Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/532

518 the intellect as a tool of the good life, so the second attaches to the will. If no man can reasonably expect success unless he puts his mind to the business, so no man can look to getting what he wants apart from certain qualities of will. The world is not a place where feebleness, vacillation, laziness, are tolerated; this is something we can lay down a priori and universally. A precondition of satisfaction, and even, in almost every case, of avoiding disaster, is a certain capacity for effort, and a steady loyalty to the course of conduct which reason and self-interest have laid down.

Bringing us nearer to the concrete facts of living is the second main group of principles, which come from the nature of the world that reason is compelled to recognize. They most of them fall again under two heads. On the one hand are the demands of biological well-being. Save for very exceptional reasons, a plan of life which ignores the primary demands of the body, leads to ill health or a constant overdrain of energy, encourages low spirits and depression, is a plan which we can say beforehand is not going to work in practice. No man who does not as a regular thing, in so far as it lies within his own power, wake up in the morning refreshed and feeling fit to tackle the day's job, can flatter himself that as a human being he is a success.

The second most general sort of external condition which enlightened self-interest has to take into account, is the social fact—the nature and disposition of our fellows. So long as happiness depends so largely as it does upon the way in which other men behave toward us, one who ignores this in his plans, and sets out as if he had only his own interests to consult, is acting like a fool. If we injure others they will be resentful and try to hurt us in turn; if we are proud and disdainful they will dislike and speak ill of us; if we treat them with a show of consideration we shall be more likely to get what we want out of them. Such facts are familiar to everyone. And in view of them we are often able to lay down with practical universality various principles of conduct; so long as men live in society, they cannot go to work to attain their ends along lines which