Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/93

not what are its accidental surroundings. Moral distinctions must apply to aims as such. Unless you are judging men exactly as you judge the north wind or the value of rain, not as consciously good or bad, but as mere forces that happen to produce such and such results under such and such conditions, you must study, not first the accidental circumstances, but the men. And in fact all moralists, however much they may condemn the weighing of mere motives, however much they desire to take just the consequences into account, as Bentham did, are nevertheless forced to separate in their moral judgments accidental from expected consequences. We maintain that this abstraction of a disposition from its accidental expressions must be rigidly carried out in order to get a moral doctrine of any significance. Let others study natural forces. We here are studying men, and are considering what ideal of a man we can form. Whatever the accidents of the outer world give him in the way of means, we want to know his real intent, and to judge that. But if the intent of the man does alone make him altruistic or the reverse, then what, for example, is the position, in ethical controversy, of any system that declares altruism to be morally good because the individual needs the social order to assist him, and must therefore in all prudence try to further the social ends as a means to the furthering of his own? Does such a system say anything whatever about altruism as such? Does it not make enlightened egoism the one rule of life? And if this is what is meant, why not say so plainly? If the intent of the