Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/540

526 met us in connection with the self-realization formula. If competing interests are present, it might seem that if we can hit upon some adjustment that will measurably satisfy both, we are better off than if we had to sacrifice one to the other. Inclusiveness, therefore, or rational completeness, has been a familiar thesis of naturalistic systems of ethics; and it leads itself to a practical ideal of life which has had a wide vogue.

But when we translate this into concrete situations, we discover empirically that at least it cannot be followed blindly. Purely as a matter of expediency and fact, it may often seem the wiser course to sacrifice some impulses to others. To combine them in anything like the form in which they actually lay hold upon desire, will inevitably in many instances be possible only through a compromise which abates something of their full pretensions; and quite conceivably the sum of losses may be greater than if we had frankly thrown overboard the weaker interest. Indeed, it would seem as if this were almost necessarily true when we take things on a scale large enough. The general experience of mankind bears out the claim that the average person at least is more likely to find satisfaction through self-limitation, than by spreading himself out too thin. We should doubtless like, if we could, to develop all our tastes; but the limitations of action have to be recognized. Our powers are not capable indefinitely of being extended, and the outer world takes no apparent interest in rendering successful compromises always easy; sacrifice is a plain necessity. Limitation, to be sure, does not need to mean narrowness. The narrow man is the man who not only decides that he cannot do everything, and so specializes; he is one who also thereupon loses interest in the things he has rejected, and so limits outlook and sympathy as well as action. And there really is no reason why this should be, or why a man should not continue to cultivate a friendly concern for many things in which he cannot hope to take an active part; he does not even need to follow them closely, so long as he maintains an open and receptive mind. But because we can still retain our interest in this sense, it would be absurd to say that there has been no sacrifice in the sense the principle