Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/86




 * But if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

even yet have we exhausted the perplexities involved in this fundamental difficulty of moral theory. Some one may say: “Let the ideals in general take care of themselves. We are concerned in this world with individual and concrete duties. These at least are plain.” But these also involve questions concerning the ideal. Let us see then how the same difficulty that has beset the more general moral doctrines, returns to plague us in case of the theoretical treatment of one of these plain duties. Our discussion will here gain in definiteness what it loses in generality. Let us choose a concrete moral question, namely, the problem of the true ground of the moral distinctions and other moral relations between what people nowadays like to call altruism and what they like to call egoism.

Upon what, then, if upon anything, is founded the moral precept: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself? Or is there any foundation for it at all? To be quite familiar in discussing this problem, let us take it as it appears in recent discussion. The