We have seen that a clearer conception to-day of the unity of the social process shows us: first, that we are not merely to follow but to create “right,” secondly, that there is no private conscience, and third, that my duty is never to “others” but to the whole. We no longer make a distinction between selfishness and altruism.[18] An act done for our own benefit may be social and one done for another may not be. Some twenty or thirty years ago our “individual” system of ethics began to be widely condemned and we have been hearing a great deal of “social” ethics. But this so-called “social” ethics has meant only my duty to “others.” There is now emerging an idea of ethics entirely different from the altruistic school, based not on the duty of isolated beings to one another, but on integrated individuals acting as a whole, evolving whole-ideas, working for whole-ideals. The new consciousness is of a whole. PURPOSE As right appears with that interrelating, germinating activity which we call the social process, so purpose also is generated by the same process. The goal of evolution most obviously must evolve itself. How self-contradictory is the idea that evolution is the world-process and yet that some other power has made the goal for it to reach. The truth is that the same process which creates all else creates the very purpose. That purpose is involved in the process, not prior to process, has far wider reaching consequences than can be taken up here. The whole philosophy of cause and effect must be rewritten. If the infinite task is the evolution of the whole, if our finite tasks are wholes of varying degrees of scope and perfection, the notion of causality must have an entirely different place in our system of thought. The question is often asked, “What is the proposed unity of European nations after the war to be for?” This question implies that the alliance will be a mere method of accomplishing certain purposes, whereas it is the union which is the important thing. With the union the purpose comes into being, and with its every step forward, the purpose changes. No one would say that the aims of the Allies to-day are the same as in 1914, or even as in April, 1917. As the alliance develops, the purpose steadily shapes itself. Every teleological view will be given up when we see that purpose is not “preëxistent,” but involved in the unifying act which is the life process. It is man’s part to create purpose and to actualize it. From the point of view of man we are just in the dawn of self-consciousness, and his purpose is dimly revealing itself to him. The life-force wells up in us for expression—to direct it is the privilege of self-consciousness.[19] LOYALTY