Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/239

214 ers all this, one sees faintly what the ideal relation of mankind would be, if the ideal work for all men were found. This devoted scientific spirit is itself only an ideal even to-day; and all sorts of personal motives still interfere to disturb its purity. But here, at all events, one sees dimly in a concrete instance what the organization of life may yet become.

Now suppose a world in which men had some one end of activity that united somehow all the different strivings of our nature, — æsthetic, social, theoretical. Suppose that in the pursuit of this end all the petty, selfish aims of individuals had been forgotten. Suppose that men said no longer: “I have won this good thing for myself and my friends,” but only, “This good is attained,” no matter by whom. Suppose that thus all life was organized in and through this activity, so that a man rose up and lay down to rest, ate and drank, exercised and amused his senses, met his fellows, talked with them, lived and planned with them, built his cities, wandered over the oceans, searched the heavens with his telescopes, toiled in his laboratories, sang his songs, wrote his poems, loved and died, all for the service of this one great work, and knew his life only as the means to serve that one end, then would the ideal of the moral insight be attained. The world of life would be as one will, working through all and in all, seeking the ends of no one individual, caring not for any stupid and meaningless “aggregate” of individual states, but getting what as insight it demands, the absolute Unity of Life. Then