Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/542

528 incidentally to correct our natural indolence. But to transform it into the one main thing worth seeking is to get it badly out of perspective. It might perhaps be claimed that the principle of 'inclusiveness' is satisfied to accept objective interests; but in point of fact its logic lends itself almost inevitably to the self-realization formula. If the 'complete life' is our goal, then it is bound to be a matter of regret if any part of ourselves fails of development, and our eyes will need constantly to be directed inward to guard against a loss of opportunity through inadvertence. A disinterested interest in things, on the other hand, is more than likely to supplant and interfere with the compromising instinct; in the pressure of weighty issues gripping our attention, lesser matters will often seem impertinent, and the demand that we salvage all our personal assets rather trivial. And when an interest in things and issues holds us, we can afford such a large indifference. If I do not see to my own cultivation, no one will attend to it for me, and the end remains unattained. But causes may still be achieved apart from me, and probably even better achieved. It would be the height of self-conceit to suppose that because I am not there to look after things they will not be done; and so without self-condemnation I can usually make my option for the special interests that are mine, and still feel that the world is safe.

Of course it must be granted, again, that self-realization has an important regulative value. But this value can be interpreted in different terms. Its real and undeniable meaning seems in substance rather this, that the successful life must needs be organized. But the basis of the organization will much better be looked for, not in the 'self,' but in a controlling interest or task. The only way to escape distraction, dissipation of energy, constant hesitation and vacillation through the need of canvassing over again at each new crisis the relative value to be placed on competing claims, is that a man commit himself definitely, and make up his mind that here rather than there the interest lies which is capable of gripping him, and keeping him steadily and pleasantly at his work, without a constant unsettling of the conditions of effective and forward-moving action. Now here we