Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/92

Rh to do. Ethical judgments deal with purposes. On any theory of right and wrong the man himself, not the accident of fortune, determines the moral character of his act; and this view must be held equally whether one believes the man’s will to be free or to be bound. Hence the unforeseen or unintended outcome, or any other accidental accompaniment of my act, does not make me egoistic or altruistic in case egoism and altruism are to be qualities that have any moral character at all. If my property is accidentally destroyed by fire, and if the loss causes great damage to my creditors or to people dependent on me, the loss makes me no less or more an altruist, although I can no longer do good as before. If my purely selfish plan chances to do others good, I am no less an egoist, although I have made my fellows happy. In short, he who means anything, and does what he can to realize his intention, must be judged according to his intent. Circumstances control the outcome, and they make of the chance discoverer of the first bit of gold in a California mill-race a greater altruist, to judge solely by consequences, than a hero would be who sacrificed himself in a good cause, and lost the battle. But no moral system could make genuine saintliness out of the deed of the man who by chance has found what the world needed. And to take one more example, the power die stets das Böse will, und stets das Gute schafft, is not altruistic in the moral sense, however vast its creations may become.

All this we maintain, because, if you are morally criticising a disposition, you must study what it is,