Page:What Religion Is (1920).djvu/73

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58
RELIGION

seriously valuable production to which certain lives gave rise. In matters so complex, a particular case goes for little, and it might always be pronounced “exceptional.” Nevertheless I believe that it would be feasible by analyses of this kind to produce a good deal of conviction as to the positive values contributed to life by what commonly pass for negations, privations, deprivations.[1] Thus we might get rid of that tendency to standardise all finite spirits and their good at a somewhat commonplace or average level, which implies and is implied in the pretension to set down so much and such as what they ought to have, and again so much and such as what is abnormal and they ought to be spared. Of course, health is a good thing, and we have a right to make good things general if we can. But health, as we saw, itself is relative,

  1. The line of thought of course is affected by Spinoza.