Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/194

Rh 4. If the moral insight be concerned directly with two conflicting wills, my neighbor’s and my own, then this insight involves the will to act as if my neighbor and myself were one being that possessed at once the aims of both of us.

5. If the moral insight be concerned with conflicting general aims, such as could express themselves in systems of conduct, then the moral insight involves the will to act, so far as may be, as if one included in one’s own being the life of all those whose conflicting aims one realizes.

6. Absolute moral insight would involve the will to act henceforth with strict regard to the total of the consequences of one’s act for all the moments and aims that are to be affected by this act.

7. The moral insight stands in all its forms opposed to ethical dogmatism, which accepts one separate end only. The insight arises from the consciousness that this one aim is not the only one that is actual. Imperfectly and blindly ethical dogmatism also realizes this truth, and so hates or even anathematizes the opposing aims. But the hatred is imperfect realization. The moral insight therefore says to those who possess the dogmatic spirit: “In so far as you seek a reason for the faith that is in you, you can find none short of the assumption of my position.” The moral insight says to itself, “I ought not to return to the dogmatic point of view.” So the moral insight insists upon giving itself the rule, “Dogmatism is wrong.”

8. The only alternatives to the moral insight are: (a) ethical dogmatism, which once for all gives up