Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/172

Rh and my own desire about it, than to realize the desires of my neighbor. My will is the datum; his the dimly-conceived, remote fact. Hence it seems to me obvious that his will must be to me less significant than my own. Therefore he and I are often in deadly warfare, just because I realize his will not in its inner nature, but as a foreign power, and because he deals even so with me. We stand over against each other like two moral systems, condemning and fighting each the other. Now, however, there often appear disinterested moralists, who try to patch up our differences. We have seen how and why they have so often failed. They tell me that my neighbor and I shall give each other much more selfish delight if we stop fighting and begin coöperating. But that wise advice in no way touches the root of the difficulty between us. If we did coöperate for this reason, we should still be two foreign powers, virtually discordant. And whenever it happened that either of us could do better by oppressing or by crushing the other than by continuing to coöperate with him, he not only would do so, but, so far as we have seen, must do so. Another moralist hopes that if we keep on coöperating long enough, we may evolve into purely unselfish beings some day. The hope is a pious one, but gives us no sufficient reason why we ought to coöperate unselfishly now, when in fact we are selfish. Yet another moralist asks us to reflect on the nature of our emotions of pity and sympathy for each other. We reply that these feelings are indeterminate in character, and may lead us to do anything or nothing: for each other. So all these