Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/108

 One of the possible selves must be actualised. He has only one life to live, he has only one self to live it; and if he wants to realise a character at all, he must choose some one walk in life in which to realise it.

Of course, he would like to be several different selves at once: all have their attractions. But he recognises that that is impossible. However severe the struggle, he must decide on some one self amid all the galaxy of his fancied selves; and this one self must become his real self. William James has put the point very vividly. "Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon vivant and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a 'tone-poet' and saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's; the bon vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the philosopher and lady-killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame and gladness with them. &hellip; Our thought, incessantly deciding, among many things of a kind, which