will be not good; and in the former case it will be nothing positive, and therefore nothing. That each should pursue the general perfection, should act for the advantage of a whole in which his self is included, or should add to a collection in which he may share—is certainly not pure self-sacrifice. And a maxim that each should aim purely at his neighbour’s welfare in separation from his own, we have seen is self-inconsistent. It can hardly be ultimate or reasonable, when its meaning seems to end in nonsense.[1]
(ii.) Or, rejecting all self-transcendence as an idle word, popular Ethics may set up pure self-assertion as all that is good. It may perhaps desire to add that by the self-seeking of each the advantage of all is best secured, but this addition clearly is not contained in self-assertion, and cannot properly be included. For by such an addition, if it were necessary, the end at once would have been essentially modified. It was self-assertion pure, and not qualified, which was adopted as goodness; and it is this alone which we must now consider. And we perceive first (as we saw above) that such a good is unattainable, since perfection cannot be realized in a finite being. Not only is the physical basis too shifting, but the contents too essentially belong to a world outside the self; and hence it is impossible that they should be brought to completion and to harmony within it. One may indeed seek to approach nearer to the unattainable. Aiming at a system within oneself, one may forcibly abstract from the necessary connections of the material used. We may consider this and strive to apply it one-sidedly, and in but a single portion of its essential aspects. But the other aspect inseparably against
- ↑ It may be as well perhaps to add that, neither in this sense nor in any other, can the good be defined negatively. At that point, in any definition, where a negative term is introduced, the reader should specially look for a defect.
