ultimate good, but for the sake of the acts them selves and their immediate consequences. I may benefit others because I love to do so, without being aware that I am thereby bettering humanity, and without consciously striving after that end. I may study from a love of study, because I have certain intellectual impulses, without being conscious that the realization of my desires will assist in civilizing the world, and without intending to work for progress. Or I may be thoroughly conscious of what I am doing and for what I am doing it, I may be governed in all my conduct by a clearly conceived ideal.

Now, different persons may have different ideals (meaning by ideals the direction which their impulses are taking, whether they are conscious of it or not). And the same individual may have different ideals at different times, nay, even, different ideals at the same time. One ideal may give way to another, which in turn may be relieved by a third. Moreover, ideals are more clearly presented in some consciousnesses than in others, and govern the lives of some individuals more characteristically than those of others.

Collective bodies like individuals move in certain directions in obedience to their characteristic desires, and have their ideals. Different nations have different ideals, and the same nation may have different ideals at different times. A nation's ideal manifests itself in all its products in its religion, philosophy, poetry, art, literature, science, politics, morality, etc.

The ideals of the Jews, Athenians, and Spartans The ideal of the earlier Romans

were not the same.

differed largely from that of the Empire, and the ideal of the modern times does not agree with the ideal of the Middle Ages.

2. The Ideal of Humanity. All these facts show us how hard it must be to answer the question, What is the highest good or ideal which humanity is striving to reach? in anything but a very general way. We can say that human beings desire to live human lives, which is a general statement of the fact that they have specific impulses, desires, or tendencies. They not only desire to live, but to live in specific ways. They love to exercise their powers and to develop their capacities. In the words of Paulsen: "The goal at which the will of every living creature aims, is the normal exercise of the vital functions which constitute its nature. Every animal desires to live the life for which it is predisposed. Its natural disposition manifests itself in impulses, and determines its activity. The formula may also be applied to man. He desires to live a human life and all that is implied in it; that is, a mental, historical life, in which there is room for the exercise of all human mental powers and virtues. He desires to play and to learn, to work and to acquire, to possess and to enjoy, to form and to create; he desires to love and to admire, to obey and to rule, to fight and to win, to make poetry and to dream, to think and to investigate. And he desires to do all

he desires to preserve and

And after he

these things in their natural order of development, as life provides them. He desires to experience the relations of the child to its parents, of the pupil to his teacher, of the apprentice to the master; and his will, for the time being, finds the greatest satisfaction in such a life. He desires to live as a brother among brothers, as a friend among friends, as a companion among companions, as a citizen among citizens, and also to prove himself an enemy against enemies. Finally, he desires to experience what the lover, husband, and father experience rear and educate children who shall transmit the contents of his own life. has lived such a life and has acquitted himself like an honest man, he has realized his desires; his life is complete; contentedly he awaits the end, and his last wish is to be gathered peacefully to his fathers."1 That is, to speak in general terms, man has certain impulses and longings, which he seeks to live out. As Professor James puts it, he has a material me, a social me, and a spiritual me, and the corresponding feelings and impulses. He desires to preserve and develop his body, to clothe it, to adorn it, to house it, to acquire and enjoy property, friends, and other possessions, to get social recognition, to be loved and admired, to promote his spiritual interests, and to assist his fellows in realizing similar desires.

We may generalize and say: Man desires his preservation and development, physical and mental. He 1 Ethics, Bk. II, chap. ii, § 5.

Some

desires to know, to feel, to will, and to act. philosophers have regarded intellect (reason) as the goal, others have emphasized the feelings (pleasure), and still others have designated action, as the end.1 Some have advised us to eradicate all material strivings, and to care only for the health of the soul, by which they meant either our moral or religious nature, or both. Mediæval ascetics regarded the body and all impulses except the desire to be united with God, as obstacles in the path of man. Natural impulses were regarded as the work of the devil, and therefore as things that ought to be suppressed. We must, however, beware of one-sidedness here, and not emphasize one element at the expense of another. We may say that human life and the development of human life is the end. But by life we do not mean mere eating and drinking, i.e., the preservation of the body, or the exercise of any other single phase of life, such as thinking, feeling, or willing, but the unfolding of all human capacities in conformity with the demands of the natural and human environment. The end is the development of body and mind in harmony with each other, the unfolding of all powers and capacities of the soul, cognitive, emotional, and volitional, in adaptation to both physical and psychical surroundings. A person is realizing

1 Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. I, chap. iii (Welldon's translation): "Thus ordinary or vulgar people conceive it (the good) to be pleasure, and accordingly approve a life of enjoyment. For there are practically three prominent lives, the sensual, the political, and, thirdly, the speculative."

the highest good when his inner life is well ordered or rationalized; when the so-called lower forces are subordinated to the higher spiritual powers; when he is what the Greeks called oppov (sophron), or healthy-minded; when his body is the servant and symbol of the soul, and like a good servant does much and demands little; when there is a proper balance between his egoistic and altruistic impulses and acts, in short, when he is a virtuous man.1

When we declare that the end of human striving is the unfolding of human life, we merely indicate the end in vague and general outlines. We cannot give a detailed and definite account of what we mean by human life; we must allow humanity to fill in the content itself. We can tell what life is only by living it. As life is movement, action, the unfolding of capacities, our goal cannot be a fixed or stable one; we cannot imagine that we shall ever reach a

1 The following quotation, from Huxley's Science and Education, will show us what that writer regards as the highest good: "That man, I think, has a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself." p. 86.