristotle bases his whole 
 philosophy upon it, and it was already vener- 
 able in his time. Yet the many writers who 
 have expounded the doctrine during the last 
 fifty years have brought the thought of it 
 home to the common man. It has entered 
 into daily life as never before, and has done 
 much to protect us against the sadness of 
 destructive change. Perceiving that changes, 
 apparently destructive, repeatedly bring to 
 light meaning previously undisclosed, we 
 more willingly than our ancestors part with 
 the imperfect that a path to the perfect may 
 be opened.
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 129 
 
 Is not this, then, the great conception of 
 change which we now need to study as self- 
 development ? I believe not. One essential 
 feature is omitted. In the typical example 
 which I have just reviewed, the growth of an 
 elm from its seed, we cannot say that the seed 
 expands itself with a view to becoming a tree. 
 That would be to carry over into the tree's 
 existence notions borrowed from an alien 
 sphere. Indeed, to assert that there has been 
 any genuine development from the seed up to 
 the finished tree is to use terms in an accom- 
 modated, metaphoric, and hypothetical way. 
 Development there certainly has been as esti- 
 mated by an outsider, an onlooker, but not as 
 perceived by the tree itself. It has not known 
 where it was going. Out of the unknown 
 earth the seed pushes its way into the still less 
 known air. But in doing so it is devoid of 
 purpose. Nor, if we endow it with conscious- 
 ness, can we suppose it would behold its end 
 and seek it. The forces driving it toward 
 that end are not conscious forces; they are 
 mechanic forces. Through every stage it is 
 pushed from behind, not drawn from before. 
 There is no causative goal set up, alluring the 
 seed onward. In speaking as if there were,
 
 130 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 we employ language which can have signifi- 
 cance only for rational beings. We may hold 
 that there is a rational plan of the universe 
 which that seed is fulfilling. But if so, the 
 plan does not belong to the seed. It is im- 
 posed from without, and the seed does its 
 bidding unawares. 
 
 VII 
 
 But we may imagine a different state of 
 affairs. Let us assume that when the seed 
 sprouted it foreknew the elm that was to be. 
 Every time it sucked in its slight moisture it 
 was gently adapting this nourishment to the 
 fulfillment of its ultimate end, asking itself 
 whether the small material had better be be- 
 stowed on the left bough or the right, whether 
 certain leaves should curve more obliquely 
 toward the sun, and whether it had better 
 wave its branches and catch the passing breeze 
 or leave them quiet. If we could rightly ima- 
 gine such a state of things, our tree would be 
 much unlike its brothers of the forest; for, 
 superintending its own development, it would 
 be not a thing at all but a person. We persons 
 are in this very way entrusted with our growth. 
 A plan there is, a normal mode of growth, a
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 131 
 
 significance to which we may attain. But 
 that significance is not imposed on us from 
 without, as an inevitable event, already settled 
 through our past. On the contrary, we detect 
 it afar as a possibility, are thus put in charge 
 of it, and so become in large degree our own 
 upbuilders. Development is movement toward 
 a mark. In self -development the mark to be 
 reached is in the conscious keeping of him 
 who is to reach it. Toward it he may more 
 or less fully direct his course. 
 
 And what an astonishing state of things 
 then appears ! Self-development involves a 
 kind of contradiction in terms. How can I 
 build if at present there is no I ? Why should 
 I build if at present there is an I ? Which- 
 ever alternative we take, we fall into what 
 looks like absurdity. Yet on that absurdity 
 personal life is based. There is no avoiding 
 it. Wordsworth has daringly stated the par- 
 adox: "So build we up the being that we 
 are." On coming into the world we are onlyj 
 sketched out. Of each of us there is a ground! 
 plan of which we progressively become aware. 
 Hidden from us in our early years, it resides 
 in the minds of our parents, just as the plan 
 of the tree's structure is in the keeping of na-
 
 132 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 ture. Gradually through our advancing years 
 and the care of those around us we catch sight 
 of what we might be. Detecting in ourselves 
 possibilities, we make out their relation to a 
 plan not yet realized. We accordingly take 
 ourselves in hand and say, " If any personal 
 good is to come to me, it must be of my mak- 
 ing. I cannot own myself till I am largely 
 the author of myself. From day to day I 
 must construct, and whenever I act study 
 bow the action will affect my betterment, 
 whether by performing it I am likely to de- 
 grade or to consolidate myself." And to this 
 process there must be no end. 
 
 Obviously, nothing like this could occur if 
 our actual condition were our ideal condition. 
 Self-development is open only to a being in 
 whom there are possibilities as yet unfulfilled. 
 The things around us have their definite con- 
 stitution. They can do exactly thus and no 
 more. What shall be the effect of any im- 
 pulse falling on them is already assured. If 
 the condition of the brutes is anything like 
 that which we disrespectfuUy attributed to 
 them, then they are in the same case ; they 
 too are shut up to fixed responses, and have 
 in them no unfulfilled capacities. It is the
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 133 
 
 possession of such empty capacities which 
 makes us personal. Well has it been said 
 that he who can declare, " I am that I am," 
 is either God or a brute. No human being 
 can say it. To describe myself as if I were 
 settled fact is to make myself a thing. My 
 life is in that which may be. The ideals of 
 existence are my realities, and " ought " is 
 my peculiar verb. "Is" has no other appli- 
 cation to a person than to mark how far he 
 has advanced along his ideal line. Were he 
 to pause at any point as if complete, he would j 
 cease to be a person. 
 
 VIII 
 
 But it is necessary to trace somewhat care- 
 fully the method of such self-development. 
 How do we proceed? Before the architect 
 built the State House, he drew up a plan 
 of the finished building, and there was no 
 moving of stone, mortar, or tool, till every- 
 thing was complete on paper. Each work- 
 man who did anything subsequently did it 
 in deference to that perfected design. Each 
 stone brought for the great structure was 
 numbered for its place and had its jointing cut 
 in adaptation to the remaining stones. If,
 
 134 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 then, each one of us is to become an architect 
 of himself, it might seem necessary to lay out 
 a plan of our complete existence before setting 
 out in life, or at whatever moment we become 
 aware that henceforth our construction is to 
 be in our own charge. Only with such a, 
 plan in hand would orderly building seem 
 possible. This is a common belief, but in 
 my judgment an erroneous one. Indeed the 
 whole analogy of the architect and his me- 
 chanisms is misleading. We rarely have in 
 mind the total plan of our unrealized being, 
 and rarely ought we to have. Our work be- 
 gins at a different point. We do not, like 
 the architect, usually begin with a thought of 
 completion. Rather we are first stirred by a 
 sense of weakness. 
 
 In my own education I find this to be 
 true. After some years as a boy in a Boston 
 public school, I went to Phillips Academy in 
 Andover, then to Harvard College, and sub- 
 sequently to a German university, and why 
 did I do all this ? Did I have in mind the 
 picture of myself as a learned man? I will 
 not deny that such a fancy drifted through 
 my brain. But it was indistinct and occa- 
 sional. I did not even know what it was to
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 135 
 
 be a learned man. I do not know now. The 
 driving force that was on me was something 
 quite different. I found myself disagreeably 
 ignorant. Reading books and newspapers, 
 I continually found matters referred to of 
 which I knew nothing. Looking out on the 
 universe, I did not understand it; and look- 
 ing into the yet more marvelous universe 
 within, I was still more grievously perplexed. 
 I thought life not worth living on such terms. 
 I determined to get rid of my ignorance and 
 to endure such limitations of knowledge no 
 longer. Is there, I asked, any place where at 
 least a portion of my stupidity may be set 
 aside? I removed a little fraction at school, but 
 revealed also enormous expanses which I had 
 not suspected before. I therefore pressed on 
 farther, and to-day am still engaged in the 
 almost hopeless attempt to extirpate my ig- 
 norance. What incites me continually is the 
 sense of how small I am, not that which a 
 few moments ago seemed my best incentive 
 the picture of myself as large. That on the 
 whole has had comparatively little influence. 
 Of course I do not assert that we are altogether 
 without visions of a larger life. That is far 
 from being the case. Were it so, desire
 
 136 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 would cease. We must contrast the poverty 
 of the present with the fullness of a possible 
 future, or we should not incline to turn from 
 that present. Yet our grand driving force 
 is that sense of limitation, of want or need, 
 which was discussed in the last chapter. And 
 our aim is rather at a better than at a best, 
 at the removal of some small distinct hin- 
 drance than at arrival at a completed goal. 
 We come upon excellence piecemeal, and do 
 not, like the architect, look upon it in its 
 entirety at the outset. 
 
 Yet in the pursuit of this "better," the 
 more vividly we can figure the coming stages, 
 the more easily will they be attained. For 
 this purpose the careers of those who have 
 gone before us are helpful, reports about 
 the great ones of the past, and the revelations 
 of themselves which they have left us in litera- 
 ture and institutions. Example is a powerful 
 agent in making our footsteps quick and true. 
 But it has its dangers, and may be a means of 
 terrifying unless we feel that even in our low 
 estate there are capacities allying us with our 
 exemplar. The first vision of excellence is 
 overwhelming. We draw back, knowing that 
 we do not look like that, and we cannot bear
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 137 
 
 to behold what is so superior. But by degrees, 
 feeling our kinship with excellence, we are 
 befriended. 
 
 I would not, then, make rigid statements 
 in regard to this point of method. Grateful 
 as I believe we should be for every sense of 
 need, this is obviously not enough. To some 
 extent we must have in mind the betterment 
 which we may obtain through supplying that 
 need. Yet I do not think a full plan of our 
 ultimate goal is usually desirable. In small 
 matters it is often possible and convenient. 
 I plan my stay in Europe before going there. 
 I figure my business prospects before form- 
 ing a partnership. But in prof ounder affairs, 
 I more wisely set out from the thought of the 
 present, and the patent need of improving it, 
 than from the future with its ideal perfection. 
 Goethe's rule is a good one : 
 
 " Willst du ins Unendliche sclireiten ? 
 So such das Endliche, naoh alien Seiten." 
 
 Would you reach the infinite? Then enter 
 into finite things, working out all that they 
 contain. 
 
 IX 
 
 If in working them out a test is wanted to 
 enable us to decide whether we are working
 
 138 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 wisely or to our harm, I believe such a test 
 may be found in the congruity of the new 
 with the old. Shall I by adding a fresh 
 power to myself strengthen those I already 
 possess ? By taking this path, rich in a cer- 
 tain sort of good as it undoubtedly is, shall 
 I be diverted from paths where my special 
 goods lie? Here I am, a student of ethics. 
 A friend calls and tells me of the charms 
 of astronomy, a study undoubtedly majestic 
 and delightful. Since I desire to take all 
 knowledge for my province, why not hurry 
 off at once to study astronomy ? No indeed. 
 No astronomy for me. I draw a ring about 
 that subject and say, " Precious subject, fun- 
 damentally valuable for all men. But I will 
 remain ignorant of it, because it is not quite 
 congruous with the studies I already have on 
 hand." That must be my test : not how im- 
 portant is the study itself, but how importanl 
 is it for me ? How far will it help me to 
 accept and develop those limitations to which 
 I am now pledged ? 
 
 lit: this acceptance of limitation, therefore, 
 which seems at first so humiliating, I believe 
 
 we have the starting point of all self-develop- 
 ment. Our very imperfections, once accepted,
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 139 
 
 prove our best means of discerning more. 
 That is a profound remark of Hegel's that 
 knowledge of a KflHt Iff ft Jpnwlftdge beyond 
 that lilpitr Let us consider for a moment 
 what it means. Suppose I should come upon 
 Kaspar Hauser, shut in his little room. 
 " And how long have you been here," I ask. 
 " Ever since I was born," he answers. " In- 
 deed ! How much, then, do you know ? " 
 " Nothing beyond the walls of this room." 
 Might I not fairly reply, " You contradict 
 yourself. How can you know anything about 
 walls of a room unless you also know of much 
 beyond them ? " We cannot conceive a limit 
 except as a limit from something. Accord- 
 ingly when we detect our ignorance we be- 
 come by that very fact not ignorant. We 
 have gone beyond ourselves and have seen 
 that we are not what we should be. And 
 this is the way of self-development. Becom- 
 ing aware of our imperfections, we by that 
 very fact continually lay hold on whatever 
 perfect is within our reach. 
 
 X 
 
 When then we ask whether at any moment 
 we are fully persons, we must answer, No.
 
 140 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 The actual extent of personality is at any 
 time small. It is rather a goal than some- 
 thing ever attained. We have seen that it is 
 not to be described in terms of the verb " to 
 be." We cannot say " I am a person," but 
 only " I ought to be a person. I am seeking 
 to be." The great body of our life is, we 
 know, a purely natural affair. Our instincts, 
 our wayward impulses, our unconnected dis- 
 orderly purposes these, which fill the larger 
 portion of our existence, do not express our 
 personal nature. Each of them goes on its 
 own way, neglectful of the whole. There- 
 fore we must confess that at no time can we 
 account ourselves completed persons. Justly 
 we use such strange expressions as "He is 
 much of a person," " He is very little of a 
 person." Personality is an affair of degree. 
 We are moving toward it, but have not yet 
 arrived. " Man partly is and wholly hopes 
 to be." And can we ever arrive ? I do not 
 see how. We are chasing a flying goal. 
 The nearer we approach, the farther it re- 
 moves. Shall we call this fact discouraging, 
 then, or even say that self-development is a 
 useless process, since it never can be fulfilled ? 
 I think not. I should rather specify this fea-
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 141 
 
 ture of it as our chief source of encourage- 
 ment ; for I hold that only those aims which 
 do thus contain an infinite element and are, 
 strictly speaking, unattainable, move mankind 
 to passionate pursuit. Probably all will agree 
 that riches, fame, and wisdom are ideals which 
 predominantly move us, and they are all un- 
 attainable. Suppose, some morning, when I 
 see a merchant setting off for his office quite 
 too early, I ask him why he is hastening so. 
 He answers, " Why, there is money to be 
 made. And as I intend to be a rich man 
 some day, I must leave home comforts and be 
 prompt at my desk." But I persist, " You 
 have forgotten something. It occurs to me 
 that you never can be rich. No rich man 
 was ever seen. Whoever has obtained a mil- 
 lion dollars can get a million more, and the 
 man of two millions can become one of three. 
 Obviously, then, neither you nor any one can 
 become a completely rich man." Should I stay 
 that merchant from his exit by remarks of this 
 kind? If he answered at all, he would 
 merely say, " Don't read too much. You had U I 
 better mix more with men." 
 
 And I should get no better treatment from 
 the scholar, the man who is seeking wisdom.
 
 142 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 It is true no really wise man ever was on 
 earth, or ever will be. But that is the very 
 reason why we are all so impassioned for wis- 
 dom, because every bit we seize only opens the 
 door to more. If we could get it in full, if 
 some time or other, knowing that we are now 
 wise, we could sit down in our armchairs with 
 nothing further to do, it would be a death 
 blow to our colleges. Nobody would attend 
 them or care for wisdom longer. An aim 
 which one can reach, and discover to be 
 finally ended, moves only children. They 
 will make collections of birds' eggs, though 
 conceivably they might obtain every species 
 in the neighborhood. But these are not the 
 things which excite earnest men. They run 
 after fame, because they can never be quite 
 famous. They may become known to every 
 person on their street, but there is the street 
 beyond. Or to every one in their town, but 
 there are other towns. Or if to every person 
 on earth, there are still the after ages. En- 
 tire fame cannot be had ; and exactly on that 
 account it stirs every impulse of our nature 
 in pursuit. 
 
 Now the aim at personal perfection is pre- 
 cisely of this sort. As servants of righteous-
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 143 
 
 ness we cannot accept any other precept than 
 " Be ye perfect as your Father which is in 
 heaven is perfect." But we know such per- 
 fection to be unattainable. Yet I sometimes 
 doubt whether we state the matter truly so. 
 Would it not be juster to say that perfection 
 can always be attained, and that it is about 
 the only thing which can be ? We might well 
 say of all the infinite ideals that they differ 
 from the finite ones simply in this, that the 
 finite can be attained but once, and then are 
 ended, while the infinite are continually at- 
 tained. At no moment of his life shall the 1 ; 
 merchant be cut off from becoming richer, or 
 the scholar from growing wiser, or the pub- 
 lic benefactor from acquiring further fame. 
 These aims, then, are always attainable; for 
 in them what we think of as the goal is not, 
 as in other cases, a single point which, once 
 reached, renders the rest of life useless and 
 listless. The goal here is the line of increase. 
 To be moving along that line should be our 
 daily endeavor. Our proper utterance should 
 be, "I was never so good as to-day, and I 
 hope never to be so bad again."
 
 144 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 XI 
 
 But when we have seen how slender is our 
 actual perfection, how slight must be reck- 
 oned the attainment of personality at any 
 moment, we are brought face to face with 
 the profound problem of its possible extent. 
 How far can the self be developed? Infi- 
 nitely ? Is each one of us an infinite being ? 
 I will not say so. I do not like to make a 
 statement which runs beyond my own experi- 
 ence. But confining myself to this, let us see 
 what it will show. 
 
 When at any time I seek to perfect my- 
 self, does my attainment of any grade of im- 
 provement prevent or further another step ? 
 All will agree that it simply opens a new 
 door. Perhaps I am seeking to withdraw 
 from habits of mendacity, and beginning to 
 tell the truth. Then every time I tell the 
 truth I shall discover more truth to tell. And 
 will this process ever come to an end? I have 
 nothing to do with " evers." I can only say 
 that each time I try it, advance is more pos- 
 sible, not less possible. In the personal life 
 there is, if I may say so, no provision for 
 checkage. As I understand it, in the animal
 
 SELF-DEVELOPMENT 145 
 
 life there is such provision. In my first chap- 
 ter I was pointing out the difference between 
 extrinsic and intrinsic goodness; and I said 
 that the table's entering into use and hold- 
 ing objects on its top tended to destroy it, 
 though we might imagine a magic table in 
 which every exercise of function would be 
 preservative. Now in the personal nature we 
 find just such a magical provision. Each time! ' 
 a person normally exerts himself he 
 further exertion in those normal ways 
 possible. 
 
 And if this is true of all personal action 
 within our experience, what right have we to 
 set a limit to it anywhere ? It may not be 
 suitable to say that I know myself infinite, 
 but it is certainly true that I cannot conceive 
 myself as finite. I can readily see that this 
 body of mine has in it what I have called a 
 provision for checkage. Every time the blood 
 moves in my veins it leaves its little deposit. 
 Further motion of that blood is slightly im- 
 peded. But every time a moral purpose'/ 
 moves my lif e, it makes the next move surer. 
 It is impossible to draw lines of limitation in 
 moral development.
 
 146 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 XII 
 
 Such, then, is the vast conception with 
 which we have been dealing. Goodness, to 
 be personal, must express perpetual self -devel- 
 opment. All the moral aims of life may be 
 summed up in the single word, " self-realiza- 
 tion." Could I fully realize myself, I should 
 have fulfilled all righteousness, and this view 
 is sanctioned by the Great Teacher when he 
 asks, " What shah* a man give in exchange 
 for his life ? " his life, his soul, his self 
 If any one fully believed this, and lived as i 
 all his desires were fulfilled so long as he had 
 opportunities of self-development, he might 
 be said to have insured himself against every 
 catastrophe. Little could harm him. What- 
 ever occurred, instead of exclaiming, "How 
 calamitous ! " he would simply ask, " What 
 fresh opportunities do these strange circum- 
 stances present for enlarged living ? Let me 
 add this new discipline to what I had before. 
 Seeking as I am to become expanded into the 
 infinite, this experience discloses a new avenue 
 thither. All things work together for good 
 to them that love the Lord."
 
 REFERENCES ON SELF-DEVELOPMENT 
 
 Bradley's Ethical Studies, essay vi. 
 Green's Prolegomena of Ethics, bk. iii. cb. ii. 
 Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. iii. ch. iv. 
 Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iii. ch. iii. 
 Mackenzie's Manual of Ethics, pt. i. ch. vii. 
 Dewey in Philos. Journal, Dec., 1893.
 
 VI 
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE
 
 VI 
 
 SELF-SACKIFICE 
 I 
 
 THE view of human goodness presented in 
 the preceding chapter is one which is at present 
 finding remarkably wide acceptance. Philoso- 
 phers are often reproached with an indisposi- 
 tion to agree, and naturally where inquiry is 
 active diversity will obtain. But to-day there 
 appears a strange unanimity as regards the 
 ultimate formula of ethics. The empirical 
 schools state this as the highest form of the 
 struggle for existence ; the idealistic, as self- 
 realization. . The two are the same so far 
 as they both regard morality as having to 
 do with the development of life in persons. 
 These curious beings, both also acknowledge, 
 can never rest till they attain a completeness 
 now incalculable. 
 
 Of course there is abundant diversity in the 
 application of such formulae. In interpreting
 
 152 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 them we come upon problems no less urgent 
 and tangled than those which vexed our 
 fathers. Who and what is a person ? How 
 far is he detachable from nature ? How far 
 from his fellow men ? Is his individuality an 
 illusion, and each of us only an imperfect phase 
 of a single universal being, so that in strict- 
 ness we must own that there is none good but 
 one, that is God ? These and kindred ques- 
 tions naturally oppress the thought of our 
 time. Yet all are but so many attempts to 
 push the formula of self-realization into entire 
 clearness. The considerable agreement in 
 ethical formulae everywhere noticeable shows 
 that at least so much advance has been made : 
 morality has ceased to be primarily repres- 
 sive, and is now regarded as the amplest exhibit 
 of human nature, free from every external 
 precept, however sacred. Man is the measure 
 of the moral universe, and the development of 
 himself his single duty. 
 
 But when we thus accept self-realization as 
 our supreme aim, we bring ourselves into seem- 
 ing conflict with one of our prof oundest moral 
 instincts. It is Fdf-gaflrifi^ *haf. fl*n^fgrtli I 
 from all mankind, as nothing else does, the! 
 distinctively moral response of reverence. In-/
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 153 
 
 telligence, skill, beauty, learning we admire 
 them all ; but when we see an act of self- 
 sacrifice, however small, an awe falls on us ; 
 we bow our heads, fearful that we might not 
 have been capable of anything so glorious. 
 We^thm acknowledge self-sacrifice to be the 
 very culmination of the moral life. He who 
 understands it has comprehended all righteous- 
 ness, human and divine. But how does self- 
 sacrifice accord with self-development ? Will 
 he who is busy cultivating himself sacrifice 
 himself ? Is there not a kind of conflict be- 
 tween the two ? Yet can we abandon either ? 
 And if not, must not the formula of self- 
 realization accept modification ? 
 
 This, then, is the problem to which I must' 
 now turn : the possible adjustment of these 
 two imperative claims, the claim to realize 
 one's self and the claim to 
 
 And I shall most easily set my theme before 
 my readers if I state at once the four historic 
 objections to the reality of self-sacrifice. I 
 call them historic, for they have appeared 
 and reappeared in the history of ethics, and 
 have been worked out there on a great scale. 
 While not altogether consistent with one an- 
 
 O 
 
 other, no one of them is unimportant. To-
 
 154 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 gether they compactly present those conflict- 
 ing considerations which must be borne in 
 mind when we attempt to comprehend the 
 subtleties of self-sacrifice. I will endeavor to 
 state them briefly and sympathetically. 
 
 II 
 
 First, self-sacrifice is psychologically impos- 
 sible. No man ever performs a strictly disin- 
 terested act, as has been shown in my chap- 
 ter on self -direction. Before desire will start, 
 his own interest must be engaged. In action 
 we seek to accomplish something, and be- 
 tween that something and ourselves some sort 
 of valued connection must be felt. Every 
 wish indicates that the wisher experiences a 
 need which he thinks might be supplied by 
 the object wished for. It is true that wishes 
 and wills are often directed upon external ob- 
 jects, but only because we believe that our 
 own well-being is involved in their union 
 with us. I devote myself to my friend as 
 my friend, counting his happiness and my 
 own inseparable. Were he so entirely a for- 
 eigner that I had no interest in him, my sac- 
 rifices for him even if conceivable would 
 be meaningless. They acquire meaning only
 
 SELF-SACEIFICE 155 
 
 through. mj_.sense. of _.a tie-betwpipn him and 
 me. My service of him may be regarded as 
 my escape from petty selfishness into broad 
 selfishness, from immediate gain to remote 
 gain. But the prospect of gain in some form, 
 proximate or ultimate, gain often of an impal- 
 pable and spiritual sort, always attends my 
 wish and will. The__aini_at_ seltteslizatiQii, 
 however hidden, is everywhere the root of 
 _action. No belittlement of ourselves can ap- 
 pear desirable except as a step toward ultimate 
 enlargement. Self-sacrifice in any true and it 
 thorough-going sense never occurs. 
 
 So cogent is this objection, and so fre- 
 quently does it appear, not only in ethical 
 discussion but in the minds of the struggling 
 multitude, that he who has not faced it, and 
 taken its truth well to heart, can have little 
 comprehension of self-sacrifice. But it is a 
 blessed fact that thousands who comprehend 
 self-sacrifice little practise it largely. 
 
 Ill 
 
 A second objection strips off the glory of 
 self-sacrifice and regards it as a sad necessity. 
 While there is nothing in it to attract or be 
 approved, the lamentable fact is that we are
 
 156 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 so crowded together and disposed to trample 
 on one another that, partially to escape, we 
 must each agree to abate something of our 
 own in behalf of a neighbor's gain. We can- 
 not each be all we would. It is a sign of our 
 mean estate that again and again we need to 
 cut off sections of what we count valuable 
 in order to save any portion. Only by such 
 compromises are we able to get along with 
 one another. He who refuses them finds 
 himself exposed to still greater loss. The 
 hard conditions under which we live appear 
 in the fact that such restraint is inevitable. It 
 call self-sacrifice, therefore, a sad necessity. \ 
 
 This theory of sacrifice is urged by Hobbes 
 and by the many later moralists who follow 
 his daring lead. It should be counted among 
 the objections because, while it admits the fact 
 of self-sacrifice, it denies its dignity. 
 
 IV 
 
 A third objection declares sacrifice to be 
 - needless. Its very appearance rests on a mis- 
 conception. We mistakenly suppose that in 
 abating our own for the sake of our neigh- 
 bor's good, we lose. In reality this is our 
 true mode of enlargement. The interests of
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 157 
 
 I the individual and society are not hostile or 
 | alien, but supplemental. Society is nothing 
 but the larger individual ; so that he alone 
 realizes himself who enters most fully into 
 social relations, making the well-being of so- 
 ciety his own. This is plain enough when 
 we study the working of a small and compre- 
 hensible portion of society. The child does 
 not lose through identification with family 
 life. That is his great means of realizing 
 himself. To assume contrast and antagonism 
 between family interest and the interest of 
 the child is palpably unwarranted and untrue. 
 Equally unwarranted is a similar assumption 
 in the broader ranges of society. When we 
 talk of sacrifice, we refer merely to the first 
 stage and outer aspect of the act. Under- 
 neath, self-interest is guarded, the individual 
 giving up his individuality only through ob- 
 taining a larger individuality still. 
 
 Such identity of interest between society 
 and the individual the moralists of the eigh- 
 teenth century are never tired of pointing out. 
 If they are right, and the identity is complete, 
 then sacrifice is abolished or is only a gener- 
 ous illusion. But these men never quite suc- 
 ceeded in persuading the English people of
 
 158 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS 
 
 their doctrine, at least they never carried their 
 thought fully over into the common mind. 
 
 That common mind has always thought of 
 sacrifice in a widely different way, but in 
 one which renders it still more incomprehen- 
 sible. Self -sacrifice it regards as a glorious 
 madness. Though the only act which ever 
 forces us to bow in reverent awe, it is insolu- 
 bly mysterious, irrational, crazy perhaps, but 
 superb. For in it we do not deliberate. We 
 hear a call, we shut our ears to prudence, and 
 with courageous blindness as regards damage 
 of our own, we hasten headlong to meet the 
 needs of others. To reckon heroism, to count 
 up opposing gains and losses, balancing them 
 one against another in order clear-sightedly 
 to act, is to render heroism impossible. Into 
 it there enters an element of insanity. The 
 sacrificer must feel that he cares nothing for 
 what is rational, but only for what is holy, 
 for his duty. The rational and the hplv^ 
 in the mind of him who has not been dis- 
 turbed by theoretic controversy these two 
 stand in harsh antithesis, and the antithesis 
 has been approved by important ethical writers
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 159 
 
 of our time. The rational man is, of course, 
 needed in the humdrum work of life. His 
 assertive and sagacious spirit clears many a 
 tangled pathway. But he gets no reverence, 
 the characteristic response of self-sacrifice. 
 This is reserved for him who says, " No pru- 
 dence for me ! I will be admirably crazy. 
 Let me fling myself away, so only there come 
 salvation to others." 
 
 Such, then, are the four massive objections : 
 self-sacrifice is unreal psychologically, aesthet- 
 ically, morally, or rationally. But negative 
 considerations are not enough. No amount 
 of demonstration of what a thing is not will 
 ever reveal what it is. Objections are merely 
 of value for clearing a field and marking the 
 spots on which a structure cannot be reared. 
 The serious task of erecting that structure 
 somewhere still remains. To it I now address 
 myself. 
 
 VI 
 
 What we need to consider first is the reality 
 and wide range of self-sacrifice. The moment 
 the term is mentioned there spring up before 
 our minds certain typical examples of it. We 
 see the soldier advancing toward the battle-
 
 160 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 field, to stake his life for a country in Avhose 
 prosperity he may never share. We see the 
 infant falling into the water, and the full- 
 grown man flinging in after it his own assured 
 and valued life in hopes of rescuing that incip- 
 ient and uncertain thing, a little child. Yes, 
 I myself came on a case of heroism hardly less 
 striking. I was riding my bicycle along the 
 public street when there dashed past me a 
 runaway horse with a carriage at his heels, 
 both moving so madly that I thought all 
 the city was in danger. I pursued as rap- 
 idly as I could, and as I neared my home, saw 
 horse and carriage standing by the sidewalk. 
 By the horse's head stood a negro. I went 
 up to him and said, " Did you catch that 
 horse?" "Yes, sir," he answered. "But," 
 I said, " he was going at a furious pace." 
 " Yes, sir." " And he might have run you 
 down." " Yes, sir, but I know horses, and I 
 was afraid he would hurt some of these chil- 
 dren." There he stood, the big brown hero, 
 unexalted, soothing the still restive horse and 
 unaware of having done anything out of the 
 ordinary. I entered my house ashamed. Had 
 I possessed such skill, would I have ventured 
 my life in such a fashion ?
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 161 
 
 Such are some of the shining examples of 
 self-sacrifice which occur to us at the first 
 mention of the word. But we shall mislead 
 ourselves if we confine our thoughts to cases 
 so climactic, triumphant, and spectacular. 
 Deeds like these dazzle and do not invite to 
 full analysis of their nature. Let us turn to 
 affairs more usual. 
 
 I have happened to know intimately mem- 
 hers of three professions ministers, nurses, 
 teachers and I find self-sacrifice a matter of 
 daily practice with them all. To it the min- 
 istsr is dedicated. He must not look for gain. 
 He has a salary, of course ; but it is much in 
 the nature of a fee, a means of insuring him 
 a certain kind of living. And while it is com- 
 mon enough to find a minister studying how 
 he may make money in his parish, it is com- 
 moner far to find one bent on seeing 1 how he 
 
 o 
 
 can make righteousness prevail there, though 
 it overwhelm him. The other professions do 
 not so manifestly aim at self-sacrifice. They 
 are distinctly money-making. They exact a 
 given sum for a given service. Still, in them 
 too how constantly do we see that that which 
 is given far outruns that which is paid for. 
 I have watched pretty closely the work of a
 
 162 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 dozen or more trained nurses, and I believe it 
 would be hard to find any class in the com- 
 munity showing a higher average of estimable 
 character. How quiet they are under the 
 most irritating circumstances ! How fully 
 they pour themselves into the lives of their 
 patients ! How prompt is the deft hand ! 
 How considerate the swift intelligence ! Their 
 hearts are aglow over what can be given, not 
 over what can be got. A similar temper is 
 widely observable among teachers, especially 
 among those of the lower grades. Paid 
 though they are for a certain task, how indis- 
 posed they are to limit themselves to that task 
 or to confine their care of their children to 
 the schoolroom ! The hard-worked creatures 
 acquire an intimate interest in the little lives 
 and, heedless of themselves, are continually 
 ready to spend and be spent for those who 
 cannot know what they receive. Among such 
 teachers I find self-sacrifice as broad, as deep, 
 as genuine, if not so striking, as that of the 
 soldier in the field. 
 
 Evidently, then, self-sacrifice may be wide- 
 spread and may permeate the institutions of 
 ordinary life ; being found even in occupa- 
 tions primarily ordered by principles of give
 
 SSLF-SACEIFICE 163 
 
 and take, where it expresses itself in a kind 
 of surplusage of giving above what is pre- 
 scribed in the contract. In this form it enters 
 into trade. The high-minded merchant is not 
 concerned merely with getting his money 
 back from an article sold. He interests him- 
 self in the thoroughly excellent quality of 
 that article, in the accommodation of his cus- 
 tomers, the soundness of his business methods, 
 and the honorable standing of his firm. And 
 when we turn to our public officials, how fre- 
 quent it is how frequent in spite of what 
 the newspapers say to find men eager for 
 the public good, men ready to take labor on 
 themselves if only the state may be saved from 
 cost and damage ! 
 
 But I still underestimate the prevalence of 
 the principle. Our instances must be homelier 
 yet. Each day come petty citations to self- 
 sacrifice which are accepted as a matter of 
 course. As I walk to my lecture-room some- 
 body stops me and says, " What is the way 
 to Berkeley Street?" Do I reprovingly 
 answer, " You must have made a mistake. I 
 have no interest in Berkeley Street. I think 
 it is you who are going there, and why are 
 you putting me to inconvenience merely that
 
 164 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 you may the more easily find your way?" 
 Should I answer so, he would think and pos- 
 sibly say, " There are strange people in Cam- 
 bridge, remoter from human kind than any 
 known elsewhere." Every one would feel as- 
 tonishment at the man who declined to bear 
 his little portion of a neighbor's burden. Our 
 commonest acceptance of society involves 
 self-sacrifice, and in all our trivial intercourse 
 we expect to put ourselves to unrewarded in- 
 convenience for the sake of others. 
 
 VII 
 
 What I have set myself to make plain in 
 this series of graded examples is simply this : 
 self-sacrifice is not something exceptional, 
 something occurring at crises of our lives, 
 something for which we need perpetually to 
 be preparing ourselves, so that when the great 
 occasion comes we may be ready to lay our- 
 selves upon its altar. Such romanticism dis- 
 torts and obscures. Self-sacrifice is an every- 
 day affair. By it we live. It is the very air 
 of our moral lungs. Without it society could 
 not go on for an hour. And that is precisely 
 why we reverence it so not for its rarity, 
 but for its importance. Nothing else, I sup-
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 165 
 
 pose, so instantly calls on the beholder for a 
 bowing of the head. Even a slight exhibit 
 of it sends through the sensitive observer a 
 thrill of reverent abasement. Other acts we 
 may admire ; others we may envy ; this we 
 adore. 
 
 Perhaps we are now prepared to sum up 
 our descriptive account and throw what we 
 have observed into a sort of definition. I 
 mean by self-sacrifice any diminution of my 
 own possessions, pleasures, or powers, in order 
 to increase those of others. Naturally what 
 we first think of is the parting with posses- 
 sions. That is what the word charity most 
 readily suggests, the giving up of some physi- 
 cal object owned by us which, even at the 
 moment of giving, we ourselves desire. But 
 the gift may be other than a physical object. 
 When I would gladly sit, I may stand in the 
 car for the sake of giving another ease. But 
 the greatest conceivable self-sacrifice is when 
 I give myself : when, that is, I in some way 
 allow my own powers to be narrowed in order 
 that those of some one else may be enlarged. 
 Parents are familiar with such exquisite char- 
 ity, parents who put themselves to daily hard- 
 ship because they want education for their
 
 166 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 boys. But they have no monopoly in this 
 kind. I who stand in the guardianship of 
 youth have frequent occasion to miss a favor- 
 ite pupil, boy or girl, who throws up a college 
 training and goes home often, in my judg- 
 ment, mistakenly to support, or merely to 
 cheer, the family there. Of course such gifts 
 are incomparable. No parting with one's 
 goods, no abandonment of one's pleasures, 
 can be measured against them. Yet this is 
 what is going on all over the country where 
 devoted mother, gallant son, loyal husband, 
 are limiting their own range of existence for 
 the sake of broadening that of certain whom 
 they hold dear. 
 
 VIII 
 
 But when we have thus assembled our om- 
 nipresent facts and set them in order for cool 
 assessment, the enigma of self-sacrifice only 
 appears the more clearly. Why should a man 
 sacrifice himself ? Why voluntarily accept 
 loss ? Each of us has but a single lif e. Each 
 feels the pressure of his own needs and desires. 
 These point the way to enlargement. How, 
 then, can I disinterestedly prefer another's 
 gain ? Each of us is penned within the range
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 167 
 
 of his solitary consciousness, which may be 
 broadened or narrowed but cannot be passed. 
 It is incumbent on us, therefore, to study 
 our own enrichment. Anticipating whatever 
 might confirm or crumble our being, we 
 should strenuously seize the one and reject the 
 other. Deliberately to turn toward loss would 
 seem to be crazy. What shouldarinan accept 
 in exchange for his life? S\ 
 
 Here is the difficulty, a difficulty of the pro- 
 foundest and most instructive sort. If we 
 could see our way clearly through it, little in 
 ethics would remain obscure. The common 
 mode of meeting it is to leave it thus para- 
 doxical. Self-sacrifice banishes rationality 
 and is a glorious madness. But such a con- 
 clusion is a repellent one. How can it be? 
 Reason is man's distinctive characteristic. 
 While brutes act blindly, while the punctual 
 physical universe minutely obeys laws of which 
 it knows nothing, usually it is open to man 
 to judge the path he will pursue. - Shall we 
 then say that, though reason is a convenience 
 in all the lower stretches of life, when we 
 reach self-sacrifice, our single awesome height, 
 it ceases ? I cannot think so. On the con- 
 trary, I hold that in self-sacrifice we have a
 
 168 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 case not of glorious madness, but of somewhat 
 extreme rationality. How, then, is rational 
 contrasted with irrational guidance ? As we 
 here approach the central and most difficult 
 part of our discussion, clearness will oblige me 
 to enter into some detail. 
 
 When a child looks at a watch, he sees a 
 single object. It is something there, a some- 
 thing altogether detached from his conscious- 
 ness, from the table, from other objects around. 
 It is a brute fact, one single thing, complete 
 in itself. Such is the child's perception. 
 But a man of understanding looks at it differ- 
 ently. Its detached singleness is not to him 
 the most important truth in regard to it. Its 
 meaning must rather be found in the relations 
 in which it stands, relations which, seeming 
 at first to lie outside it, really enter into it and 
 make it what it is. The rational man would 
 accordingly see it all alive with the qualities 
 of gold, brass, steel, the metals of which it is 
 composed. He would find it incomprehensible 
 apart from the mind of its maker, and would 
 not regard that mind and watch as two things, 
 but as matters essentially related. Indeed, 
 these relations would run wider still, and rea- 
 son would not rest satisfied until the watch
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 169 
 
 was united to time itself, to the very frame- 
 work of the universe. Apart from this it 
 would be meaningless. In short, if a man 
 comprehends the watch in a rational way he 
 must comprehend it in what may be called a 
 conjunct way. The child might picture it as 
 abstract and single, but it could really be 
 known only in connection with all that exists. 
 Of course we pause far short of such full 
 knowledge. Our reason cannot stretch to the 
 infinity of things. But just so far as relations 
 can be traced between this object and all other 
 objects, so much the more rational does the 
 knowledge of the watch become. Rationality j 
 is the comprehending of anything in its rela-J 
 tions. The perceptive, isolated view is irra-1 
 tional. 
 
 But if this is true of so simple a matter as 
 a watch, it is doubly true of a complex human 
 being. The child imagines he can compre- 
 hend a person too in isolation, but rational 
 proverb-makers long ago told us, " One per- 
 son, no person.'* Each person must be con- 
 ceived as tied in with all his fellows. We have 
 seen how in the case of the watch we were 
 almost obliged to abandon the thought of a 
 single object and to speak of it as a kind of
 
 170 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 centre of constitutive relations. A plexus of 
 ties runs in every direction, and where these 
 cross there is the watch. So it is among 
 human beings. If we try for a moment to 
 conceive a person as single and detached, 
 we shall find he would have no powers to 
 exercise. No emotions would be his, whether 
 of love or hate, for they imply objects to 
 arouse them, no occupations of civilized life, 
 for these involve mutual dependency. From 
 speech he would be cut off, if there were no- 
 body to speak to ; nor would any such instru- 
 ment as language be ready for his use, if an- 
 cestors had not cooperated in its construction. 
 His very thoughts would become a meaning- 
 less series of impressions if they indicated no 
 reality beside themselves. So empty would 
 be that fiction, the single and isolated individ- 
 ual. The real creature, rational and conjunct 
 man, is he who stands in living relationship 
 with his fellows, they being a veritable part 
 of him and he of them. Man is essentially a 
 social being, not a being who happens to be 
 living in society. Society enters into his in- 
 most fibre, and apart from society he is not. 
 Yet this does not mean that society, any more 
 than the individual, has an independent exist-
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 171 
 
 ence, prior, complete, and authoritative. What 
 would society be, parted from the individuals 
 who compose it ? No more than an individ- 
 ual who does not embody social relationships. 
 The two are mutual conceptions, different 
 aspects of the same thing. We may view 
 a person abstractly, fixing attention on his 
 single centre of consciousness ; or we may 
 view him conjunctly, attending to his multi- 
 farious ties. 
 
 Now what is distinctive of self-sacrifice is 
 that it insists in a somewhat extreme way on 
 this second and rational mode of regard. It 
 is a frank confession of interlocking lives. It 
 says, " I have nothing to do with the abstract, 
 isolated, and finite self. That is a matter of 
 no consequence. What I care about is the 
 conjunct, social, and infinite self that self 
 which is inseparable from others. Where 
 that calls, I serve." The self-sacrificing per- 
 son knows no interest of his own separate 
 from those of his father and mother, his wife 
 and children. He cannot ask what is good for 
 himself and set it in contrast with what is good 
 for them. For his own broader existence is 
 presented in these dear members of his family. 
 And such a man, so far from being mad, is
 
 172 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 wise as few of us are. Glorious indeed is the 
 self-sacrificer, because he is so sane, because 
 in him all pettiness and detachment are swept 
 away. He appears mad only to those who 
 stand at the opposite point of view, but in his 
 eyes it is they who are ridiculous. In fact, 
 each must be counted crazy or wise according 
 to the view we take of what constitutes the 
 real person. 
 
 I remember a story current in our news- 
 papers during the Civil War. Just before a 
 battle an officer of our army, knowing of what 
 consequence it was that his regiment should 
 hold its ground, hastened to the rear to see 
 that none of his men were straggling. He 
 met a cowardly fellow trying to regain the 
 camp. Turning upon him in a passion of dis- 
 gust, he said, " What ! Do you count your 
 miserable little life worth more than that of 
 this great army ? " " Worth more to me, 
 sir," the man replied. How sensible ! How en- 
 tirely just from his own point of view, that 
 of the isolated self ! Taking only this into 
 account, he was but a moral child, incapable 
 of comprehending anything so difficult as a 
 conjunct self. He imagined that could he but 
 gave this eating, breathing, feeling self, no
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 173 
 
 matter if the country were lost, he would 
 be a gainer. What folly ! What would exist- 
 ence be worth outside the total inter-relation- 
 ship of human beings called his land ? But 
 this fact he could not perceive. To risk his 
 separate self in such a cause seemed absurd. 
 Turn for a moment and see how absurd the 
 separate self appears from the point of view 
 of the conjunct. When our Lord hung upon 
 the cross, the jeering soldiers shouted, "He. 
 saved others, himself he cannot save." No, 
 he could not ; and his inability seemed to 
 them ridiculous, while it was in reality his 
 glory. His true self he was saving himself 
 and all mankind the only self he valued. 
 
 IX 
 
 Now it is this strange complexity of our 
 being, compelling us to view ourselves in both 
 a separate and a conjunct way, which creates 
 all the difficulty in the problem of self-sacri- 
 fice. But I dare say that when I have thus 
 shown the reality and worth of the conjunct 
 self, it will be felt that self-sacrifice is alto- 
 gether illusory ; for while it seems to produce 
 loss, it is in fact the avoidance of what entails 
 littleness. So says Emerson :
 
 174 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS 
 
 " Let love repine and reason chafe, 
 There came a voice without reply : 
 'T is man's perdition to be safe 
 When for the truth he ought to die." 
 
 Have we not, then, by explaining the ration- 
 ality of self-sacrifice, explained away the whole 
 matter and practically identified it with self- 
 culture ? There is plausibility in this view 
 and it has often been maintained but not 
 complete truth. For evidently the emotions 
 excited by culture and sacrifice are directly 
 antagonistic. Toward a man pursuing the ami 
 of culture we experience a feeling of approval, 
 not unmixed with suspicion, but we give him 
 none of that reverent adoration which is the 
 proper response to sacrifice. And if the feel- 
 ings of the beholder are contrasted, so also are 
 the psychological processes of the performer. 
 The man of culture starts with a sense of 
 defect which he seeks to supplement ; the 
 sacrificer, with a sense of fullness which he 
 seeks to empty. He who turns to self-culture 
 says, "I have progressed thus far. I have 
 gained thus much of what I would acquire. 
 But still I am poor. I need more. Let me 
 gather as abundantly as possible on every 
 side." But the thought of him who turns to
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 175 
 
 self-sacrifice is, " I have been gaining, but I 
 only gained to give. Here is my opportunity. 
 Let me pour out as largely as I may." He 
 contemplates final impoverishment. Accord- 
 ingly I was obliged to say in my definition 
 that the self-sacrificer seeks to heighten an- 
 other's possessions, pleasures, or powers at the 
 cost of his own. Undoubtedly at the end of 
 the process he often finds himself richer than 
 at the beginning. Perhaps this is the normal 
 result; but it is not contemplated. Psycho- 
 logically the sacrificer is facing in a different 
 direction. 
 
 X 
 
 Yet, though the motive agencies of the two 
 are thus contrasted, I think we must acknow- 
 ledge that sacrifice. no less than culture is a 
 
 To miss this 
 
 is to miss its essential character, and at the 
 same time to miss the safeguards which should 
 protect it against waste. For to say, " I will 
 sacrifice myself " is to leave the important part 
 of the business unexpressed. The weighty 
 matter is in the covert preposition /or, "I 
 will sacrifice myself for." An approved ob- 
 ject is aimed at. We are not primarily inter- 
 ested in negating ourselves. Only our estimate
 
 176 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS 
 
 of the importance of the object justifies our 
 intended loss. This object should accordingly 
 be scrutinized. Self-sacrifice is noble if its 
 end is noble, but becomes reprehensible when 
 its object is petty or undeserving. Omit or 
 overlook that word for, and self-sacrifice loses 
 its exalted character. It sinks into asceticism, 
 one of the most degrading of moral aberra- 
 tions. In asceticism we prize self-sacrifice for 
 its own sake. We hunt out what we value 
 most ; we judge what would most completely 
 fulfill our needs; and then we abolish it. 
 Abolish it for what? For nothing but the 
 mere sake of abolishing. This is to turn 
 morality upside down; and in place of the 
 Christian ideal of abounding life, to set up the 
 pessimistic aim of impoverishment. There is 
 nothing of this kind in self-sacrifice. Here 
 we assert ourselves, our conjunct selves. We 
 estimate what will be best for the community 
 of man and seek to further this at whatever 
 cost to our isolated individuality. By this 
 dedication to a deserving object sacrifice is 
 purified, ennobled, and made strong. We 
 speak of the glorious deed of him who plunges 
 into the water to save a child. But it is a 
 foolish and immoral thing to risk one's life
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 177 
 
 for a stone, a coin, or nothing at all. " Is the 
 object deserving ? " we must ask, " or shall I 
 reserve myself for greater need ? " 
 
 Too easily does our sympathetic and senti- 
 mental age, recklessly eulogistic of altruism, 
 hurry into self -sacrifice. Altruism in itself is 
 worthless. That an act is unselfish can never 
 justify its performance. He who would be a 
 great giver must first be a great person. Oui 
 men, and still more our women, need as ur- 
 gently the gospel of self -development as thai 
 of self -sacrifice ; though the two are naturally/ 
 supplemental. Our only means of estimating 
 the propriety and dignity of sacrifice is to in- 
 quire how closely connected with ourselves is 
 its object. Until we can justify this connec- 
 tion, we have no right to incur it, for genuine 
 sacrifice is always an act of self-assertion. In 
 saving his regiment and contributing his share 
 toward saving his country, the soldier asserts 
 his own interests. He is a good soldier in pro- 
 portion as he feels these interests to be his ; 
 while the deserter is condemned, not for refus- 
 ing to give his life to an alien country and 
 regiment, but because he was small enough to 
 imagine that these great constituents of him- 
 self were alien. I tell the man on the street
 
 178 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 the way home because I cannot part his be- 
 wilderment from my own. The problem al- 
 ways is, What may I suitably regard as mine ? 
 And in solving it, we should study as care- 
 fully that for which we propose to sacrifice 
 ourselves as anything which we might seek 
 to obtain. Triviality or lack of permanent 
 consequence is as objectionable in the one 
 case as in the other. The only safe rule is 
 that self-sacrifice is self-assertion, is a judg- 
 ment as regards what we would welcome to be 
 a portion of our conjunct self. 
 
 Perhaps an extreme case will show this most 
 clearly. Jesus prayed, " Not my will, but thine, 
 be done." He did not then lose his will. He 
 asserted and obtained it. For his will was that 
 the divine will should be fulfilled, and ful- 
 filled it was. He set aside one form of his will, 
 his private and isolated will, knowing it to be 
 delusive. But his true or conjunct will and 
 he knew it to be his true one he abundantly 
 obtained. It is no wonder, then, that in ex- 
 plaining these things to his disciples he says, 
 " My meat it is to do the will of my Father." 
 /That is always the language of genuine self- 
 ( sacrifice. The act is not complete until the 
 \A sense of loss has disappeared.
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 179 
 
 XI 
 
 Yet while I hold that self-sacrifice is thus 
 the very extreme of rationality, grounding as 
 it does all worth in the relational or conjunct 
 selfhood, I cannot disguise from myself that 
 it contains an element of tragedy too. This 
 my readers will already have felt and will 
 have begun to rebel against my insistence that 
 self-sacrifice is the fulfillment of our being. 
 For though it is true that when opposition 
 arises between the conjunct and separate 
 selves our largest safety is with the former, 
 the very fact that such opposition is possible 
 involves tragedy. One part of the nature be- 
 comes arrayed against another. We must die 
 to live. Our lower goods are found incom- 
 patible with our higher. Pleasure, comfort, 
 property, friends, possibly life itself, have be- 
 come hostile to our more inclusive aims and 
 must be cast aside. It is true that when the 
 tragic antithesis is presented and we can reach 
 our higher goods only by loss of the lower, 
 hesitation is ruin. It is true too that on 
 account of that element of self-assertion to 
 which I have drawn attention, the genuine 
 sacrificer is ordinarily unaware of any such
 
 180 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 tragedy. But none the less tragedy is there. 
 To suppose it absent would strip sacrifice of 
 what we regard as most characteristic. 
 
 Nor can we pause here. Those who would 
 call self-sacrifice a glorious madness have still 
 further justification. A leap into the dark we 
 must at least admit it to be. For trace it 
 rationally as far as we may, there always re- 
 mains uncertainty at the close. There is, for 
 example, uncertainty about ultimate results. 
 The mother toiling for her child, and neglect- 
 ing for its sake most of what would render her 
 own life rich, can never know that this child 
 will grow up to power. The day may come 
 when she will wish it had died in childhood. 
 The glory of her action is bound up with this 
 darkness. Were the soldier, marching to the 
 field, sure that his side would be victorious, he 
 would be only half a hero. The consequences 
 of self-sacrifice can never be certain, foreseen, 
 calculable. There must be risk. Omit it, and 
 the sacrifice disappears. Indeed nothing in life 
 which calls forth high admiration is free from 
 this touch of faith and courage, this move- 
 ment into the unknown. It is at the very heart 
 of self-sacrifice. 
 
 But besides the unknown character of the
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 181 
 
 result there is usually uncertainty as regards 
 the cost. The sacrificer does not give accord- 
 ing to measure. I do not say I will attend to 
 this sick person up to such and such a point, 
 but when that point is reached I shall have 
 done enough. This would hardly be self-sac- 
 rifice. I rather say, " Here I am. Take me, 
 use me to the full, spend of me whatever you 
 need. How much that will be, I do not know." 
 So there is an element of darkness in our- 
 selves. 
 
 And possibly I ought to mention a third 
 variety of these incalculabilities of sacrifice. 
 We do not plan the case. A while ago, meet- 
 ing a h'terary man whose product is of much 
 consequence to the community and himself, 
 I asked him how his book was coming on. 
 " Badly," he answered. " Just now an aged 
 relative has fallen ill. There is no other place 
 where she can be properly disposed, and so 
 she has been brought to my house. I must 
 care for her, my home will be much broken 
 up, and my work must be set aside." I said, 
 " Is that your duty ? Have you not a more 
 important obligation to your book ? " But 
 he answered, " One cannot choose a duty." 
 I did not fully agree. I think we should
 
 182 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 carefully weigh duties, even if we do not 
 choose them. Morality would otherwise be- 
 come the sport of accident. But I perceive 
 that in the last analysis no duty is made by 
 ourselves. It is given us by something more 
 authoritative than we, something which we 
 cannot alter, fully estimate, or without dam- 
 age evade. Necessity is laid upon us, some- 
 times an invading necessity. We are walking 
 our well-ordered path, pursuing some dear 
 aims, when harsh before us stands a waiting 
 duty, bidding us lay aside that in which we 
 are engaged and take it. I have said I be- 
 lieve a degree of scrutiny is needful here. We 
 should ask, what for ? We should correlate 
 the new duty with those already pledged. 
 And probably an interrupting duty is less 
 often the one it is well to follow than one 
 which has had something of our time and 
 care. Few fresh calls can have the weighty 
 claim of loyalty to obligation already incurred. 
 But, after all, that on which we finally decide 
 has not sprung from our own wishes. It sub- 
 jects those wishes to itself. Standing over 
 against us, it summons us to do its bidding, 
 and allows us no more to be our own self- 
 directed masters.
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 183 
 
 XII 
 
 Summing up, then, the jarring character- 
 istics of self-sacrifice, its frequency, ration- 
 ality, assertiveness, nearness to self-culture; 
 yes, and its darker traits of risk, immeasura- 
 bility, and authoritativeness, does it not be- 
 gin to appear that I have been calling it by 
 a wrong name? Self-sacrifice is a negative 
 term. It lays stress on the thought that I set 
 myself aside, become in some way less than I 
 was before. And no doubt through all this 
 intricate discussion certain belittlements have 
 been acknowledged, though these have also 
 been shown to lie along the path of largeness. 
 There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both 
 negative and positive elements. But why 
 select its name from the subordinate part? 
 Why turn to the front its incidental nega- 
 tions? This is topsy-turvy nomenclature. 
 Better blot the word self-sacrifice from our 
 dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication 
 to a cause, these words mark its real nature 
 and are the only descriptions of it which 
 its practicers will recognize. That damage to 
 the abstract self which chiefly impresses the 
 outsider is something of which the sacrificer
 
 184 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 is hardly aware. How exquisitely astonished 
 are the men in the parable when called to re- 
 ceive reward for their generous gifts ! " Lord, 
 when saw we thee an hungred and fed thee, 
 or thirsty and gave thee drink ? When saw 
 we thee sick or in prison and came unto 
 thee?" They thought they had only been 
 following their own desires. 
 
 Perhaps the most admirable case of self- 
 sacrifice is that in which no single person 
 appears who is profited by our loss. The 
 scholar, the artist, the scientific man dedi- 
 cate themselves to the interests of undiffer- 
 entiated humanity. They serve their undeci- 
 pherable race, not knowing who will obtain 
 gains through their toils. In their sublime 
 benefactions they study the wants of no indi- 
 vidual person, not even of themselves. Yet, 
 turn to a man of this type and try to call his 
 attention to the privations he endures, and 
 what will be his answer ? "I have no coat ? 
 I have no dinner ? I have little money ? 
 People do not honor me as they honor others ? 
 Yes, I believe I lack these trifles. But think 
 what I possess ! This great subject ; or ra- 
 ther, it possesses me. And it shall have of 
 me whatever it requires."
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 185 
 
 In such service of the absolute is found 
 the highest expression of self-sacrifice, of so- 
 cial service, of self-realization. The doctrine 
 that through union with a reason and right- 
 eousness not exclusively our own each of us 
 may hourly be renewed is the very heart of 
 
 ethics. 
 
 XIII 
 
 I have attempted to cut out a clear path 
 through an ethical jungle overgrown with the 
 exuberance of human life. I have not suc- 
 ceeded, and it is probably impossible to suc- 
 ceed. In the subject itself there is paradox. 
 Conflicting elements enter into the very con- 
 stitution of a person. To trace them even 
 imperfectly one must be patient of refine- 
 ments, accessible to qualifications, and ever 
 ready to admit the opposite of what has been 
 laboriously established. We all desire through 
 study to win a swift simplicity. But na- 
 ture abhors simplicity : she complicates ; she 
 forces those who would know to take pains, 
 to proceed cautiously, and to feel their way 
 along from point to point. This I have tried 
 to do ; and I believe that the inquiry, though 
 intricate, primarily scientific, and only par- 
 tially successful, need not altogether lack
 
 186 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 practical consequence. Our age is bewildered 
 between heroism and greed. To each it 
 is drawn more powerfully than any age pre- 
 ceding. Neither of the two does it quite 
 comprehend. If we can render the nobler 
 somewhat more intelligible, we may increase 
 the confidence of those who now, half -ashamed, 
 follow its glorious but blindly compulsive 
 call.
 
 REFERENCES ON SELF-SACRIFICE 
 
 Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. xi., xii. 
 
 Bradley's Appearance and Reality, p. 414-429. 
 
 Faulsen's Ethics, bk. ii. ch. 6. 
 
 Wundt's Facts of the Moral Life, ch. iii., 4 (g). 
 
 Sidgwick's Methods, concluding chapter. 
 
 Kidd's Social Evolution, ch. 5. 
 
 S. Bryant in Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1893. 
 
 Bradley in Journal of Ethics, Oct. 1894. 
 
 Mackenzie, in Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1895.
 
 vn 
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT
 
 VII 
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 
 
 . . 
 
 AT this culmination of our long discussion, 
 a discussion much confused by its necessary 
 mass of details, it may be well to pause a 
 moment, to fix attention on the great lines 
 along which we have been moving, and to 
 mark the points on which they appear to con- 
 verge. We have regarded goodness as di- 
 vided into two very unequal parts. The first 
 two chapters treated of goodness in general, 
 a species which being shared alike by persons 
 and things is in no sense distinctive of per- 
 sons. The last four chapters have been given 
 to the more complex task of exploring the 
 goodness of persons. 
 
 In things we found that goodness consists 
 in having their manifold parts drawn into 
 integral wholeness. And this is true also of 
 persons. But the modes of organization in
 
 192 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 the two cases were so unlike as to require 
 long elucidation. Our conclusion would seen^ 
 to be that while goodness is everywhere ex-l 
 pressive of organization, personal conduct is 
 good only when consciously organized, guided, 
 and aimed at the development of a social self. 
 We have seen how self-consciousness lies at 
 the foundation of personality, sharply dis- 
 criminating persons from things. We have 
 seen, too that wherever it is present, the per- 
 son curiously directs himself, passing through 
 all the varieties of purposive activity which 
 were catalogued in the chapter on self-direc- 
 tion. But such activity implies a being of 
 variable, not of fixed powers, a being accord- 
 ingly capable of enlargement, and with possi- 
 bilities in him which every moment renders 
 real. This progressive realization of himself, 
 this development, he so far as he is good 
 consciously conducts. And finally we found 
 in the person the strange fact that he con- 
 ceives of his good self as essentially in con- 
 junction with his fellow man, and recognizes 
 that parted off and in separate abstractness 
 he is no person at all. Accordingly personal 
 goodness must everywhere express conscious 
 organization, direction, enlargement, conjunc-\
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 193 
 
 V tion. Under our analysis two antithetic worlds 
 1 emerge, a world of nature and of spirit, the 
 former guided by blind forces, the latter self- 
 managed. Unlike spiritual beings, natural 
 objects are under alien control ; have not the 
 power of development, and when brought into 
 close conjunction with others are liable to dis- 
 ruption. 
 
 H 
 
 Accepting this vital distinction, we see that 
 the work of spiritual man will consist in pro- 
 gressively subjugating whatever natural pow- 
 ers he finds within him and without, rendering 
 them all expressive of self-conscious purpose. 
 For we men are not altogether spiritual ; in 
 us two elements meet. Our spirituality is 
 superposed on a natural basis. Like things, 
 we have our natural aptitudes, blind tenden- 
 cies, established functions of body and mind. 
 These are all serviceable and organic ; but to 
 become spiritual all need to be redeemed, or 
 drawn over into the field of consciousness, 
 where our special stamp may be set upon 
 them. When we speak of a good act, we 
 mean an act which shows the results of such 
 redemption, one whose every part has been 
 studied in relation to every other part, and
 
 194 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 \ has thus been made to bear our own image 
 
 \ and superscription. 
 
 And this is essentially the Christian ideal, 
 that spirit shall be lord of nature. I ought 
 to reject my natural life, accounting it not 
 my life at all. Until shaped by myself, it is 
 merely my opportunity for life, material fur- 
 nished, out of which my true and conscious 
 life may be constructed. Widely is this con- 
 trasted with the pagan conceptions, where man 
 appears with powers as fixed as the things 
 around him. Indeed, in many forms of pa- 
 ganism there is no distinction between per- 
 sons and things. They are blended. And 
 such blending usually operates to the dispar- 
 agement of the person ; for things being more 
 numerous, and their laws more urgent, the 
 powers of man become lost in those of nature. 
 Or if distinction is made, and men hi some 
 dim fashion become aware that they are dif- 
 ferent from things, still it is the tendency 
 of paganism to subordinate person to nature. 
 The child is sacrificed to the sun. The sun 
 is not thought of as existing for the child. 
 From the Christian point of view everything 
 seems turned upside down. Man is absorbed 
 in natural forces, natural forces are rever-
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 195 
 
 enced as divine, and self -consciousness if 
 noticed at all is regarded as an impertinent 
 accident. 
 
 In the Christian ideal all this is reversed. 
 Man is called to be master of himself, and 
 therefore of all else. The many beautiful 
 adjustments of the natural world are thought 
 to possess dignity only so far as they accept 
 the conscious purposes put by us in their 
 keeping. And in man himself goodness is 
 held to exist only in proportion as his conduct 
 expresses fullness of self -consciousness, full- 
 ness of direction, and fullness of conscious 
 conjunction with other persons. I do not see 
 how we can escape this conclusion. The care- 
 ful argumentation through which the previous 
 chapters have brought us obliges us to count 
 conduct valuable in proportion as it bears the 
 impress of self-conscious mind. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Yet it must be owned that during the last 
 few centuries doubts have arisen about the 
 justice of this Christian ideal. The simple 
 conception of a world of spirit and a world 
 of nature arrayed against each other, the one 
 of them exactly what the other is not, the
 
 196 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 world of spirit the superior, the world of 
 nature to be frowned on, used possibly, but 
 always in subordination to spiritual purposes, 
 this view, dominant as it was in the Middle 
 Ages, and still largely influential, has been 
 steadily falling into disrepute. There is even' 
 a tendency in present estimates to reverse 
 the ancient valuation and allow superiority toi 
 nature. Such a transformation is strikingly 
 evident in those sensitive recorders of human 
 ideals, the Fine Arts. Let us see what at dif- 
 ferent times they have judged best worthy of 
 record. 
 
 Early painting dealt with man alone, or 
 rather with persons; for personality in its 
 transcendent forms saints, angels, God him- 
 self was usually preferred above little man. 
 Except the spiritual, nothing was regarded as 
 of consequence. The principle of early paint- 
 ing might be summed in the proud saying, 
 " On earth there is nothing great but man ; in 
 man there is nothing great but mind." It is 
 true when man is thus detached from nature 
 he hardly appears to advantage or in his ap- 
 propriate setting. But the early painters would 
 tolerate nothing natural near their splendid 
 persons. They covered their backgrounds
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 197 
 
 with gilding, so that a glory surrounded the 
 entire figure, throwing out the personality 
 sharp and strong. Nothing broke its effect. 
 But after all, one comes to see that we inhabit 
 a world ; nature is continually about us, and 
 man really shows his eminence most fully 
 when standing dominant over nature. Early 
 painting, accordingly, began to set in a little 
 landscape around the human figures, contrast- 
 ing the person with that which was not him- 
 self. But an independent interest could not 
 fail to spring up in these accessories. By 
 degrees the landscape is elaborated and the 
 figure subordinated. The figure is there by 
 prescription, the landscape because people 
 enjoy it. Nature begins to assert her claims ; 
 and man, the eminent and worthy represen- 
 tative of old ideals, retires from his ancient 
 prominence. 
 
 When the Renaissance revolted against the 
 teachings of the mediaeval church, the dispo- 
 sition to return to nature was insolently strong. 
 Natural impulses were glorified, the physical 
 world attracted attention, and even began to be 
 studied. Hitherto it had been thought deserv- 
 ing of study only because in a few respects it 
 was able to minister to man. But in the Re-
 
 198 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS 
 
 naissance men studied it for its own sake. Grad- 
 ually the distinction between man and nature 
 grew faint, so that a kind of pantheism arose 
 in which a general power, at once natural and 
 spiritual, appeared as the ruler of all. We in- 
 dividual men emerge for a moment from this 
 great central power, ultimately relapsing into 
 it. Nature had acquired coordinate, if not su- 
 perior, rights. Yet the full expression of this 
 independent interest in nature is more recent 
 than is usually observed. Landscape paintingj 
 goes back but little beyond the year sixteen 
 hundred. It is only two or three centuries ago 
 that painters discovered the physical world 
 to be worthy of representation for its own 
 sake. 
 
 As the worth of nature thus became vin- 
 dicated in painting, parallel changes were 
 wrought in the other arts. Arts less distinctly 
 rational began to assert themselves, and even 
 to take the lead. The art most characteristic 
 of modern tunes, the one which most widely 
 and poignantly appeals to us, is music. But 
 in music we are not distinctly conscious of a 
 meaning. Most of us in listening to music 
 forget ourselves under its lulling charms, aban- 
 don ourselves to its spell, and by it are swept
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 199 
 
 away, perhaps to the infinite, perhaps to an ob- 
 literation of all clear thought. Is it not largely 
 because we are so hard pressed under the anx-j 
 ious conditions of modern life that music be4 
 comes such an enormous solace and strength ?| 
 I do not say that no other factors have con- 
 tributed to the vogue of music, but certainly 
 it is widely prized as an effective means of es- 
 cape from ourselves. Music too, though early 
 known in calm and elementary forms, has 
 within the last two centuries been developed 
 into almost a new art. 
 
 Of all the arts poetry is the most strikingly 
 rational and articulate. Its material is plain 
 thought, plain words. We employ in it the 
 apparatus of conscious life. Poetry was there- 
 fore concerned in early times entirely with 
 things of the spirit. It dealt with persons, 
 and with them alone. It celebrated epic ac- 
 tions, recorded sagacious judgments, or uttered 
 in lyric song emotions primarily felt by an 
 individual, yet interpreting the common lot of 
 man. But there has occurred a great change 
 in poetry too, a change notable during the last 
 century but initiated long before. Poetry 
 has been growing naturalistic, and is to-day 
 disposed to reject all severance of body and
 
 200 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 spirit. The great nature movement which we 
 associate with the names of Cowper, Burns, 
 and Wordsworth, has withdrawn man's atten- 
 tion from conscious responsibility, and has 
 taught him to adore blind and vast forces 
 which he cannot fully comprehend. We all 
 know the refreshment and the deepening of 
 lif e which this mystic new poetry has brought. 
 But it is hard to say whether poetry is nowa- 
 days a spiritual or a natural art. Many of 
 us would incline to the latter view, and would 
 hold that even in dealing with persons it treats 
 them as embodiments of natural forces. Our 
 instincts and unguided passions, the features 
 which most identify us with the physical world, 
 are coming more and more to be the subjects 
 of modern poetry. 
 
 IV 
 
 Nature, meanwhile, that part of the universe 
 which is not consciously guided, has become 
 within a century our favorite field of scientific 
 study. The very word science is popularly 
 appropriated to naturalistic investigation. Of 
 course this is a perversion. Originally it was 
 believed that the proper study of mankind 
 was man. And probably we should all still
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 201 
 
 acknowledge that the study of personal struc- 
 ture is as truly science as study of the struc- 
 ture of physical objects. Yet so powerfully is 
 the tide setting toward reverence for the un- 
 conscious and the sub-conscious that science, 
 our word for knowledge, has lost its univer- 
 sality and has taken on an almost exclusively 
 physical character. 
 
 Perhaps there was only one farther step 
 possible. Philosophy itself, the study of 
 mind, might be regarded as a study of the 
 unconscious. And this step has been taken. 
 Books now bear the paradoxical title t( Philo- 
 sophy of the Unconscious," and investigation 
 of the sub-conscious processes is perhaps the 
 most distinctive trait of philosophy to-day. 
 More and more it is believed that we cannot 
 adequately explore a person without probing 
 beneath consciousness. The blind processes 
 can no longer be ruled out. Nature and 
 spirit cannot be parted as our fathers supposed 
 they might. Probably Kant is the last great 
 scholar who will ever try to hold that distinc- 
 tion firm, and he is hardly successful. In 
 spite of his vigorous antitheses, hints of covert 
 connection between the opposed forces are 
 not absent. Indeed, if the two are so widely
 
 202 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 parted as his usual language asserts, it is hard 
 to see how his ethics can have mundane worth. 
 Curiously enough too, at the very time when 
 Kant was reviving this ancient distinction, 
 and offering it as the solid basis of personal 
 and social life, the opposite belief received 
 its most clamorous announcement, resounding 
 through the civilized world in the teachings 
 of Rousseau. Rousseau warns us that the 
 conscious constructions of man are full of 
 artifice and deceit, and lead to corruption 
 and pain. Conscious guidance should, conse- 
 quently, be banished, and man should return 
 to the peace, the ease, and the certainty of 
 
 nature. 
 
 V 
 
 Now I do not think it is worth while to blame 
 or praise a movement so vast as this. If it 
 is folly to draw an indictment against a na- 
 tion, it is greater folly to indict all modern 
 civilization. We must not say that philosophy 
 and the fine arts took a wrong turn at the 
 Renaissance, at least it is useless to call on 
 them now to turn back. The world seldom 
 turns back. It absorbs, it re-creates, it brings 
 new significance into the older thought. All 
 progress, Goethe tells us, is spiral, coming
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 203 
 
 out at the place where it was before, but 
 higher up. No, we cannot wisely blame or 
 praise, but we may patiently study and under- 
 stand. That is what I am attempting to do 
 here. The movement described is no neg- 
 ligible accident of our time. It is world-wide, 
 and shows progress steadily in a single di- 
 rection. 
 
 In order, however, to prove that such a change 
 in moral estimates has occurred, it was hardly 
 necessary to survey the course of history. 
 The evidence lies close around us, and is found 
 in the standards of the society in which we 
 move. Who are the people most prized ? 
 Are they the most self-conscious ? That 
 should be the case if our long argument is 
 sound. Our preceding chapters would urge 
 us to fill life with consciousness. In pro- 
 portion as consciousness droops, human good- 
 ness becomes meagre ; as our acts are filled 
 with it, they grow excellent. These are our 
 theoretic conclusions, but the experience of 
 daily life does not bear them out. If, for ex- 
 ample, I find the person who is talking to me 
 watches each word he utters, pauses again and 
 again for correction, choosing the determined 
 word and rejecting the one which instmc-
 
 0UJL 
 
 "t&uu 
 
 204 
 
 TRE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 w 
 
 
 tively comes to his lips, I do not trust 
 what he says, or even listen to it ; while he is 
 shaping his exact sentences I attend to some- 
 thing else. In general, if a man's small 
 actions impress us as minutely planned, we 
 turn from him. It is not the self-reflecting 
 persons, cautious of all they do, say, or think, 
 who are popular. It is rather those instinc- 
 tively spontaneous creatures characterized by 
 abandon men and women who let themselves' 
 go, and with all the wealth of the world i 
 
 them, allow it to come out of itself that w 
 
 7 
 
 take to our hearts. We prize them for theii 
 want of deliberation. In short, we give oui 
 unbiased endorsement not to the spiritual 
 consciously guided person, but to him, on the 
 contrary, who shows the closest adjustment to 
 nature. 
 
 VI 
 
 Yet even so, we have gone too far afield for 
 evidence. First we surveyed the ages, then 
 we surveyed one another. But there is one 
 proof-spot nearer still. Let us survey our- 
 selves. I am much mistaken if there are not 
 among my readers persons who have aU their 
 lives suffered from self-consciousness. They
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 205 
 
 have longed to be rid of it, to be free to think 
 of the other person, of the matter in hand. 
 Instead of this, their thoughts are forever re- 
 verting to their own share in any affair. Too 
 contemptible to be avowed, and more distress- 
 ing than almost any other species of suffering, 
 excessive self-consciousness shames us with 
 our selfishness, yet will not allow us to turn 
 from it. When I go into company where 
 everybody is spontaneous and free, easily 
 uttering what the occasion calls for, I can 
 utter only what I call for and not at all what 
 the occasion asks. Between the two demands 
 there is always an awkward jar. When tor- 
 tured by such experiences it does not soothes 
 to have others carelessly remark, " Oh, just be 
 natural ! " That is precisely what we should 
 like to be, but how? That little point isj 
 continually left unexplained. Yet obviously 
 self-consciousness involves something like a 
 deadlock. For how can one consciously exertj 
 himself to be unconscious and try not to try ? 
 We cannot arrange our lives so as to have no 
 arrangement in them, and when shaking hands 
 with a friend, for example, be on our guard, 
 against noticing. Once locked up in this] 
 vicious circle, we seem destined to be prison-
 
 o 
 
 206 } THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 vJ->7 
 
 ers forever. That is what constitutes the an- 
 guish of the situation. The most tyrannical 
 of jailers one's self is over us, and from 
 his bondage we are powerless to escape. The 
 trouble is by no means peculiar to our time, 
 though probably commoner forty years ago 
 than at any other period of the world's history. 
 But it had already attracted the attention of 
 Shakespere, who bases on it one of his great- 
 est plays. When Hamlet would act, self-con- 
 sciousness stands in his way. The hindering 
 process is described in the famous soliloquy 
 with astonishing precision and vividness, if 
 only we substitute our modern term " self- 
 consciousness " for that which was its ancient 
 equivalent : 
 
 " Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought ; 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment 
 With this regard their currents turn awry, 
 And lose the name of action." 
 
 And such is our experience. We, too, have 
 purposed all manner of important and service- 
 able acts ; but just as we were setting them in 
 execution, consideration fell upon us. We 
 asked whether it was the proper moment, 
 whether he to whom it was to be done was
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 207 
 
 really needy, or were we the fit doer, or should 
 it be done in this way or that. We hesitated, 
 and the moment was gone. Self -consciousness 
 had again demonstrated its incompetence for 
 superintending a task. Many of us, far from 1 
 regarding self-consciousness as a ground of 
 goodness, are disposed to look upon it as a 
 curse. 
 
 vn 
 
 Before, however, attempting to discover 
 whether our theoretic conclusions may be 
 drawn into some sort of living accord with 
 these results of experience, let us probe a little 
 more minutely into these latter, and try to learn 
 what reasons there may be for this very gen- 
 eral distrust of self-consciousness as a guide. 
 Hitherto I have exhibited that distrust as a 
 fact. We always find it so ; our neighbors 
 find it so, the ages have found it so. But 
 why? I have not pointed out precisely the 
 reasons for the continual fact. Let me de- 
 vote a page or two to rational diagnosis. 
 
 To begin with, I suppose it will be conceded 
 that we really cannot guide ourselves through 
 and through. There are certain large tracts 
 of life totally unamenable to consciousness.
 
 208 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 Of our two most important acts, and those by 
 which the remaining ones are principally af- 
 fected, birth and death, the one is necessarily 
 removed from conscious guidance, and the 
 other is universally condemned if so guided. 
 We do not as we have previously seen 
 happen to be present at our birth, and so are 
 quite cut off from controlling that. Yet the 
 conditions of birth very considerably shape 
 everything else in life. We cannot, then, be 
 purely spiritual ; it is impossible. We must be 
 natural beings at our beginning ; and at the 
 other end the state of things is largely similar, 
 for we are not allowed to fix the time of our 
 departure. The Stoics were. " If the house 
 smokes," they said, " leave it." When life is 
 no longer worth while, depart. But Chris- 
 tianity will not allow this. Death must be a 
 natural .affair, not a spiritual. I am to wait 
 till a wandering bacillus alights in my lung. 
 He will provide a suitable exit for me. But 
 neither I nor my neighbors must decide my 
 departure. Let Jaws oi-natm^ rp"ir n - 
 
 And if these two tremendous events are 
 altogether removed from conscious guidance, 
 many others are but slightly amenable to it. 
 The great organic processes both of mind and
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 209 
 
 body are only indirectly, or to a partial ex- 
 tent, under the control of consciousness. A 
 few persons, I believe, can voluntarily suspend 
 the beating of their hearts. They are hardly 
 to be envied. The majority of us let our 
 hearts alone, and they work better than if we 
 tried to work them. Though it is true that 
 we can control our breathing, and that we oc- 
 casionally do so, this also in general we wisely 
 leave to natural processes. A similar state of 
 affairs we find when we turn to the mind 
 itself. The association of ideas, that curious 
 process by which one thought sticks to another 
 and through being thus linked draws after it 
 material for use in all our intellectual con- 
 structions, goes on for the most part unguided. 
 It would be plainly useless, therefore, to treat 
 our great distinction as something hard and 
 fast. Nature and spirit may be contrasted 'J 
 they cannot be sundered. Spirit removed! 
 from nature would become impotent, while \ 
 nature would then proceed on a meaningless \ 
 career. 
 
 Then too there are all sorts of degrees in 
 consciousness. No man was ever so conscious 
 of himself and his acts that he could not be 
 more so. When introspection is causing us our
 
 210 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 sharpest distress, it may still be rendered more 
 minute. That is one cause of its peculiar 
 anguish. We are always uncertain whether 
 our troubles have not arisen from too little 
 self-consciousness, and we whip ourselves into 
 greater nicety and elaborateness of personal 
 observation. Varying through a multitude 
 of degrees, the fullness of consciousness is 
 never reached. A more thorough exercise 
 of it is always possible. At the last, nature 
 must be admitted as a partner in the control 
 of our lives, and her share in that partner- 
 ship the present age believes to be a large 
 one. 
 
 VIII 
 
 For could we always consciously steer our 
 conduct, we should be unwise to do so. Con- 
 sciousness hinders action. Acts are excel- 
 lent in proportion as they are sure, swift, and 
 easy. When we undertake anything, we seek 
 to do exactly that thing, reach precisely that 
 end, and not merely to hit something in 
 the neighborhood. Occasions, too, run fast, 
 and should be seized on the minute. Action 
 is excellent only when it meets the urgent 
 
 and evasive demands of life. Faltering and 
 
 * ' " * .. n*
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 211 
 
 hesitation are fatal. Nor must action unduly 
 weary. Good conduct effects its results with 
 the least necessary expenditure of effort. 
 When there are so many demands pressing 
 upon us, we should not allow ourselves to be- 
 come exhausted by a single act, but should 
 keep ourselves fresh for further needs. Effi- 
 cient action, then, is sure, swift, and easy. 
 
 Now the peculiarity of self-consciousness is 
 that it hinders all this and makes action inac- 
 curate, slow, and fatiguing. Inaccuracy is al- 
 most certain. When we study how something 
 is to be done, we are apt to lay stress on cer- 
 tain features of the situation, and not to bring 
 others into due prominence. It is difficult 
 separately to correlate the many elements 
 which go to make up a desired result. Some- 
 times we become altogether puzzled and for 
 the moment the action ceases. When I have, 
 had occasion to drive a screw in some unusual 
 and inconvenient place, after setting the blade; 
 of the screw-driver into the slot I have asked 
 myself, " In which direction does this screw 
 turn ? " But the longer I ask, the more un- 
 certain I am. My only solution lies in trust- 
 ing my hand, which knows a great deal more 
 
 about the matter than I. When we once
 
 212 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 begin to meditate how a word is spelled, how 
 helpless we are! It is better to drop the 
 question, and pick up the dictionary. In all 
 such cases consideration tends to confuse. 
 
 It tends to delay, too, as everybody knows. 
 To survey all the relations in which a given 
 act may stand, to balance their relative gains 
 and losses, and with full sight to decide on 
 the course which offers the greatest profit, 
 would require the years of Methuselah. Bufcf 
 at what point shall we cut the process short ?V 
 To obtain full knowledge, we should pass in 
 review all that relates to the act we propose ; 
 should inquire what its remoter consequences 
 will be, and how it will affect not merely my- 
 self, my cousin, my great-grandchild, but the 
 man in the next street, city, or state. There 
 is no stopping. To carry conscious verifica- 
 tion over a moderate range is slow business. 
 If on the impulse of occasion we dash off an 
 action unreflectingly, life will be swift and 
 simple. If we try to anticipate all conse- 
 quences of our task it will be slow and 
 endless. 
 
 Nor need I dwell on the fatigue such con- 
 scious work involves. In writing a letter, we 
 usually sit down before our paper, our minds
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 213 
 
 occupied with what we would say. We allow 
 our fingers to stroll of themselves across the 
 page, and we hardly notice whether they 
 move or not. If anybody should ask, " How 
 did you write the letter s ? " we should be 
 obliged to look on the paper to see. But sup- 
 pose, instead of writing in this way, I come 
 to the task to-morrow determined to superin- 
 tend all the work consciously. How shall I 
 hold my pen in the best possible manner? 
 How shape this letter so that each of its curves 
 gets its exact bulge? How give the correct 
 slant to what is above or below the line ? I 
 will not ask how long a time a letter prepared 
 in this fashion would require, or whether when 
 written it would be fit to read, for I wish to fix 
 attention on the exhaustion of the writer. He 
 certainly could endure such fatigue for no 
 more than a single epistle. The schoolboy,, 
 when forced to it, seldom holds out for more 
 than half a page, though he employs every^ 
 contortion of shoulder, tongue, and leg to! 
 ease and diversify the struggle. 
 
 A dozen years ago some nonsense verses 
 were running through the papers, verses 
 pointing out with humorous precision the 
 very infelicities of conscious control to which
 
 214 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 I am now directing attention. They put the 
 case thus : 
 
 " The centipede was happy, quite, 
 
 Until the toad for fun 
 
 Said, ' Pray which leg comes after which ? ' 
 This worked her mind to such a pitch 
 She lay distracted in a ditch, 
 
 Considering how to run." 
 
 And no wonder! Problems so complex as 
 this should be left to the disposal of nature, 
 and not be drawn over into the region of spir- 
 itual guidance. But the complexities of the 
 centipede are simple matters when compared 
 with the elaborate machinery of man. The 
 human mind offers more alternatives in a min- 
 ute than does the centipede in a lifetime. If 
 spiritual guidance is inadequate to the latter, 
 and is found merely to hinder action, why is 
 not the blind control of nature necessary for 
 the former also ? Our age believes it is and, 
 ever disparaging the conscious world, attaches 
 steadily greater consequence to the uncon- 
 scious. " It is the unintelligent me," writes 
 Dr. 0. W. Holmes, " stupid as an idiot, that 
 has to try a thing a thousand times before he 
 can do it and then never knows how he does 
 it, that at last does it well. We have to edu-A 
 cate ourselves through the pretentious claims!
 
 NATURE AND SPIRIT 215 
 
 \ of intellect into the humble accuracy of in- 
 \ stinct ; and we end at last by acquiring the 
 1 dexterity, the perfection, the certainty which 
 ; those masters of arts, the bee and the spider, 
 'inherit from nature." 
 
 ex
 
 REFERENCES ON NATURE AND SPIRIT 
 
 Green's Prolegomena, 297. 
 
 Dewey's Study of Ethics, xli. 
 
 Seth's Study of Ethical Principles, pt. i. ch. 3, 6. 
 
 Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. i. ch. i. iii. 
 
 Earle's English Prose, p. 490-500. 
 
 Palme* in The Forum, Jan. 1893.
 
 VIII 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS
 
 vm 
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 
 
 SUCH is the mighty argument conducted 
 through several centuries in behalf of nature 
 against spirit as a director of conduct. I 
 have stated it at length both because of its 
 own importance and because it is in seeming 
 conflict with the results of my early chapters. 
 But those results stand fast. They were 
 reached with care. To reject them would be 
 to obliterate all distinction between persons 
 and things. Self-consciousness is the indis- 
 putable prerogative of persons. Only so far 
 as we possess it and apply it in action do we 
 rise above the impersonal world around. And 
 even if we admit the contention in behalf 
 of nature as substantially sound, we are not 
 obliged to accept it as complete. It may be 
 that neither nature nor spirit can be dispensed 
 with in the supply of human needs. Each
 
 220 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 may have its characteristic office ; for though 
 in the last chapter I have been setting forth 
 the superiorities of natural guidance, in spir-\ 
 ifciial guidance there ..are. .ajdrantages^ ioo, ad- 
 vantages of an even more fundamental kind. 
 Let us see what they are. 
 
 They may be summarily stated in a single 
 sentence : gfimsinTniTgnpaa alnno giyp,s fresh i p - 
 itaatJfi~ Disturbing as the influence of con- 
 sciousness confessedly is, on its employment 
 depends every possibility of progress. Natu- 
 ral action is regular, constant, conformed to 
 a pattern. In the natural world event follows 
 event in a fixed order. Under the same con- 
 ditions the same result appears an indefinite 
 number of times. The most objectionable 
 form of this rigidity is found in mechanism. 
 I sometimes hear ladies talking about " real 
 lace " and am on such occasions inclined to 
 speak of my real boots. They mean, I find, 
 not lace that is the reverse of ghostly, but 
 simply that which bears the impress of per- 
 sonality. It is lace which is made by hand 
 and shows the marks of hand work. Little 
 irregularities are in it, contrasting it with the 
 machine sort, where every piece is identical 
 with every other piece. It might be more
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 221 
 
 accurately called personal lace. The machine 
 kind is no less real unfortunately but 
 mechanism is hopelessly dull, says the same 
 thing day after day, and never can say any- 
 thing else. 
 
 Now though this coarse form of monotonous 
 process nowhere appears in what we call the 
 world of nature, a restriction substantially 
 similar does ; for natural objects vary slowly 
 and within the narrowest limits. Outside 
 such orderly variations, they are subjected 
 to external and distorting agencies effecting 
 changes in them regardless of their gains. 
 Branches of trees have their wayward and 
 subtle curvatures, and are anything but me- 
 chanical in outline. But none the less are 
 they helpless, unprogressive, and incapable of 
 learning. The forces which play upon them, 
 being various, leave a truly varied record. 
 But each of these forces was an invariable 
 one, and their several influences cannot be 
 sorted, judged, and selected by the tree with 
 reference to its future growth. Criticism 
 and choice have no place here, and accord- 
 ingly anything like improvement from year 
 to year is impossible. 
 
 The case of us human beings would be the
 
 222 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 same if we \vere altogether managed by the 
 sure, swift, and easy forces of nature. Pro- 
 gress would cease. We should move on our 
 humdrum round as fixedly constituted, as sub- 
 missive to external influence, and with as little 
 exertion of intelligence as the dumb objects 
 we behold. Every power within us would be 
 actual, displayed in its full extent, and involv- 
 ing no variety of future possibility. We 
 should live altogether in the present, and no 
 changes would be imagined or sought. From 
 this dull routine we are saved by the admix- 
 ture of consciousness. For a gain so great 
 we may well be ready to encounter those diffi- 
 culties of conscious guidance which my last 
 chapter detailed. Let the process of advance 
 be inaccurate, slow, and severe, so only there 
 be advance. For progress no cost is too 
 great. I am sometimes inclined to congrat- 
 ulate those who are acute sufferers through 
 self-consciousness, because to them the door 
 of the future is open. The instinctive, un- 
 critical person, who takes life about as it 
 comes, and with ready acceptance responds 
 promptly to every suggestion that calls, may 
 b_e_as ^popular as the sunshine, but he, is aa 
 
 incapable of further advance. Except in at-
 
 THE THESE STAGES OF GOODNESS 223 
 
 tractiveness, such a one is usually in later life 
 about what he was in youth ; for progress is 
 a product of forecasting intelligence. When 
 any new creation is to be introduced, only 
 consciousness can prepare its path. 
 
 Evidently, then, there are strong advan- 
 tages in guidance through the spirit. But 
 natural guidance has advantages no less genu- 
 ine. Human life is a complex and demanding 
 affair, requiring for its ever-enlarging good 
 whatever strength can be summoned from every 
 side. Probably we must abandon that mag- 
 nificent conception of our ancestors, that spirit 
 is all in all and nature unimportant. But 
 must we, in deference to the temper of our 
 time, eliminate conscious guidance altogether ? 
 May not the disparagement of recent ages 
 have arisen in reaction against attempts to 
 push conscious guidance into regions where 
 it is unsuitable ? Conceivably the two agen- 
 cies may be supplementary. Possibly we may 
 call on our fellow of the natural world for 
 aid in spiritual work. The complete ideal, at 
 
 A ^^^^V^HWMMMMMMW^Mr 
 
 any rate, of goe-cL CQnduct..,uiiies. the-ssoft- 
 ness, certainty, and ease of .natural action with 
 the selectLYe.^iogrSsiveness-ef-sp4ttial. Till 
 such a combination is found, either conduct
 
 224 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 will be insignificant or great distress of self* 
 consciousness will be incurred. Both of these 
 evils will be avoided if nature can be per- 
 suaded to do the work which we clearly intend. 
 That is what goodness calls on us to effect. 
 To showing the steps through which it may be 
 reached the remainder of this chapter will be 
 given. 
 
 II 
 
 Let us, then, take a case of action where 
 we are trying to create a new power, to de- 
 velop ourselves in some direction in which we 
 have not hitherto gone. For such an under- 
 taking consciousness is needed, but let us see 
 how far we are able to hand over its work to 
 unconsciousness. Suppose, when entirely igno- 
 rant of music, I decide to learn to play the 
 piano. Evidently it will require the minutest 
 watchfulness. Approaching the strange in- 
 strument with some uneasiness, I try to secure 
 exactly that position on the stool which will 
 allow my arms their proper range along the 
 keyboard. There is difficulty in getting my 
 sheet of music to stand as it should. When 
 it is adjusted, I examine it anxiously. What 
 is that little mark? Probably the note C.
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 225 
 
 Among these curious keys there must also be 
 a C. I look up and down. There it is ! But 
 can I bring my finger down upon it at just 
 the right angle ? That is accomplished, and 
 gradually note after note is captured, until I 
 have conquered the entire score. 
 
 If now during my laborious performance 
 a friend enters the room, he might well say, 
 " I do not like spiritual music. Give me the 
 natural kind which is not consciously directed. 
 But let him return three years later. He will 
 find me sitting at the piano quite at my ease, 
 tossing off notes by the unregarded handful. 
 He approaches and enters into conversation 
 with me. I do not cease my playing ; but as 
 I talk, I still keep my mind free enough to 
 observe the swaying boughs outside the win- 
 dow and to enjoy the fragrance of the flowers 
 which my friend has brought. The musical 
 phrases which drop from my fingers appear 
 to regulate themselves and to call for little 
 conscious regard. 
 
 Yet if my friend should try to show me 
 how mistaken I had been in the past, attempt- 
 ing to manage consciously what should have 
 been left to nature, if he should eulogize my 
 natural action now and contrast it with my
 
 226 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 former awkwardness, he would plainly be in 
 error. My present naturalness is the result 
 _fif Jong spiritual-endeavor, and cannot be had 
 on cheaper terms; and the unconsciousness 
 which is now noticeable in me is not the same 
 thing as that which was with me when I began 
 to play. It is true the incidental hardships 
 connected with my first attack on the piano 
 have ceased. I find myself in possession of a 
 new and seemingly unconscious power. An 
 automatic train of movements has been con- 
 structed which I now direct as a whole, its 
 parts no longer requiring special volitional 
 prompting. But I still direct it, only that a 
 larger unit has been constituted for conscious- 
 ness to act upon. The naturalness which thus 
 becomes possible is accordingly of an alto- 
 gether new sort; and since the result is a 
 completer expression of conscious intention,^, 
 it may as truly be called spiritual as natural. \ 
 
 III 
 
 It has now become plain that our early 
 reckoning of actions as either natural or spir- 
 itual was too simple and incomplete. Conduct 
 has three stages, not two. Let us get them 
 clearly in mind. At the beginning of life we
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 227 
 
 are at the beck and call of every impulse, 
 not having yet attained reflective command 
 of ourselves. This first stage we may rightly 
 call that of nature or of unconsciousness, and I 
 manifestly most of us continue in it to some 
 extent and as regards certain tracts of action 
 throughout life. Then reflection is aroused ; c* 
 we become aware of what we are doing. The 
 many details of each act and the relations 
 which surround it come separately into con- 
 scious attention for assessment, approval, or 
 rejection. This is the stage of spirit, or con- 
 sciousness. But it is not the final stage. As 
 we have seen in our example, a stage is possi- 
 ble when action runs swiftly to its intended 
 end, but with little need of conscious super- 
 vision. This mechanized, purposeful afitimy- Q 
 presents conduct in its third stage, that of 
 second nature or negative consciousness. As 
 this third is least understood, is often confused 
 with the first, and yet is in reality the complete 
 expression of the moral ideal and of that 
 reconciliation of nature and spirit of which 
 we are in search, I will devote a few pages 
 to its explanation. 
 
 The phrase negative consciousness describes 
 its character most exactly, though the meaning
 
 228 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 is not at once apparent. Positive conscious- 
 ness marks the second stage. There we are 
 obliged to think of each point involved, in or- 
 der to bring it into action. In piano-playing, 
 for example, I had to study my seat at the 
 piano, the music on the rack, the letters of the 
 keyboard, the position of my fingers, and the 
 coordination of all these with one another. 
 To each such matter a separate and positive 
 attention is given. But even at the last, when 
 I am playing at my ease, we cannot say that 
 consciousness is altogether absent. I am 
 conscious of the harmony, and if I do not 
 direct, I still verify results. As an entire 
 phrase of music rolls off my rapid fingers, I 
 judge it to be good. But if one of the notes 
 sticks, or I perceive that the phrase might be 
 improved by a slightly changed stress, I can 
 check my spontaneous movements and correct 
 the error. There is therefore a watchful, if 
 not a prompting, consciousness at work. It 
 is true that, the first note started, all the others 
 follow of themselves in natural sequence. 
 Though I withdraw attention from my fingers, 
 they run their round as a part of the associated 
 train. But if they go awry, consciousness is 
 ready with its inhibition. I accordingly call
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 229 
 
 this the stage of negative consciousness. In 
 it consciousness is not employed as a positive 
 guiding force, but the moment inhibition or 
 check is required for reaching the intended re- 
 sult, consciousness is ready and asserts itself in 
 the way of forbiddal. This third stage, there- 
 fore, differs from the first through having its 
 results embody a conscious purpose; from the 
 second, through having consciousness superin- 
 tend the process in a negative and hindering, 
 rather than in a positive and prompting way. 
 It is the stage of habit. I call it second nature 
 because it is worked, not by original instincts, 
 but by a new kind of associative mechanism 
 which must first be laboriously constructed. 
 
 Years ago when I began to teach at Harvard 
 College, we used to regard our students as roar- 
 ing animals, likely to destroy whatever came 
 in their way. We instructors were warned to 
 keep the doors of our lecture rooms barred. 
 As we came out, we must never fail to lock 
 them. So always in going to a lecture, as I 
 passed through the stone entry and approached 
 the door my hand sought my pocket, the key 
 came out, was inserted in the keyhole, turned, 
 was withdrawn, fell back into my pocket, and 
 I entered the room. This series of acts re-
 
 230 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 peated day after day had become so mechan- 
 ized that if on entering the room I had been 
 asked whether on that particular day I had 
 really unlocked the door, I could not have told. 
 The train took care of itself and I was not 
 concerned in it sufficiently for remembrance. 
 Yet it remained my act. On one or two occa- 
 sions, after shoving in the key in my usual un- 
 conscious fashion, I heard voices in the room 
 and knew that it would be inappropriate to 
 enter. Instantly I stopped and checked the 
 remainder of the train. Habitual though the 
 series of actions was, and ordinarily executed 
 without conscious guidance, it as a whole was 
 aimed at a definite end. If this were unat- 
 tainable, the train stopped. 
 
 All are aware how large a part is played by 
 such mechanization of conduct. Without it, 
 life could not go on. When a man walks to 
 the door, he does not decide where to set his 
 foot, what shall be the length of his step, 
 how he shall maintain his balance on the foot 
 that is down while the other is raised. These 
 matters were decided when he was a child. 
 In those infant years which seem to us intel- 
 lectually so stationary, a human being is prob- 
 ably making as large acquisitions as at any
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 231 
 
 period of his later life. He is testing alterna- 
 tives and organizing experience into ordered 
 trains. But in the rest of us a consolidation 
 substantially similar should be going on in 
 some section of our experience as long as we 
 live. For this is the way we develop : not 
 the total man at once, but this year one 
 tract of conduct is surveyed, judged, mecha- 
 nized ; and next year another goes through 
 the same maturing process. Not until such 
 mechanization has been accomplished is the 
 conduct truly ours. When, for example, I 
 am winning the power of speech, I gradually 
 cease to study exactly the word I utter, the 
 tone in which it is enunciated, how my tongue, 
 lips, and teeth shall be adjusted in reference 
 to one another. While occupied with these 
 things, I am no speaker. I become such only 
 when, the moment I think of a word, the 
 actions needed for its utterance set them- 
 selves in motion. With them I have only a 
 negative concern. Indeed, as we grow ma- 
 turer of speech, collocations of words stick 
 naturally together and offer themselves to our 
 service. When we require a certain range 
 of words from which to draw our means of 
 communication, there they stand ready. We
 
 232 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 have no need to rummage the dimness o the 
 past for them. Mechanically they are pre- 
 pared for our service. 
 
 Of course this does not imply that at one 
 period we foolishly believed consciousness to 
 be an important guide, but subsequently be- 
 coming wiser, discarded its aid. On the con- 
 trary, the mechanization of second nature is 
 simply a mode of extending the influence of 
 consciousness more widely. The conclusions 
 of our early lectures were sound. The more 
 fully expressive conduct can be of a self-con- 
 scious personality, so much the more will it 
 deserve to be called good. But in order that 
 it may in any wide extent receive this impress 
 of personal life, we must summon to our aid 
 agencies other than spiritual. The more we 
 mechanize conduct the better. That is what 
 maturing ourselves means. When we say that 
 a man has acquired character, we mean that 
 he has consciously surveyed certain large 
 tracts of life, and has decided what in those 
 regions it is best to do. There, at least, he will 
 no longer need to deliberate about action. 
 As soon as a case from this region presents 
 itself, some electric button in his moral or- 
 ganism is touched, and the whole mechanism
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 233 
 
 runs off in the surest, swiftest, easiest possible 
 way. Thus his consciousness is set free to 
 busy itself with other affairs. For in this 
 third stage we do not so much abandon con- 
 sciousness as direct it upon larger units ; and 
 this not because smaller units do not deserve 
 attention, but because they have been already 
 attended to. Once having decided what is 
 our best mode of action in regard to them, 
 we wisely turn them over to mechanical con- 
 trol. 
 
 IV 
 
 Such is the nature of moral habit. Before 
 goodness can reach excellence, it must be 
 rendered habitual. Consideration, the mark 
 of the second stage, disappears in the third. 
 We cannot count a person honest so long as 
 he has to decide on each occasion whether to 
 take advantage of his neighbor. Long ago 
 he should have disciplined himself into ma- 
 chine-like action as regards these matters, so 
 that the dishonest opportunity would be in- 
 stinctively and instantly dismissed, the honest 
 deed appearing spontaneously. That man has 
 not an amiable character who is obliged to re- 
 strain his irritation, and through all excitement 
 and inner rage curbs himself courageously.
 
 234 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 Not until conduct is spontaneous, rooted in a 
 second nature, does it indicate the character 
 of him from whom it proceeds. 
 
 That unconsciousness is necessary for the 
 highest goodness is a cardinal principle in the 
 teaching of Jesus. Other teachers of his na- 
 tion undertook clearly to survey the entirety 
 of human life, to classify its situations and 
 coolly to decide the amount of good and evil 
 contained in each. Righteousness according 
 to the Pharisees was found in conscious con- 
 formity to these decisions. Theirs was the 
 method of casuistry, the method of minute, 
 critical, and instructed judgment. The fields 
 of morality and the law were practically iden- 
 tified, goodness becoming externalized and re- 
 garded as everywhere substantially the same 
 for one man as for another. Pharisaism, in 
 short, stuck in the second stage. Jesus em- 
 phasized the unconscious and subjective fac- 
 tor. He denounced the considerate conduct 
 of the Pharisees as not righteousness at all. 
 It was mere will-worship. Jesus preached a 
 religion of the heart, and taught that right- 
 eousness must become an individual passion, 
 similar to the passions of hunger and thirst, 
 if it would attain to any worth. So long aaJ
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 235 
 pvil is ffl,fiy flnrl tin/hira! Inr ng ; pnd gft^H dif- 
 
 ficult, wq are evil. W A mnst.be born again. 
 We must attain a new nature. Our right 
 hand must not know what our left hand does. 
 We must become as little children, if we 
 would enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The chief difficulty in comprehending this 
 doctrine of the three stages lies in the easy 
 confusion of the first and the third. Jesus 
 guards against this, not bidding us to be or 
 to remain children, but to become such. The 
 unconsciousness and simplicity of childhood is 
 the goal, not the starting-point. The uncon- 
 sciousness aimed at is not of the same kind as 
 that with which we set out. In early life we 
 catch the habits of our home or even derive 
 our conduct from hereditary bias. We be- 
 gin, therefore, as purely natural creatures, not 
 asking whether the ways we use are the best. 
 Those ways are already fixed in the usages of 
 speech, the etiquettes of society, the laws of 
 our country. These things make up the un- 
 criticised warp and woof of our lives, often 
 admirably beautiful lives. When speaking in 
 my last chapter of the way in which our age 
 has come to eulogize guidance by natural 
 conditions, I might have cited as a striking
 
 236 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 illustration the prevalent worship of childhood. 
 Only within the last century has the child cut 
 much of a figure in literature. He is an im- 
 portant enough figure to-day, both in and out 
 of books. In him nature is displayed within 
 the spiritual field, nature with the possibilities 
 of spirit, but those possibilities not yet real- 
 ized. We accordingly reverence the child and 
 delight to watch him. How charming he is, 
 graceful in movement, swift of speech, pictur- 
 esque in action ! Enviable little being ! The 
 more so because he is able to retain his per- 
 fection for so brief a time. 
 
 But we all know the unhappy period from 
 seven to fourteen when he who formerly was 
 all grace and spontaneity discovers that he 
 has too many arms and legs. How disagree- 
 able the boy then becomes ! Before, we liked 
 to see him playing about the room. Now we 
 ask why he is allowed to remain. For he is 
 a ceaseless disturber ; constantly noisy and 
 constantly aware of making a noise, his ex- 
 cuses are as bad as his indiscretions. He 
 cannot speak without making some awkward 
 blunder. He is forever asking questions with- 
 out knowing what to do with the answers. 
 A confused and confusing creature ! We say
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 237 
 
 he has grown backward. Where before he 
 was all that is estimable, he has become all 
 that we do not wish him to be. 
 
 All that we do not wish him to be, but cer- 
 tainly much more what God wishes him to be. 
 For if we could get rid of our sense of annoy- 
 ance, we should see that he is here reaching 
 a higher stage, coming into his heritage and 
 obtaining a life of his own. Formerly he lived 
 merely the life of those about him. He laid 
 a self-conscious grasp on nothing of his own. 
 When now at length he does lay that grasp, 
 we must permit him to be awkward, and to 
 us disagreeable. We should aid him through 
 the inaccurate, slow, and fatiguing period of 
 his existence until, having tested many tracts 
 of life and learned in them how to mechanize 
 desirable conduct, he comes back on their far- 
 ther side to a childhood more beautiful than 
 the original. Many a man and woman pos 
 sesses this disciplined childhood through life 
 Goodness seems the very atmosphere thej 
 breathe, and everything they do to be exactly 
 fitting. Their acts are performed with ful 
 self-expression, yet without strut or intrusion 
 of consciousness. Whatever comes from them 
 is happily blended and organized into the
 
 58 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 ptirety of life. Such should be our aim. 
 r e should seek to be born again, and not to 
 [remain where we were originally born. 
 
 V 
 
 In what has now been said there is a 
 good deal of comfort for those who suffer 
 the pains of self-consciousness, previously de- 
 scribed. They need not seek a lower degree 
 of self-consciousness, but only to distribute 
 more wisely what they now possess. In full- 
 ness of consciousness they may well rejoice, 
 recognizing its possession as a power. But 
 they should take a larger unit for its exercise. 
 In meeting a friend, for example, we are prone 
 to think of ourselves, how we are speaking or 
 poising our body. But suppose we transfer 
 our consciousness to the subject of our talk, 
 and allow ourselves a hearty interest in that. 
 Leaving the details of speech and posture to 
 mechanized past habits, we may turn all the 
 force of our conscious attention on the fresh 
 issues of the discussion. With these we may 
 identify ourselves, and so experience the en- 
 largement which new materials bring. When 
 we were studying the intricacies of self-sacri- 
 fice, we found that the generous man is_not_
 
 THE THESE STAGES OF GOODNESS 239 
 
 so much the self-denier or even the self-for- 
 getter, but rather he who is mindful of his 
 largejLSfllf. He turns consciousness from his 
 abstract and isolated self and fixes it upon 
 his related and conjunct self. But that is a 
 process which may go on everywhere. Our rule 
 should be to withdraw attention from isolated 
 minutiae, for which a glance is sufficient. 
 Giving merely that glance, we may then leave 
 them to themselves. Encouraging them to 
 become mechanized, we should use these me- 
 chanized trains in the higher ranges of living. 
 The cure for self-consciousness is not suppress, 
 sion, but the turning of it upon something! 
 more significant. 
 
 VI 
 
 Every habit, however, requires perpetual ad- 
 justment, or it may rule us instead of allow- 
 ing us to rule through it. We do well to let 
 alone our mechanized trains while they do not 
 lead us into evil. So long as they run in the 
 right direction, instincts are better than in- 
 tentions. But repeatedly we need to study 
 results, and see if we are arriving at the 
 goal where we would be. If not, then habit 
 requires readjustment. From such negative
 
 240 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 control a habit should never be allowed to 
 escape. This great world of ours does not 
 stand still. Every moment its conditions are 
 altering. Whatever action fits it now will be 
 pretty sure to be a slight misfit next year. 
 'No one can be thoroughly good who is not a 
 flexible person, capable of drawing back his 
 trains, reexamining them, and bringing them 
 into better adjustment to his purposes. 
 
 It is meaningless, then, to ask whether we 
 should be intuitive and spontaneous, or con- 
 iderate and deliberate. There is no such 
 alternative. We need both dispositions. We 
 should seek to attain a condition of swift 
 spontaneity, of abounding freedom, of the 
 absence of all restraint, and should not rest 
 satisfied with the conditions in which we were 
 3orn. But we must not suffer that even the 
 new nature should be allowed to become alto- 
 ether natural. It should be but the natu- 
 ral engine for spiritual ends, itself repeatedly 
 scrutinized with a view to their better fulfill- 
 ment. 
 
 VII 
 
 The doctrine of the three stages of conduct, 
 elaborated in this chapter, explains some curi- 
 ous anomalies in the bestowal of praise, and
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 241 
 
 at the same time receives from that doctrine 
 farther elucidation. When is conduct praise- 
 worthy ? When may we fairly claim honor 
 from our fellows and ourselves ? There is a 
 ready answer. Nothing is praiseworthy which 
 is not the result of effort. I do not praise a 
 lady for her heauty, I admire her. The ath- 
 lete's splendid body I envy, wishing that mine 
 were like it. But I do not praise him. Or 
 does the reader hesitate ; and while acknow- 
 ledging that admiration and envy may be our 
 leading feelings here, think that a certain 
 measure of praise is also due ? It may be. 
 Perhaps the lady has been kind enough by 
 care to heighten her beauty. Perhaps those 
 powerful muscles are partly the result of 
 daily discipline. These persons, then, are not 
 undeserving of praise, at least to the extent 
 that they have used effort. Seeing a collec- 
 tion of china, I admire the china, but praise 
 the collector. It is hard to obtain such pieces. 
 Large expense is required, long training too, 
 and constant watchfulness. Accordingly I 
 am interested in more than the collection. I 
 give praise to the owner. A learned man we 
 admire, honor, envy, but also praise. His 
 wisdom is the result of effort.
 
 242 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 / Plainly, then, praise and blame are attribu- 
 (table exclusively to spiritual beings. Nature 
 is unfit for honor. We may admire her, may 
 wish that our ways were like hers, and envy 
 her great law-abiding calm. But it would be 
 foolish to praise her, or even to blame when 
 her volcanoes overwhelm our friends. We 
 praise spirit only, conscious deeds. Where 
 self -directed action forces its path to a worthy 
 goal, we rightly praise the director. 
 
 Now, if all this is true, there seems often- 
 times a strange unsuitableness in praise. We 
 may well decline to receive it. To praise 
 some of our good qualities, pretty fundamen- 
 tal ones too, often strikes us as insulting. 
 You are asked a sudden question and put 
 in a difficult strait for an answer. " Yes," I 
 say, " but you actually did tell the truth. I 
 wish to congratulate you. You were suc- 
 cessful and deserve much praise." But who 
 would feel comfortable under such eulogy ? 
 And why not ? If telling the truth is a spir- 
 itual excellence and the result of effort, why 
 should it not be praised ? But there lies the 
 trouble. I assumed that to be a truth-teller 
 required strain on your part. In reality it 
 would have required greater strain for false-
 
 THE THESE STAGES OF GOODNESS 243 
 
 hood. It might then seem that I should 
 those who are not easily excellent, since I ai 
 forbidden to praise those who are. And some 
 thing like this seems actually approved. 
 a boy on the street, who has been trained 
 hardly to distinguish truth from lies, some day 
 stumbles into a bit of truth, I may justly 
 praise him. " Splendid fellow ! No word of 
 falsehood there ! " But when I see the fa- 
 ther of his country bearing his little hatchet, 
 praise is unfit ; for George Washington cannot. 
 tell a lie. 
 
 Absurd as this conclusion appears, I believe 
 it states our soundest moral judgment; for 
 
 jisenever escapes an element of disparage- 
 
 haj3pnfiil. If I praise a man for learning, it 
 is because I had supposed him ignorant ; if 
 for helping the unfortunate, I hint that I did 
 not anticipate that he would regard any but 
 himself. Wherever praise appears, we cannot 
 evade the suggestion that excellence is a mat- 
 ter of surprise. And as nobody likes to be 
 thought ill-adapted to excellence, praise may 
 rightly be resented. 
 
 It is true, there is a group of cases where 
 praise seems differently employed. We can
 
 244 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 praise those whom we recognize as high and 
 lifted up. " Sing praises unto the Lord, sing 
 praises," the Psalmist says. And our hearts 
 respond. We feel it altogether appropriate. 
 We do not disparage God by daily praise. 
 No, but the element of disparagement is still 
 present, for we are really disparaging our- 
 selves. That is the true significance of praise 
 offered to the confessedly great. For them, the 
 praise is inappropriate. But it is, neverthe- 
 less, appropriate that it should be offered by 
 us little people who stand below and look up. 
 Praising the wise man, I really declare my 
 ignorance to be so great that I have difficulty 
 in conceiving myself in his place. For me, 
 it would require long years of forbidding 
 work before I could attain to his wisdom. 
 And even in the extreme form of this praise 
 of superiors, substantially the same meaning 
 holds. We praise God in order to abase our- 
 selves. Him we cannot really praise. That 
 we understand at the start. He is beyond 
 commendation. Excellence covers him like a 
 garment, and is not attained, like ours, by 
 struggle through obstacles. Yet this differ- 
 ence between him and us we can only express 
 by trying to imagine ourselves like him, and
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 245 
 
 saying how difficult such excellence would 
 then be. We have here, therefore, a sort 
 of reversed praise, where the disparagement 
 which praise always carries falls exclusively 
 on the praiser. And such cases are by no 
 means uncommon, cases in which there is at 
 least a pretense on the praiser's part of setting 
 himself below the one praised. But praise 
 usuaUy proceeds down from above, and then, 
 implicitly, we disparage him whom we profess 
 to exalt. 
 
 Nor do I see how this is to be avoided ; 
 for praise belongs to goodness gained by ef- 
 fort, while excellence is not reached till effort 
 ceases in second nature. To assert through 
 praise that goodness is still a struggle is to 
 set the good man back from our third stage 
 to our second. In fact by the time he really 
 reaches excellence praise has lost its fitness, 
 goodness now being easier than badness, and 
 no longer something difficult, unexpected, and 
 demanding reward. For this reason those 
 persons are usuaUy most greedy of praise 
 who have a rather low opinion of themselves. 
 Being afraid that they are not remarkable, 
 they are peculiarly delighted when people 
 assure them that they are. Accordingly the
 
 246 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS 
 
 greatest protection against vanity is pride. 
 The proud man, assured of his powers, hears 
 the little praisers and is amused. How much 
 more he knows about it than they ! Inner 
 worth stops the greedy ear. When we have] 
 something to be vain about, we are seldom] 
 
 vain. 
 
 VIII 
 
 But if all this is true, why should praise be 
 sweet ? In candor most of us will own that 
 there is little else so desired. When almost 
 every other form of dependence is laid by, to 
 our secret hearts the good words of neigh- 
 bors are dear. And well they may be ! Our 
 pleasure testifies how closely we are knitted 
 together. We cannot be satisfied with a 
 separated consciousness, but demand that the 
 consciousness of all shall respond to our own. 
 A glorious infirmity then ! And the peculiar 
 sweetness which praise brings is grounded in 
 the consciousness of our weakness. In cer- 
 tain regions of my life, it is true, goodness 
 has become fairly natural ; and there of 
 course praise strikes me as ill-adjusted and dis- 
 tasteful. I do not like to have my manners 
 praised, my honesty, or my diligence. But 
 there are other tracts where I know I am
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 247 
 
 still in the stage of conscious effort. In this 
 extensive region, aware of my feebleness and 
 hearing an inward call to greater heights, it 
 will always be cheering to hear those about 
 me say, " Well done ! " Of course in saying 
 this they will inevitably hint that I have not 
 yet reached an end, and their praises will dis- 
 please unless I too am ready to acknowledge 
 my incompleteness. But when this is ac- 
 knowledged, praise is welcome and invigorat- 
 ing. I suspect we deal in it too little. If 
 imagination were more active, and we were 
 more willing to enter sympathetically the in- 
 ner life of our struggling and imperfect com- 
 rades, we should bestow it more liberally. 
 Occasion is always at hand. None of us ever 
 quite passes beyond the deliberate, conscious, 
 and praise-deserving line. In some parts of 
 our being we are farther advanced, and may 
 there be experiencing the peace and assurance 
 of a considerable second nature. But there 
 too perpetual verification is necessary. And so 
 many tracts remain unsubdued or capable of 
 higher cultivation that throughout our lives, 
 perhaps on into eternity, effort will still find 
 room for work, and suitable praises may at- 
 tend it.
 
 REFERENCES ON THE THREE STAGES OF 
 GOODNESS 
 
 James's Psychology, ch. iv. 
 
 Bain's Emotions and the Will, ch. ix. 
 
 Wundt's Facts of the Moral Life, ch. iii. 
 
 Stephen's Science of Ethics, ch. vii. iii. 
 
 Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, pt. ii. bk. i. ch. iii.
 
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 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
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