The Nature of Goodness by George Herbert Palmer
page 25 of 153 (16%)
page 25 of 153 (16%)
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quite as decidedly through the wholeness of our characters as we do
through any interlocking of single traits. Such totality of relationship I have tried to suggest by connecting the centres of each little square with the centres of adjacent ones. John as a whole is thus shown to be good for Peter as a whole. We have successively found ourselves obliged to broaden our conception until the goodness of a single object has come to imply that of a group. The two phases of goodness are thus seen to be mutually dependent. Extrinsic goodness or serviceability, that where an object employs an already constituted wholeness to further the wholeness of another, cannot proceed except through intrinsic goodness, or that where fullness and adjustment of functions are expressed in the construction of an organism. Nor can intrinsic goodness be supposed to exist shut up to itself and parted from extrinsic influence. The two are merely different modes or points of view for assessing goodness everywhere. Goodness in its most elementary form appears where one object is connected with another as means to end. But the more elaborately complicated the relation becomes, and the richer the entanglement of means and ends--internal and external--in the adjustment of object or person, so much ampler is the goodness. Each object, in order to possess any good, must share in that of the universe. II But the diagram suggests a second question. Are all the functions here represented equally influential in forming the organism? Our figure |
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