Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/174

Rh but, “In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou wert at once thy neighbor and thyself.” “Treat these two lives as one life.”

We must try to show how this insight leads to this result. We must try so to bring home the insight to the reader that he shall in his person accomplish the act of which we speak, and so come to accept the ideal upon which we are insisting. It is in himself that he is to experience this ideal, or else he will not be able or willing to accept it. We can only suggest the way. And so we shall try forthwith to suggest what is the nature of that common imperfect realization of our neighbor’s life which does not lead to the moral insight, and then to dwell upon this insight itself.

The common sense, imperfect recognition of our neighbor implies rather realization of the external aspect of his being, as that part of him which affects us, than realization of his inner and peculiar world of personal experience. Let us show this by example. First, take my realization of the people whom I commonly meet but do not personally very well know, e.g. the conductor on the railway train when I travel. He is for me just the being who takes my ticket, the official to whom I can appeal for certain advice or help if I need it. That this conductor has an inner life, like mine, this I am apt never to realize at all. He has to excite my pity or some other special human interest in me ere I shall even begin to try to think of him as really like me. On the whole,