Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/164

Rh, solely because our skepticism was itself a realization of the aims with which men live, and of the warfare of these aims.

From the world of dead facts, we had said, you can get no ethical doctrine. Physical truth never gives moral doctrine. Therefore the world of facts seemed to stand on one side, and the world of moral aims seemed to stand on the other, no logical connection being discoverable between them. This was our theoretical objection to the ethical doctrines that we examined. Separate as they were from the world of facts, they seemed to dwell alone, ungrounded and conflicting acts of caprice. Yet for them to pass over to the world of facts was to lose their ethical character. But now we seek to overcome our difficulty by considering, not the world of physical facts themselves, but the world of ends. And this world we consider, not now in detail, but as a whole. What highest end is suggested, we ask, to him who realizes for himself this whole world of ends? The very end, we answer, that, as first dimly seen, forced upon us our skeptical pessimism. Whoso realizes an end, his, for the time being, is that end. And since it is his end, he mentally wills to realize it in ideal perfection. But whoso realizes the various conflicting aims in the world, his are all these aims at the moment of insight, when, so far as in him lies, he realizes them, and mentally desires their success. In proportion as his realization is or can be catholic and genuine, his will becomes, for the time, these conflicting wills. In him is now the warfare. He feels in his own person the bitterness of the universal