Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/176

Rh one and all to him ideal or real ways of behavior towards himself or other people, outwardly effective beings, rather than realized masses of genuine inner life, of sentiment, of love, or of felt desire? Does he not naturally think of each of them rather as a way of outward action than as a way of inner volition? His butcher, his newsboy, his servant, — are they not for him industrious or lazy, honest or deceitful, polite or uncivil, useful or useless people, rather than self-conscious people? Is any one of these alive for him in the full sense, — sentient, emotional, and otherwise like himself; as perhaps his own son, or his own mother or wife seems to him to be? Is it not rather the kind of behavior of these beings towards him which he realizes? Is it not rather in general their being for him, not for themselves, that he considers in all his ordinary life, even when he calls them conscious? And this being for him is what he calls their dispositions. They are all good fellows or bad fellows, good-humored or surly, hateful or admirable. They may appear even sublime or ideal beings, as a Caesar might to a student of history. Yet their inner life need not therefore be realized. They remain powers, ways of acting, dispositions, wonderful examples of energy. They are still seen from without. Not their inner, volitional nature is realized, but their manner of outward activity; not what they are for themselves, but what they are for others.

Such then is our natural realization of our fellows even when we call them conscious. The imperfect realization in question extends even to the case of