Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/187

162 unquenchable as the fires of the sun, real as these impulses that even now throb in thy own little selfish heart. Lift up thy eyes, behold that life, and then turn away and forget it as thou canst; but if thou hast known that, thou hast begun to know thy duty.

But this unity that the moral insight has found for us in life must not be falsely interpreted. Rightly interpreted, the moral insight will solve for us many very difficult problems; but we must not imagine that it shows us all this individual life as in any mystical sense already actually in the harmony that we seek. Not because these aims are already in themselves one, but because we, as moral seers, unite in one moment of insight the realization of all these aims, for that reason alone is this life one for us. It is in this sense alone that the moral insight gives us a solution of the problem of egoism and altruism, as well as a foundation for a general doctrine of the Highest Good. The moral insight does not enable us to say: These beings have always actually but blindly sought what was in itself the Highest Good. We can only say: Each one has sought in his blindness only what was to him desirable. And not, save by the realization of the conflict of desire, can the truly highest good be conceived. The moral insight discovers harmony not as already implied in the nature of these blind, conflicting wills, but as an ideal to be attained by hard work.