Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/530

516 to the natural human fondness for self-glorification, has been taken up and given vogue by a number of philosophic and semi-philosophic writers. That such a will to power may, in an aggressive personality, be consciously chosen as the highest good, history sufficiently shows. But to extend the title to cover dissentient ideals also, though properly interpreted it may find some justification, and for literary purposes may prove effective, will yet appear, from the very need of interpretation, not to be our normal human way of thinking of the comprehensive end of living. Men do not in any ordinary sense of the word simply want power. They want a variety of things in particular, of which power constitutes qualitatively only one of many characteristics; and while it is doubtless true that all of them involve energizing in some degree, it does not in the least follow that this necessary condition can adequately describe the concrete outcome men are after.

Perhaps in view of the difficulty in describing 'life,' it might after all be left as its own interpreter; and indeed we know quite well what living means if we do not try to put it into words. But there remains one simple and unambitious formula which seems to me fairly successful in conveying this meaning, and which I shall find it convenient to use, and to presuppose in the subsequent discussion. Life, namely, means doing things that we find interesting and important. A common defect in most of the preceding definitions is that they suppose the eye turned inward to the self; whereas it is definitely characteristic of a normal and healthy notion of life that it should be disinterested and outward-looking. The self is indeed taken for granted; its needs and their satisfaction are involved. But it is the essence of the natural view that it should have its interest and its attention directed to things rather than to feelings, to a career or cause rather than to myself. Accordingly I shall, as I say, adopt this without further comment as a working formula.

But supposing we are willing to agree that a search for congenial tasks is an accurate and fairly adequate transcription of the end we set before us in living, our main work has just begun. What, we have to ask, constitutes a congenial task? What kind