Page:Philosophical Review Volume 22.djvu/425

No. 4.] and readjustments have to be made too often, for the virtues ever to be reduced to a complete unity; and it will probably always be more illuminating to interpret our individual and social life in terms of the various virtues, than in terms of any single general good supposed to synthesize them. Such a general good, whether happiness, self-realization, humanity, or Good or Virtue spelled with capital letters, will always be too vague to afford much practical guidance. An objective ethics based on the conception of the virtues as guides for the instincts will profit most by fuller analysis and discrimination between the permanent and modifiable constituents of human nature, and the effort to determine the significance of each of these constituents for practical life.