Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/535

No. 6.] retains it almost in full measure in the case of more backward peoples. That China or India should have any real contribution to offer to the science of living, is to the natural mind unthinkable. Even so near a neighbor as the Irishman is an unfortunate mistake of nature, rather than a possible enrichment to the content of the universal life. And this is true equally of class and individual ideals. Indeed the intolerance is apt to be more pronounced in proportion as ideals are held more strongly and sincerely. The easy-going man of the world may be willing to grant the same indulgence to his neighbors that he claims for himself; but the idealist, the enthusiast, is more often than not so intrigued with his own more excellent way that he is impatient of a different valuation, even when he is not ready to set to work to make it practically as unpleasant as possible for those who show other preferences.

In view of the plain fact, then, that men are differently built, with a bent toward widely various kinds of work and interest, no rational principle taken by itself can possibly tell us what sort of life in the concrete a man is suited to. The true fact lies below the surface of the rational consciousness, and can be discovered only by an experiment in living. This experimenting each man has in the end to do for himself; and the result at which he arrives will be true for himself and not for his neighbors. There are innumerable ways of accomplishing good in the world, with wide differences of quantitative result; and it is not reasonable to call upon any man to adjust his own life to these objective possibilities independently of the sort of thing for which he is himself particularly fitted, his fitness being evidenced to himself in the end by the call he feels, and the assured content that comes to him in the process.

Such an insistence on individual liking as the primary determinant of the personal ideal, as against an appeal to objective and absolute standards, will doubtless seem to some too little strenuous, and too indifferent to the lofty character of duty and the dominant claims of the good. It is always possible to bring about in oneself a feeling of unworthiness by contrasting the needs of the world with the actual achievements of any individual