In whatever measure ill-controlled individuals may yield to personal impulses or attractions, the aim of the race must be a collective aim. I do not mean an austere demand of self-sacrifice from the individual, but an adjustment—as genial and generous as possible—of individual variations for common good. Otherwise life becomes discordant and futile, and the pain and waste react on each individual. So we raise again, in the twentieth century, the old question of “the greatest good,” which men discussed in the Stoa Poikile and the suburban groves of Athens, in the cool atria of patrician mansions on the Palatine and the Pincian, in the Museum at Alexandria, and the schools which Omar Khayyám frequented, in the straw-strewn schools of the Middle Ages and the opulent chambers of Cosmo de’ Medici.
We answer, as men did in all those earlier debates, according to our temperament. One says culture, another character, another happiness, another pleasure, another efficiency. This discussion is often a mere exercise of wit, and very often we use a quite arbitrary standard in fixing what is “best,” or the greatest good. Probably the modern mind will put to itself the plain question: “What is the best purpose for the race, in its own interest, to adopt?” As we are not now clear that there are any other interests to be consulted, this is the obvious form of the question. And when we do put it in this form, the old conflict begins to disappear. We see that a comprehensive ideal, embracing all the
