On the other hand, the follower of nature, like other intuitionists, may easily be thrown into perplexity by the fact that what seems to him natural, and, hence, right, may not be approved by other men. He cannot _prove_ that he is right and they are wrong. He appears condemned to take refuge in subjective conviction, that is, in mere dogmatism. II. PERFECTION 119. PERFECTION AND TYPE.--When we speak of a thing as more or less perfect, we commonly mean that it is more or less perfect in its kind. A good saw makes a poor razor; a good chair, a more than indifferent bed. A bee crushed by a blow, a bird with a broken wing, we regard as imperfect. But it scarcely occurs to us to ask ourselves whether the bee is more or less perfect than the bird, or the bird than the spider. Swift's Houyhnhnms at their best could not be either perfect horses or perfect men. They were creatures with a perfection of their own, and one appropriate to their hybrid nature. To every creature its own perfection. This principle men seem to assume tacitly in their judgments. They set up a standard for each kind, and they conceive the individual to attain or to fall short, according to the degree of its approach to, or of its divergence from, the allotted standard. If we take perfection in this sense--and we usually have no other sense in mind in our judgments of perfection--the doctrine that it is the whole duty of man to strive to attain to perfection is none other than the doctrine that it is his duty to follow nature, his proper nature as man. And any difficulties which may legitimately be urged upon the attention of the moralist who recommends the following of nature may with equal justice be urged upon the attention of him who exhorts us to aim at perfection. Thus, if it is doubtful just what nature demands of us, it seems no less doubtful what obligations are laid upon us when we make perfection our goal. That goal cannot mean for each man simply the developing to the utmost of all the capacities which he possesses. There are men rich in the possibilities of sloth, of indifference to future good, of egoism, even of malignant feeling. Nor does the average man furnish the pattern of perfection. The perfectionist does not regard the average man as the embodiment of his ideal. He seeks to better him. That, in striving to attain perfection, a man should remain a man, with essentially human characteristics, seems evident. But what sort of a man he should be is not as clear. Until we are in a position to give some reasoned account of what we mean by perfection as an ideal, and to show that it is a desirable goal for man, we appear to be setting up but a vague end for human endeavor, and to be assuming intuitively that it is a desirable end.