Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/174

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162
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. XXV.

neighbor's satisfaction also will come under the head of the good, though what my neighbor wants may for me have no attraction whatsoever. It may perhaps be asked whether I am doing anything more here than classing this intellectually under the term good; am I really approving it also? And it is notorious that as a matter of fact mankind is not in its natural state greatly inclined to do this last. Sympathy with tastes other than one's own is rather the exception than the rule. But this is due, pretty plainly, to our provincialism and failure in impartiality; the more a man develops rationally, the more capacity he shows for putting himself in the place of others, and sympathizing with their differing modes of life. And so, since he recognizes the intrinsic goodness in satisfied desire, he will come to look with approval upon whatever satisfies desire; and he will do this primarily through a sympathetic enlargement of intellectual vision. But there will be one important limitation. Good in the large may not all of it be his good, but it can hardly be inconsistent with his good, and still call forth his approving judgment. For it is hardly rational for me to judge two things to be good which are mutually repellent. Consequently we are led to define the Summum Bonum as the sum of the interests and satisfactions of all sentient creatures, not in so far as they possess some one identical content, but in so far as they are capable of living together harmoniously in the same world. Unless there is a clash, I do not see that I am justified in condemning or despising the life interests of any being, in so far as I can assume that for him they represent the demands of his particular nature. Certainly to any one who has ever had a canine friend, the natural life even of the animal may be a constituent of the sum of good; and it seems a little snobbish to object even to the pig's happiness so long as it is a literal pig that is in question.

Now, if this is true, it would appear that there is a difference between the ideal of the individual, and the Summum Bonum; and this is a point which both theoretically and practically is worth considering. The Summum Bonum, or the greatest sum of good, does not represent the personal ideal, or what I ought individually to aim at. My duty is determined by my particular