Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/179

154 sense answers: “No, for is he not most assuredly a conscious agent, whose action I realize?” “Dost thou then know that he wills, and not realize what this will means for him, namely, that he experiences it?” “No,” answers common sense, “if he wills as I do, he must experience as I do.” “Realize it then, and see what thou then wilt do with him.” And common sense must, we affirm, so realizing, simply reply, “As he is real, he is as much an object for my effort as I myself am, in case I can affect him. Ours is one life.” This common sense must see, if it fully realizes the neighbor. And if it realizes his activity, as it always in some fashion does, then it must come to realize his experience, and so to realize him fully, so soon as it undertakes to complete the incomplete act by which it has begun to realize his will. This completion may be hastened by pity, or may be hindered by the weakness that pity often involves; but when it comes, it must be an act of clear insight, made possible by the rational nature of our mental life. Whatever in our thought is done in part, we are ready either to abandon wholly, or to finish altogether, so soon as we realize that we have been doing it in part. Our resolution to recognize an existence cannot remain confused or self-contradictory when we come to realize where the confusion and self-contradiction lie. And as we simply cannot give up recognizing our neighbor, we must of necessity resolve, when we see this inconsistency of our natural realization, to realize him wholly.

Such is our reflective account of the process that, in