Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/691

No. 5.] defective or an incompetent. Does this mean, then, that cooperation and combination are impossible or undesirable? Not in the least. It does mean that cooperation requires joint action by parties whose interests are equally served by joining forces. It means that every party to the agreement has a right to know where his interests are going to be furthered by the project. It means that even the will to do good has to recognize the right of the recipient to something more humane than the position of a patient in the social hospital. No individual, or no class, is good enough or wise enough to be made the perpetual guardian of the interests of another individual or class. In the long run, social and political cooperation of a desirable kind will not be hindered but rather helped by an appeal to individual interests. The point is that no class of interests is individual per se. The individual may reasonably be interested in all sorts of causes and ends. And what sort of reflection is likely to be morally more enlightening than the question, Why am I, or why ought I to be, especially interested in just the matters which usually absorb my time and attention? Unless a cause can bear the criticism involved in answering this question, it lacks the essential element of a moral cause. It is probably true that an individualism such as this, if widely practiced, would be revolutionary, but most thorough-going applications of intelligence to human affairs are likely to be revolutionary. How many bubbles of manifest destiny, imperial ambition, and national wealth would not be pricked by a persistent request on the part of those who furnish the resources to be shown wherein they benefit by the expenditure?