If we use the word in the second sense, that of being for the benefit of another, to give to the beggar may or may not be altruistic; thoughtful philanthropy is inclined to say that it is usually for his harm. It may, perhaps, be said that we at least intend to benefit or please him, that this is the main thing, and that it is a question whether the action has an I-reference or a you-reference in the mind of the actor. As to this I would again call attention to what was said of the nature of I and you as personal ideas in Chapter III., and of the nature of egotism in Chapter VI. Our impulses regarding persons cannot, in my opinion, be classified in this way. What could be more selfish than the action of a mother who cannot refuse her child indigestible sweetmeats? She gives them both to please the child and to gratify a shallow self which is identified with him. To refuse the money to the beggar may be as altruistic, in the sense of springing from the desire to benefit others, as to give it. The self for which one wishes to keep the dollar is doubtless a social self of some sort, and very possibly has better social claims upon him than the beggar: he may wish to buy flowers for a sick child. I need hardly add that to give the money is not necessarily the moral course. The attempt to identify the good with what refers to others as against what refers to one’s self is hopelessly confusing and false, both theoretically and in practical application. In short it is hard to discover, in the word altruism, any definite moral significance. The individual and the group are related in respect to moral thought quite as they are everywhere else; individual consciences and the social conscience are not separate things, but aspects of one thing, namely, the moral Life, which may be regarded as individual by fixing our attention upon a particular conscience in artificial isolation, or as general, by attending to some collective phase, like public opinion upon a moral question. Suppose, for instance, one were a member of the Congress that voted the measure which brought on the war with Spain. The question how he should vote on this measure would be, in its individual aspect, a matter of private conscience; and so with all other members. But taking the vote as a whole, as a synthesis, showing the moral drift of the group, it appears as an expression of a social conscience. The separation is purely artificial, every judgment of an individual conscience being social in that it involves a synthesis of social influences, and every social conscience being a collective view of individual consciences. The concrete thing, the moral Life, is a whole made up of differentiated members. If this is at all hard to grasp, it is only because the fact is a large one. We certainly cannot get far unless we can learn to _see_ organization, since all our facts present it.