the self. You may have harmony without any morality, and you may have morality with but little harmony.
There are other one-sided views, from which consequences follow opposed to the moral consciousness. We may state them so; ‘The most systematic man is not the most moral, since he need not have done what he could and therefore should have done; is then the most energetic realization of the good self the most moral man? Suppose we say Yes. Then (1) the difference of capacity and circumstances is left out of the account, and the stronger and more successful nature will be the more moral; and again (2) the different amount of drawbacks is not considered: no credit is given to a man for moral struggles however severe; and in both cases we are in collision with the moral consciousness.
‘Or if we say, No, you must look not to the positive realization but to the negative, to the victory over the bad self;—that, again, is against morality, because it unjustly favours the weaker nature; the more energetic may, because he is more energetic, have therefore more bad self to conquer.
‘Again if we say, Neither negative nor positive realization is to be looked to, for morality is a struggle, and it is the struggle which is of importance,—then it will follow that, to increase the struggle and with it morality, the bad self must not be allowed to decrease beyond a certain point; and, further, it will follow that either all men are morally equal, since all struggle, and no one can do more than struggle; or else, if the most moral man is the man who struggles most, the quantity (intensive and extensive) of the struggle, and not the degree in the scale of qualitative advance, will count for morality. And of these, as of the other conclusions, every one is immoral.’
It would not repay us to investigate these difficulties in detail; they arise from doctrines which are not false in themselves, but each of which is false if taken as the expression of the whole truth, and their solution will come readily from the answer to the question, Who for the moral consciousness is the most moral man?
Who is the most moral man? ‘Moral’ with an emphasis. We do not ask who is the most perfect man. We do not say, Whose will is most identified with the ideal human type? but, Whose will is most identified with his ideal?
