ENGLISH COMMENTARY
which compose it. Fortify the will by giving the true name to the object in question and to its parts. The effect is like bringing an object under the microscope into the centre of the field and focusing it.
Then, with the object thus exhibited in its entirety to the understanding, remind yourself of the nature of this Universe of which it is a part. It has its purpose, because the Universe is a providential system, no chance congeries of atoms as materialists pretend. Ask, therefore, what is the value of the present object in such a system of necessary law. Relate it to the whole system, and to your individual system, which is itself a microcosm and is so constituted as to enable you to play your part in the Kingdom of all reasonable creatures. Thus, and thus only, the object's real nature, its components, its relative worth (if it be pleasant), its transitory nature (if it be painful), may be determined. Finally, ask what virtue is appropriate to meet its challenge; in any case, remind yourself that it is derived from Nature, or is an aftereffect of a predetermined, inevitable scheme; or, should it result from a neighbour's action, remember that its apparently injurious character flows from his blindness to right, from his ignorance. Enough: realize the insight which is yours, the power of seeing from which he is debarred. This will enable you to treat him according to Nature's law of fellowship, though you will endeavour to understand the merely relative worth of what is morally indifferent (viz. that the apparent injury cannot affect your own moral life, ii. 1).
This remarkable chapter is in fact a plea for that disinterestedness which the Stoics called 'indifference', a term easily misunderstood and misrepresented. The attempt is to reach in moral life that purely objective standard which is the ambition in the intellectual life of all true followers of science. We cannot doubt its strengthening and salutary effect upon character; the question is whether, so rigorously pursued, it does not produce in the moral self a hardness and lack of sensibility, which is injurious to the whole.[1]
Ch. 12. A reassertion of the ideal, which was put more at large in ch. 6, a reaffirmation of the claim of the Deity within; finally, an assertion of moral freedom.
- ↑ See also iv. 7; vi. 8 and 13; ix. 36; xi. 2; xii. 8 and 18.
