Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/227

202 whole ideal is the making of others like themselves. They fall into a notion about life that the author not long since heard well-expressed by a cheerful young friend, a former fellow-student, who, having early plunged into a busy life, has already won both influence and property. This man, full of the enthusiasm of first success, v/as talking over his life with the writer, and fell to defining his opinions on various subjects, such as young men like to discuss. At last he was asked about the view of life that he had already formed in his little experience. He was quick, honest, and definite in his answer, as he always has been. “My notion of a good life is,” he said, “that you ought to help your friends and whack your enemies.” The notion was older than the speaker remembered; for Socratic dialogues on the Just, with their ingenious Sophists making bold assertions, form no part of his present stock of subjects for contemplation. But what was interesting in the fresh and frank manner of the speech was the clearness of the conviction that a world of successful and friendly selves, whose enemies chanced to be all recently “whacked,” would be at the goal of bliss. Such indeed is and must be the individualism of the successful and unreflecting man, by whom all the world is classified as being either his or not his, as to a cow all is either cow feed or not cow feed. A man in this position has never yet known the burden of Faust’s soul when he says. Cursed he what as possession charms us. If such a man gets any moral insight, it will be on this stage imperfect. He will seek only to multiply himself