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522 life, and so to leave an uneasy sense that we have no right to insist upon personal claims to satisfaction. Such a feeling is a useful element in human nature for heightening the quality of experience, and spurring men to larger endeavor; but like any other human feeling it will, if we detach it from its instrumental service and hold it alone before the mind, get out of perspective, and carry an emotional insistence which reason fails to justify. It is perhaps best answered by letting it have in imagination its way, and then asking whether the results appeal to our sense of approval. And when I ask, Does the life which, in spite of achievement, fails of permanent content and satisfaction in the career which it has chosen, really justify itself to me as a good life, one that is successful and that has achieved its end? I can only reply that it does not. Of course one might conceivably maintain that only in a life-long sacrifice of personal interests does true satisfaction lie; and that there are natures of which this may be so is very probable. The feeling of 'unworthiness' sometimes becomes so abnormally acute as to spoil the most innocent forms of personal realization, and to sting its victim into a constant crucifixion of his natural desires. But that such a thing is generally so of mankind is not in the least true. Indeed one of the things that ethical wisdom is constantly called upon to combat, is this belief that mere attainment, work done, going after results, is the true way of life, even though in themselves the results are what we commonly approve as good. But, it may be said, is there not, in fact, a value in achievement even apart from whether it makes the man who does the work happy in the doing? To be sure there may be—for other people. But a theory which starts to find the clue to a successful life in its social effects can hardly universalize itself. What of these others who enjoy the fruits of a man's unenjoying toils? why should they have more enjoyment than he? And if they too are to sacrifice happiness in work to the creation of commodities for their neighbors, in the end everybody alike fails of satisfaction. But also there is an empirical answer which goes a long way toward rebutting such a claim—the fact that on the whole, and in the long run, it is very doubtful whether the sum total of goods is