utmost power of such minds as ours. Every day of life drives that
conviction further home. And it is possible to maintain that in perhaps
quite a great number of ethical, social, and political questions there
is no absolute "truth" at all--at least for finite beings. To one
intellectual temperament things may have a moral tint and aspect,
differing widely from that they present to another; and yet each may be
in its own way right. The wide differences in character and quality
between one human being and another may quite conceivably involve not
only differences in moral obligation, but differences in fundamental
moral aspect--we may act and react upon each other towards a universal
end, but without any universally applicable rule of conduct whatever.
In some greater vision than mine, my right and wrong may be no more
than hammer and anvil in the accomplishment of a design larger than I
can understand. So that these papers are not written primarily for all,
nor with the same intention towards all who read them. They are
designed first for those who are predisposed for their reception. Then
they are intended to display in an orderly manner a point of view, and
how things look from that point of view, to those who are not so
predisposed. These latter will either develop into adherents as they
read, or, what is more likely, they will exchange a vague disorderly
objection for a clearly defined and understood difference. To arrive at
such an understanding is often for practical purposes as good as
unanimity; for in narrowing down the issue to some central point or
principle, we develop just how far those who are divergent may go
together before separation or conflict become inevitable, and save
something of our time and of our lives from those misunderstandings,
and those secondary differences of no practical importance whatever,
which make such disastrous waste of human energy.

Now the point of view which will be displayed in relation to a number