Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/345

 344 s. COIT : end must be consciously aimed at, that it must always be the centre of attention. It is natural and normal for the will to allow the final aim to move from the verge of con- sciousness to the centre and back again, according as may best serve the end itself. This is the psychological analysis of the normal relation of any final aim of life that may be proposed to the centre of attention. We might say that, until it becomes his own private aim, a man ought to hold the true moral end of life in the centre of attention. But if he continues to hold it there he will become morally inactive and fail to attain the end. On the other hand, if he devote himself exclusively to the means, he will be in danger of converting them into ends and thus failing. It is therefore a psychological law concerning ends in general, and not any peculiarity of the inner moral sanction, that makes it unfit to be the centre of attention. That the final aim cannot be the sole interest of life is in accordance with a kindred psychological law, viz., that when we turn our attention upon external objects, no matter what they may be, men, animals, plants, the earth, the stars, we cannot remain quite indifferent to them nor treat them as mere means to an end. Such indifference would be so unnatural that, if anyone should manifest it, he would seem more like a monster than a man. The degree of our attach- ment to external objects becomes deeper the longer and more intently we occupy ourselves with them, and also the more points their nature has in common with ours. Ac- cordingly in proportion as we pursue the inner satisfaction that comes of devotion to the right, we shall love our fellow- men. For at least the greater part of devotion to the right consists in justice, and in order to be just we must attend to our fellow-men. They therefore will become the centre of interest to us, not because our end is served by them, but because our thought is directed upon them and our nature is the same as theirs. In short, to whom the inner moral sanction is the final aim of conduct, to him is mankind the centre of interest and right conduct the centre of attention. Therefore we must conclude that to make the inner sanction the end of moral action would induce the golden mean of introspectiveness, between the too much that would arise from making it the centre of attention and interest and the too little which now prevails among men and which an objective aim would not increase. In determining the relative adaptibility to human nature of the inner sanction and the activity itself as final aim of conduct, it must ever be borne in mind that the purely moral