Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/169

No. 2.] With a certain refinement of taste, which I find is so generally capable of being developed under proper conditions that it justifies its place in my conception of human nature, piggishness arouses an immediate feeling of dislike. If another man does not feel this, I still say that he ought to, and that I am right and he wrong. I mean, probably, at least in part, that there is that latent in him which, if only it could get a chance to develop, would lead him to feel the same way that I do. Of course in a sense this is a matter of faith, based on my knowledge of the possibilities of human culture, and my readiness to assume that all beings in the likeness of a man can be trusted to have in fundamentals much the same make-up. If on the contrary any such being really had the instincts of a pig, as is always conceivable, I should cease to say that he ought to feel differently, just as, if I am sensible, I do not blame the real pig for his preferences, but leave him to his own conscience and his Maker. But I still say that sensuality is low, because it is my understanding of what human nature is that determines my notion of higher and lower; and I still believe that my preference here represents essential man, and that he who has only the instinctive possibilities of an animal is a man only in outward semblance.

There is a second form of emotional revolt which may enter into my feeling judgments of qualitative difference, and that is the instinctive objection to injustice or cruelty, or what may be called moral indignation. It is this which in particular seems to me to cast doubt upon the supreme rank of intellectual eminence, or of culture, as a form of human good. In comparing this with the virtues of simple human kindliness, when each stands by itself without the other, I think I find myself in doubt about the outcome, until I begin to take notice of its obtuseness to the righting of human wrongs outside the field of what effects its special interests; and then I find myself tending to pronounce the judgment that, if I am forced to assign a relative rank to pure intellect, and the humane virtues, the latter are the higher. I recognize that here it is still less certain that everybody will pronounce the same judgment; but in case of difference, I find an explanation in the relatively weaker character of the emotion