Dewey in Philos. Journal, Dec., 1893.




VI

SELF-SACRIFICE

I


The view of human goodness presented in the preceding chapter is one
which is at present finding remarkably wide acceptance. Philosophers
are often reproached with an indisposition to agree, and naturally
where inquiry is active diversity will obtain. But to-day there
appears a strange unanimity as regards the ultimate formula of ethics.
The empirical schools state this as the highest form of the struggle
for existence; the idealistic, as self-realization. The two are the
same so far as they both regard morality as having to do with the
development of life in persons. These curious beings, both also
acknowledge, can never rest till they attain a completeness now
incalculable.

Of course there is abundant diversity in the application of such
formulae. In interpreting them we come upon problems no less urgent
and tangled than those which vexed our fathers. Who and what is a
person? How far is he detachable from nature? How far from his fellow
men? Is his individuality an illusion, and each of us only an