The Five Great Philosophies of LifeHyde, William De Witt
Philosophy
The Five Great Philosophies of Life
Hyde, William De Witt
Ethics; Philosophy, Ancient
Do you wish, then, to know precisely where you stand in the scale of
personality? Here is the test. How large a section of this world do you
care for, in such a vital, responsible way, that you are thinking about
its welfare, forming schemes for its improvement, bending your energies
toward its advancement? Do you care for your profession in that way? Do
you care for your family like that? Do you love your country with such
jealous solicitude for its honour and prosperity? Can you honestly say
that your neighbour gets represented in your mind in this imaginative,
sympathetic, helpful way? Do you think of God's great universe as
something in the goodness of which you rejoice, and for the welfare of
which you are earnestly enlisted? Begin down at the bottom, with your
stomach, your pocket-book, your calling list, and go up the scale until
you come to these wider interests, and mark the point where you cease to
think how these things might be better than they are and to work to make
them so, and that point where your imagination and your service stops,
and your indifference and irresponsibility begins, will show you
precisely how you stand on the rank-book of God. The magnitude of the
ends you see and serve is the measure of your personality. Personality
is not an entity we carry around in our spiritual pockets. It is an
energy, which is no whit larger or smaller than the ends it aims at and
the work it does. If you are not doing anything or caring for anybody,
or devoted to any end, you will not be called up at some future time and
formally punished for your negligence. Plato might flatter your
self-importance with that notion, but not Aristotle. Aristotle tells
you, not that your soul will be punished hereafter, but that it is lost
already.
Goodness does not consist in doing or refraining from doing this or that
particular thing. It depends on the whole aim and purpose of the man who
does it, or refrains from doing it. Anything which a good man does as
part of the best plan of life is made thereby a good act. And anything
that a bad man does, as part of a bad plan of life, becomes thereby an
evil act. Precisely the same external act is good for one man and bad
for another. An example or two will make this clear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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