# Philosophical Review/Volume 29/Number 6/Principles in Ethics (I)

THE
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
PRINCIPLES IN ETHICS
I
IN the present discussion I am going to assume without argument that the origin of moral judgments, and the final source of the confidence a man may feel that his own intuitions of value are justified, are to be located not in 'reason,' but in certain pre-rational elements of impulse and of feeling. However important the part reason has to play, it is not its work to set ultimately the ends of conduct and supply their raw material; and any attempt to give to it a primary rôle will result in turning ethical principles into abstractions that have no virtue in them for the actual guidance of human life. When one turns, however, to the education or development of the ethical life, the emphasis will need to be differently placed. What we call refinement of feeling would seem indeed to be in large measure refinement of perception. Goodness is hardly separable from a certain moral tact, a sympathetic sensitiveness to niceties of quality and conduct; and progress lies not so much in strengthening the feelings—these may already be strong enough where they are actually evoked, as is shown by the ease with which even a hardened audience can be worked up over some fictitious case presented vividly on the stage—as in cultivating a capacity to see the occasion of sympathy in a wider range of situations, and a superior responsiveness to those shades of a situation calculated to evoke the inhibitive impulses and feelings. The callous man, on the other hand, is the man who acts to a morally irrelevant part of the situation. The unscrupulous business man admires himself ​for his business acumen—a thing admirable enough in itself; but he fails to note how inadequate an account it gives of the total fact.
I propose then to ask in what general form reason can be applied to the ethical life, as a source of principles to guide us in the search for our best good. A principle, we should note, is something more than a mere generalization, fact, or truth. Every principle rests indeed upon a foundation of fact; and it is necessary to emphasize this in order to repudiate again the notion that in reason we have an immediate intuition of absolute ends. Take any formula that has been proposed as a starting-point for ethics—the proposition that we ought to be reasonable, or that we ought to lead a unified life, or that we ought to work for the general good. Of each of these, as purely intellectual propositions, it is legitimate to ask the question, Why ought we? We reach no resting place till we get hold of something that is not a rational intuition, or a principle, but a fact. And since the fact can hardly be that we are always reasonable, or always unified, or that we always act for the general good, the ultimate thing we are left with is the fact of approval, as an empirical expression of human nature. Unless we found ourselves—for no one can tell why human nature is of this sort rather than another, or indeed why it is at all—so constituted that some things are pronounced good by us and others not so good, no ideal, or principle, or guiding insight would be possible. And this fact of approval, again, is only one aspect, in terms of feeling, of that larger fact of the human constitution which we accept on the strength of the established convergence of common sense and science. But to get anything we can call a principle, we have to go beyond this. A principle always implies as well a connection with human practice; it is a general truth which can be used to suggest to us what it is we ought to do. Accordingly, if we are to be sure what we are after in the search for ethical principles, it is well to translate the problem into these specific terms: Granting the existence of human nature and its wants, can we point out anything as in general necessary to the attainment of those ends which man will find himself permanently approving?
​It will be noticed that the possibility of such necessary principles is supplied, without going outside the limits of an empirical view of the world, by the peculiar nature of the fact on which they rest. It is of course true that if human nature were to change fundamentally, the principles stating what is now necessary to its satisfaction would no longer hold. We have to start with man's constitution as we find it, empirical and contingent. But this does not interfere with the possibility of real principles dealing with the ethically best, because 'best' is for us a word explicitly relating to man as he is. And we are freed from the uncertainty of mere empiricism, simply because our supposed necessity attaches not to a generalization of events and instances, but to the necessary connection between a want or group of wants, and the known conditions of their satisfaction. Granting both the existence of desire, and the world in which it tries to get expression and both these things are facts that are practically assured—we can anticipate further experience, and say generally, not only that men have commonly done so and so, but that so and so must be done. And the necessity remains whether or not men have done this in the past. This is, to be sure, in the end hypothetical necessity only; but since none of us have any vital interest in inquiring what we should need to do if we were apes or angels, the principles practically, though not theoretically, remain absolute.
Before inquiring, however, into the general source and nature of such principles, I should like to go back, from a slightly different standpoint, to the basic fact which principles of guidance presuppose. In scientific language this fact is, again, the biological organism and its mechanism of instinct. These however are not the terms in which life presents itself to the natural man while he is actually engaged in living it; and it will be useful, in order to avoid ambiguities later on, to ask what is the translation of this scientific fact into more ordinary human discourse. The value of dealing with this preliminary definition first, lies in a temptation on the part of ethical philosophies to confuse the question of fact with that of ethical norm or standard, and to suppose that they are furnishing a guide to life when ​their real task is still before them. A number of the phrases which philosophers have used to describe the end of human conduct, or the Summum Bonum, are in reality no more than descriptions in this sense of the de facto end identifiable with the character of life as such; they are blanket terms that do not by themselves give us any practical directions about the road we ought to take for the attainment of the best. Thus even if it were the case that what every human being really is after is to secure his own pleasure, we should still have the ethical problem on our hands: what kinds of pleasure are we to select if the end is to be successfully attained?
Of the various formulas that profess to describe the character of life, that of pleasure is historically the most wide-spread; but its inadequacy has been so often pointed out that it is unnecessary to consider its claims here. All men, at one time or another, set pleasure among their aims of conduct; some men, it may be, make it the one rule of life. But that the normal mind reckons life only as a means to the gratification of its private feelings, is simply not the case. In instructed circles, a different type of formula is now therefore chiefly current, pointing back in one form or another to that scientific fact which traditional hedonism failed sufficiently to take into account—the biological life with its predisposed mechanism. The first way of putting the matter which this suggests, is that we stick to the fact in its lowest terms, and interpret life in accordance with the scientific notion of 'self-preservation.' And as a matter of fact such a formula has had a very considerable vogue. It is too simple, however, and too bare of content, to stand any chance of justifying itself to impartial inspection. To hold with Hobbes that men actually regard the preservation of themselves in existence as the one self-evident goal never to be lost sight of, is to be blind to the greater part of human experience; it gives no heed to the deep-lying recklessness of human nature, its fondness for taking a sporting chance, and is quite inconsistent with intentional self-sacrifice. Nor does science overlook this; and if biological preservation is its watchword, it at least is not self-preservation, but the preservation of the race. But this only brings into relief ​the fact that life is more than biology. It may be so that, keeping to the purely animal plane, 'nature' is only interested in keeping the species alive—though the statement seems more poetic than scientific. It may even be that for themselves men ought to make this their sole aim. But it is quite clear that men do not make it their comprehensive definition of living.
The more ethical form in which the same general point of view has commonly issued is much more nearly adequate. This is the formula of self-realization. It may be admitted that this phrase gives an account, and a fairly true account, of the psychological situation, just as preservation perhaps does of the biological. Life is as a matter of fact the expression or realization of the self, as a center of potencies and impulses to action. But the same objection can be brought against self-realization that applies to pleasure; self-realization, no more than pleasure, is the thing at which most people are conscious of aiming. Some of them indeed do make it their aim; there are men for whom their own self-development constitutes the conscious end and motive of their lives. But this itself is enough to eliminate the term for our present purpose. Discussions about the self-realization principle have suffered from this ambiguity; the phrase is used at one time as a statement of what every act as a matter of fact is, and at another, when qualified implicitly in terms of completeness, or harmony, or all-roundness, as a specific kind of life at which some men consciously aim as the best. But as a statement of what all men do, it ceases to represent what consciously they think of themselves as doing; as a statement of what some men consciously set before themselves as an end, it is plainly not universal.
Somewhat closer to the biological formula of self-preservation is another phrase which has played a conspicuous part in recent writings. If we translate into less literal terms that assertion of oneself, in the form of superiority over one's surroundings, which self-preservation seems to imply, we might be led to think of experience as a striving after power—the consciousness of dominating the conditions of one's life. Such a mode of expression, congenial alike to a popularized theory of evolution and ​to the natural human fondness for self-glorification, has been taken up and given vogue by a number of philosophic and semi-philosophic writers. That such a will to power may, in an aggressive personality, be consciously chosen as the highest good, history sufficiently shows. But to extend the title to cover dissentient ideals also, though properly interpreted it may find some justification, and for literary purposes may prove effective, will yet appear, from the very need of interpretation, not to be our normal human way of thinking of the comprehensive end of living. Men do not in any ordinary sense of the word simply want power. They want a variety of things in particular, of which power constitutes qualitatively only one of many characteristics; and while it is doubtless true that all of them involve energizing in some degree, it does not in the least follow that this necessary condition can adequately describe the concrete outcome men are after.
Perhaps in view of the difficulty in describing 'life,' it might after all be left as its own interpreter; and indeed we know quite well what living means if we do not try to put it into words. But there remains one simple and unambitious formula which seems to me fairly successful in conveying this meaning, and which I shall find it convenient to use, and to presuppose in the subsequent discussion. Life, namely, means doing things that we find interesting and important. A common defect in most of the preceding definitions is that they suppose the eye turned inward to the self; whereas it is definitely characteristic of a normal and healthy notion of life that it should be disinterested and outward-looking. The self is indeed taken for granted; its needs and their satisfaction are involved. But it is the essence of the natural view that it should have its interest and its attention directed to things rather than to feelings, to a career or cause rather than to myself. Accordingly I shall, as I say, adopt this without further comment as a working formula.
But supposing we are willing to agree that a search for congenial tasks is an accurate and fairly adequate transcription of the end we set before us in living, our main work has just begun. What, we have to ask, constitutes a congenial task? What kind ​of work in particular carries with it our settled sense of approval so that we pronounce it really and permanently, and not just 'apparently,' good? Are there any general principles here to be discovered on scrutiny which will guide us in our actual quest, or are we left wholly to chance and the rule of thumb?
Now if an ethical principle is a statement about what it is necessary to do in order to be able to lead a satisfying life, it is clear that we shall discover such principles, not in the realm of 'self-evident truths,' but by looking to the facts of experience, and trying to find out what these actually have to say about the possibilities of successful living. The most natural way to classify principles would therefore be in terms of the kind of fact to which we are appealing. And of relevant facts there are three general sorts. First, there are the purely formal conditions which success involves—the abstract methods, that is, that a human being has to follow if he is to get a chance at concrete satisfaction. Second, there are the external conditions he is bound to take into account, since life involves not only desire and interest, but the surroundings under which interests have to get their fulfillment. And, third, there are the inner conditions in terms of the concrete potentialities of man's nature, which set the lines along which satisfaction is possible.
The first or formal principles are of two general sorts, both so obvious as to need no extended discussion. It is evident to begin with that, considering the sort of being man is, a successful life must be a rational life. It must not, that is, be merely impulsive and haphazard, but must submit impulse to rational reflection, and act only after an impartial scrutiny alike of the outer facts, and of the relative value of aims and ideals such as comes from deliberate self-knowledge. It is well to note once more that the maxim, 'Be rational,' does not of itself tell us in the least what is rational; as a principle it is purely formal, and no one but the abstract thinker, concerned less with life itself than with its scientific technique, would be likely to suppose that it covers our ethical needs. But as a formal precondition to any such discovery of the best life, it is quite indispensable.
As the first formal principle, or set of principles, attaches to ​the intellect as a tool of the good life, so the second attaches to the will. If no man can reasonably expect success unless he puts his mind to the business, so no man can look to getting what he wants apart from certain qualities of will. The world is not a place where feebleness, vacillation, laziness, are tolerated; this is something we can lay down a priori and universally. A precondition of satisfaction, and even, in almost every case, of avoiding disaster, is a certain capacity for effort, and a steady loyalty to the course of conduct which reason and self-interest have laid down.
Bringing us nearer to the concrete facts of living is the second main group of principles, which come from the nature of the world that reason is compelled to recognize. They most of them fall again under two heads. On the one hand are the demands of biological well-being. Save for very exceptional reasons, a plan of life which ignores the primary demands of the body, leads to ill health or a constant overdrain of energy, encourages low spirits and depression, is a plan which we can say beforehand is not going to work in practice. No man who does not as a regular thing, in so far as it lies within his own power, wake up in the morning refreshed and feeling fit to tackle the day's job, can flatter himself that as a human being he is a success.
The second most general sort of external condition which enlightened self-interest has to take into account, is the social fact—the nature and disposition of our fellows. So long as happiness depends so largely as it does upon the way in which other men behave toward us, one who ignores this in his plans, and sets out as if he had only his own interests to consult, is acting like a fool. If we injure others they will be resentful and try to hurt us in turn; if we are proud and disdainful they will dislike and speak ill of us; if we treat them with a show of consideration we shall be more likely to get what we want out of them. Such facts are familiar to everyone. And in view of them we are often able to lay down with practical universality various principles of conduct; so long as men live in society, they cannot go to work to attain their ends along lines which ​ignore the wishes and opinions of other men, and expect to reach their goal.
Meanwhile such principles are hardly as yet constitutive of the good life; they are mostly negative, as the first were formal. And what we are most anxious to discover is, not what we have to avoid merely, but what we have to do; along what lines of effort and activity, positive and concrete, can we hope to find the satisfied life? And in order to clear the ground, I shall turn to begin with to two possible theories about the positive content of the good life, both of which I shall find occasion to reject. The first is the very plausible claim which sets out to find the governing principle of the moral life in terms of purely objective 'good.' It has often appeared to philosophers and to moral enthusiasts alike, that the thing we ought to do, the life we ought to aim to live, is that which shall realize the greatest possible quantity of value. The plausibility of this becomes perhaps most apparent in connection with our natural hesitation to give an affirmative answer to the question, Ought I to be content with anything short of the maximum of good within my power to produce? If I have a chance to create either more or less of good by my efforts, can I reconcile it with my conscience knowingly to choose the less?
Before starting to consider this, we should first make clear that we are not interpreting the thesis in a way to beg the question. Of course if by good we mean 'morally good,' or that which 'ought to be,' we can hardly escape the conviction that that which has the greater claim on our duty we ought to do. But this is to empty the supposed principle of any practical meaning. As a practical guide what it needs to maintain is, that 'natural' good, in its widest and most comprehensive sense, is capable of summation, and that our sense of duty arises only after we have completed the summation, and found on what side the maximum of natural good lies.
A first objection to this is, that it presents us with what on the practical side seems an almost hopeless task. How in the world are we ever going to find in the concrete an answer to the problem, Where lies the greatest amount of absolute good? ​It would be bad enough even were we all agreed on the comparison of various goods, and knew just how much weight ought to attach in our calculation to the creation of an object of beauty, say, as over against an equal effort spent in health-producing exercise, or in giving good advice to our friends—all of them supposedly goods of a sort. The mere quantitative complexity is itself enough to destroy any real chance of ever coming to a rational conclusion. Ethics, to be sure, need not set its demand quite so high as this; it might be content with such factors as the human mind could reasonably be expected to lay hold of. But even this would at each moment of choice set a painful and laborious task of calculation, which at least would be likely to prove fatal to the freshness and spontaneity of the moral life. But now the supposition that the factors, though numerous, are in them- selves unambiguous, and that there is no particular difficulty in ranking simple goods, is of course quite contrary to fact. Not only do men fail to agree, but no man agrees with himself at all times; and often his judgment about the relative value of things in themselves is in the highest degree tentative and uncertain.
But there is a more fundamental defect in the method proposed. It is important, if we are ever to expect any definite guidance in the good life, and are not to be put off with abstractions, to emphasize the fact that the good is, up to a point, incurably specific and individual. One of the most serious failings of ethical thought has been its imperfect vision of the multiplicity of human ideals. In its sense for the urgent need of introducing unity and harmony into the ethical experience, it has tended to ignore the individual aspect which ideals must take on before they are fit to stand for anything that real human beings actually want. In this tendency it has been backed and abetted by one of the most universal of human failings. The principle, Live and let live, seldom has played any but a very modest rôle in history. Our first reaction toward national and racial ideals other than our own is that of intolerance; and if experience and necessity have compelled the Englishman, say, to give up part of his natural contempt for the frog-eating Frenchman, he still ​retains it almost in full measure in the case of more backward peoples. That China or India should have any real contribution to offer to the science of living, is to the natural mind unthinkable. Even so near a neighbor as the Irishman is an unfortunate mistake of nature, rather than a possible enrichment to the content of the universal life. And this is true equally of class and individual ideals. Indeed the intolerance is apt to be more pronounced in proportion as ideals are held more strongly and sincerely. The easy-going man of the world may be willing to grant the same indulgence to his neighbors that he claims for himself; but the idealist, the enthusiast, is more often than not so intrigued with his own more excellent way that he is impatient of a different valuation, even when he is not ready to set to work to make it practically as unpleasant as possible for those who show other preferences.
In view of the plain fact, then, that men are differently built, with a bent toward widely various kinds of work and interest, no rational principle taken by itself can possibly tell us what sort of life in the concrete a man is suited to. The true fact lies below the surface of the rational consciousness, and can be discovered only by an experiment in living. This experimenting each man has in the end to do for himself; and the result at which he arrives will be true for himself and not for his neighbors. There are innumerable ways of accomplishing good in the world, with wide differences of quantitative result; and it is not reasonable to call upon any man to adjust his own life to these objective possibilities independently of the sort of thing for which he is himself particularly fitted, his fitness being evidenced to himself in the end by the call he feels, and the assured content that comes to him in the process.
Such an insistence on individual liking as the primary determinant of the personal ideal, as against an appeal to objective and absolute standards, will doubtless seem to some too little strenuous, and too indifferent to the lofty character of duty and the dominant claims of the good. It is always possible to bring about in oneself a feeling of unworthiness by contrasting the needs of the world with the actual achievements of any individual ​life, and so to leave an uneasy sense that we have no right to insist upon personal claims to satisfaction. Such a feeling is a useful element in human nature for heightening the quality of experience, and spurring men to larger endeavor; but like any other human feeling it will, if we detach it from its instrumental service and hold it alone before the mind, get out of perspective, and carry an emotional insistence which reason fails to justify. It is perhaps best answered by letting it have in imagination its way, and then asking whether the results appeal to our sense of approval. And when I ask, Does the life which, in spite of achievement, fails of permanent content and satisfaction in the career which it has chosen, really justify itself to me as a good life, one that is successful and that has achieved its end? I can only reply that it does not. Of course one might conceivably maintain that only in a life-long sacrifice of personal interests does true satisfaction lie; and that there are natures of which this may be so is very probable. The feeling of 'unworthiness' sometimes becomes so abnormally acute as to spoil the most innocent forms of personal realization, and to sting its victim into a constant crucifixion of his natural desires. But that such a thing is generally so of mankind is not in the least true. Indeed one of the things that ethical wisdom is constantly called upon to combat, is this belief that mere attainment, work done, going after results, is the true way of life, even though in themselves the results are what we commonly approve as good. But, it may be said, is there not, in fact, a value in achievement even apart from whether it makes the man who does the work happy in the doing? To be sure there may be—for other people. But a theory which starts to find the clue to a successful life in its social effects can hardly universalize itself. What of these others who enjoy the fruits of a man's unenjoying toils? why should they have more enjoyment than he? And if they too are to sacrifice happiness in work to the creation of commodities for their neighbors, in the end everybody alike fails of satisfaction. But also there is an empirical answer which goes a long way toward rebutting such a claim—the fact that on the whole, and in the long run, it is very doubtful whether the sum total of goods is ​really increased by toil which is not the outcome of personal appreciation. Unless one is obsessed by the idea of pure quantity, he must recognize that a great deal of even conscientious work is done which the world would be quite as well off without. Quality, on the other hand, almost invariably comes from the man who is interested in his job.
And there is a further qualification which may help to quiet moralistic scruples, the distinction between our career in the large, in so far as we can aim at it with conscious deliberation and foresight, and the emergencies which, in a world like the present one, constantly intrude themselves upon us. Now these last present themselves not seldom to our natural moral feeling as exceptions to the general principle of 'living one's own life.' In so far as a man can plan his life for himself,—and more and more this is coming to represent one of the necessary requirements of a tolerable social order,—then it ought not in the normal mind to give rise to the least sense of unworthiness when he deliberately seeks to know his own wants and interests, and to shape his career so as to the fullest extent possible to give play to these, and evoke thereby the greatest satisfaction open to his nature. But it is only within limits that we can thus determine our field of conduct. Life presents many hard-and-fast choices. Demands are made quite independently of any will of ours; responsibilities are put upon us by circumstances beyond our control. Now when such occasions arise, it is often, to be sure, still possible to evade the responsibilities that would lead us into uncongenial fields, and to stick to the pleasanter paths to which our natural likings point us; and it is not necessary to pronounce upon the nature of what in such a dilemma it is our duty to choose. This is indeed indeterminable, except in view of the special circumstances of the particular case. Often a wrong perspective makes such external claims seem far more important than they really are, and they ought not to be allowed to interfere with our fixed plans, and to dissipate our lives. But there will be little question that while we do not call upon a man in the abstract to sacrifice to impersonal demands the interests which appeal to him individually, we do normally tend ​to despise the person who cannot on occasion, for due cause shown, subordinate his private scheme of life to some larger and less personally appealing cause. Thus I doubt if there would be any general condemnation of the life of the recluse as such. Anyone who felt that for him the good was to be attained by withdrawing from the conflict of the world would not be regarded as of the highest human type; but he would hardly be of necessity morally despised. But a recluse who should persist in his seclusion when he might render important service to his country at war, would most certainly arouse in us a feeling of moral reprobation. And situations the same in principle arise constantly in the course of the most normal living. The very commitment to a given line of conduct automatically gives rise to responsibilities which do not limit themselves to our prearranged plans. And when responsibilities are assumed, or imposed, we cannot judge the man who does not meet them with some regard to the relative quantitative importance of interests, without a feeling of distaste.
This is the truth contained in the ethical principle, 'my vocation and its duties.' Such a principle is defective in the form in which it has sometimes been defended, because it inclines to think of my 'vocation' as settled for me; it minimizes the essential need that I should be enabled to choose my own vocation and adopt it freely, and so lends itself to a political and social conservatism. But when we have once allowed that 'vocation' is something which ought of itself to be determined from within, and that social arrangements should be directed to this end, there still remains a large field within which, if I am to be able to retain my self-respect, duty must help to shape my life as well as inclination; since a vocation once assumed can only be carried on in a world constantly presenting me with unwelcome alternatives, which however I can ignore only at the risk of feeling degraded in my own eyes. Nor, of course, is it possible to free ourselves entirely from the coërcion of circumstances even in the choice of a vocation at the start. A man of conscience, born to high rank or vast wealth, and so made responsible for large interests in terms of possible human welfare, or one whom ​chance has shouldered with an enterprise which it then seems cowardly to desert, or who is conscious in himself of powers to meet some crisis for which no one else seems to have the ability or the will—such an one may find it his duty to sacrifice those ends which he really is eager for, and endure, in his vocation, the exactions of an uncongenial taskmaster. One might fairly be asked to test such an instance very carefully, and first make sure he is not under the influence of the romantic illusion. It is not always that the facts bear out this assumption of a man's indispensableness; and it may very well be false pride, or an unacknowledged hankering after all for the perquisites of his position, which prevents him from finding a substitute, and turning to ways that attract him. Still in principle the thing does exist. And where it exists, it will seem to reverse at times the relative rank of duty and inclination, and substitute considerations of purely objective value for the more personal appeal of this or that particular form of good; though I still contend that normally this impersonal calculation is subordinate to the ends chosen for us by our constitution. The ideal of 'living one's own life' is not, then, one to be accepted uncritically; it needs limitations and qualifications. But since, to set the limits, we need the help of principles not yet fully determined, I shall postpone any further remarks to a later point. All I am concerned at present to maintain is, that in general the good life is not an abstraction, but the life that satisfies some individual man; and he therefore can expect no real guidance till he sees the relevancy to the problem of the personal leadings that alone give 'satisfaction' a meaning. And accordingly the attempt to meet the problem of duty by an objective and impersonal calculation of the good, is bound to be a failure.
If, therefore, we are to discover principles that will help in assigning actual content to the good life, it must be in connection with a scrutiny of human nature itself, on the side of its concrete springs of action. Here interests of various kinds exist which constitute my being; can we lay down generally how they must be utilized?
The first and most obvious possibility is one that has already ​met us in connection with the self-realization formula. If competing interests are present, it might seem that if we can hit upon some adjustment that will measurably satisfy both, we are better off than if we had to sacrifice one to the other. Inclusiveness, therefore, or rational completeness, has been a familiar thesis of naturalistic systems of ethics; and it leads itself to a practical ideal of life which has had a wide vogue.
But when we translate this into concrete situations, we discover empirically that at least it cannot be followed blindly. Purely as a matter of expediency and fact, it may often seem the wiser course to sacrifice some impulses to others. To combine them in anything like the form in which they actually lay hold upon desire, will inevitably in many instances be possible only through a compromise which abates something of their full pretensions; and quite conceivably the sum of losses may be greater than if we had frankly thrown overboard the weaker interest. Indeed, it would seem as if this were almost necessarily true when we take things on a scale large enough. The general experience of mankind bears out the claim that the average person at least is more likely to find satisfaction through self-limitation, than by spreading himself out too thin. We should doubtless like, if we could, to develop all our tastes; but the limitations of action have to be recognized. Our powers are not capable indefinitely of being extended, and the outer world takes no apparent interest in rendering successful compromises always easy; sacrifice is a plain necessity. Limitation, to be sure, does not need to mean narrowness. The narrow man is the man who not only decides that he cannot do everything, and so specializes; he is one who also thereupon loses interest in the things he has rejected, and so limits outlook and sympathy as well as action. And there really is no reason why this should be, or why a man should not continue to cultivate a friendly concern for many things in which he cannot hope to take an active part; he does not even need to follow them closely, so long as he maintains an open and receptive mind. But because we can still retain our interest in this sense, it would be absurd to say that there has been no sacrifice in the sense the principle ​deprecates. The interest of mental participation is not the interest of active participation. I may retain a fondness for concerts, and still regret that I was unable to carry on my music; a sympathy for literary, or political, or benevolent enterprises no more fully satisfies my suppressed ambitions along such lines, than a sympathy for lovers is a substitute for marriage.
Of course it is so that by taking the matter firmly in hand, and making it the one business of his life to secure for himself a fully rounded development, a man may come indefinitely closer to the goal, even if it remains in strictness unattainable. This stands as one of the accredited human ideals. But it very certainly would not be generally accepted as the one ideal by which all others are to be tested. Indeed it has plain deficiencies of its own. It can be lived most successfully, to speak in terms of paradox, when the full life is itself the expression of a narrow and special interest. Goethe is likely to remain for some time the best exemplar of the type; and we may tolerate in a man like Goethe what in the mere dilettante we should cordially detest, because after all Goethe is always the workman, the artist. He is not living simply for the sake of his own beautiful life, but to utilize the results of experience for literary purposes; it is his literary specialization which excuses, in so far as it does excuse, the sentimentalisms of the 'full life.' But even in Goethe the ideal does not stand the test of reflective appreciation. Self-realization is after all self-centered, and therefore petty when we put it alongside the bigger world. "Very early," writes Margaret Fuller of herself, "I knew that the only object in life was to grow." To grow is certainly highly to be desired. But to make the inner process of growth itself the professed object of our ambition is precisely the dubious point in the ideal. It assumes that the most interesting thing in the universe is oneself—a natural supposition which experience may be expected to dispose us to find questionable. There is a vast difference between taking a wide interest in things because they are interesting, and taking a wide interest because the interests are ours, and what we have in view is to develop our capacities. The last motive is quite proper as a secondary motive, which serves ​incidentally to correct our natural indolence. But to transform it into the one main thing worth seeking is to get it badly out of perspective. It might perhaps be claimed that the principle of 'inclusiveness' is satisfied to accept objective interests; but in point of fact its logic lends itself almost inevitably to the self-realization formula. If the 'complete life' is our goal, then it is bound to be a matter of regret if any part of ourselves fails of development, and our eyes will need constantly to be directed inward to guard against a loss of opportunity through inadvertence. A disinterested interest in things, on the other hand, is more than likely to supplant and interfere with the compromising instinct; in the pressure of weighty issues gripping our attention, lesser matters will often seem impertinent, and the demand that we salvage all our personal assets rather trivial. And when an interest in things and issues holds us, we can afford such a large indifference. If I do not see to my own cultivation, no one will attend to it for me, and the end remains unattained. But causes may still be achieved apart from me, and probably even better achieved. It would be the height of self-conceit to suppose that because I am not there to look after things they will not be done; and so without self-condemnation I can usually make my option for the special interests that are mine, and still feel that the world is safe.
Of course it must be granted, again, that self-realization has an important regulative value. But this value can be interpreted in different terms. Its real and undeniable meaning seems in substance rather this, that the successful life must needs be organized. But the basis of the organization will much better be looked for, not in the 'self,' but in a controlling interest or task. The only way to escape distraction, dissipation of energy, constant hesitation and vacillation through the need of canvassing over again at each new crisis the relative value to be placed on competing claims, is that a man commit himself definitely, and make up his mind that here rather than there the interest lies which is capable of gripping him, and keeping him steadily and pleasantly at his work, without a constant unsettling of the conditions of effective and forward-moving action. Now here we ​have a real principle of subordination; other things are good in proportion as they lend themselves to the accomplishment of this main design, or at least do not actively impede it. Sub-ordination to the 'self,' on the contrary, has no plain meaning, unless we fall back on the outworn notion of 'faculties' standing to one another in some inherent relationship of worth. As a working tool, the 'whole' is thus no standard fact of human nature. Neither the whole, nor what is meant in the concrete by subordination to the whole, is determinable until the particular task is chosen; and what that central organizing fact shall be, we cannot discover without an experimental appeal to the individual case.
A. K. Rogers.