Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/199

174 made of a man’s sight is to extend the power of sight to others, of what use is the power itself? The sole aim of seeing cannot be to cause others to see. Else what good would result to any one, if all followed your precept?” The answer would be plain: “When all or the most of us get the power, then indeed we can use it for other ends. But because it is the best of powers for all these other ends, therefore the best provisional use to make of it is, not to spend much time upon these ends, but to spend time upon extending the possession of the power. When this is done, then first will begin the real use of the power for its own sake.” As in this case of the supposed miraculous acquirement of a new sense in all its maturity of power at one stroke, so it is in case of the much more gradual acquirement of the moral insight. To be sure, the ultimate aim of life cannot be merely the extension of the power to realize the wills that are active about us, but must at last be found by defining the course of action that best harmonizes these wills. But, provisionally, we have a task before us that is easily defined, because elementary. Harmony cannot be even partially attained, the best human acti^dty cannot be even imperfectly developed, until a very great number of men have this, the very first, most elementary requisite of conscious morality, namely, the power to see the facts of human life as they are. So long as a man is bound up in his individual will, he may be instinctively upright, he cannot be consciously and with clear intent righteous. So long therefore as this is true of him, he will be dependent on traditions that are often per-