offer one more illustration. Some time ago I chanced upon an autobiographical work by a Jewish writer, an American of foreign birth. The book was a very personal document, in which an interesting experience and an interesting point of view were presented with genius and literary skill. At one point the writer was at pains to explain to his reader that he could find none of the supposedly Jewish traits in himself. Evidently it was his purpose to prove that there is no difference between a Jew and a gentile. Personally I do not understand why a Jew, representing a people which has contributed so much to the culture of the race, should wish to deny that there is any distinctive quality in a Jew. It happens, however, that other gentile readers have agreed with me in thinking that the book in question exhibited rather markedly some of the more unpleasant traits commonly attributed by gentiles to Jews.

And in particular the following. The writer referred more than once to his wife, and to his married life in terms that should win respect, yet with a certain defensive, not to say truculent, eloquence which made one wonder at the necessity. At the same time he commented in terms most contemptuous upon the "commonplace" and "uninteresting" wives of men with whom he had been associated; men who, it seemed, had not only done him no ill but had been generally friendly to him, and whose chief fault seemed to be that they preferred the society of their wives to his own society. Now this lack, I will not say of chivalry, but of objective decency and fairness-this childish and ill-mannered disposition to write one's own sensibilities large and the sensibilities of others small-is unfortunately just what the common gentile world

whether truly or falsely, matters not for our purpose-is most inclined to regard as the peculiar mark of the Jew. And whether truly or falsely, how could he fail to be alive to the nature of the prejudice and to provide for it? Either, it seems, he must then have deleted these offensive passages or he must have justified them by explaining his point of view. And I think he must then have gone on to make as persuasive as possible the beauty of the Jewish character.

The difficulty with this writer, I guess, was precisely that he was unaware of these so-called Jewish traits. He did not know what his attitude would mean to his reader, nor just what it meant to himself. This was the root of the moral difficulty, and this constituted his offence and his offensiveness. After all, one can permit a man to say anything he pleases to one-or, apart from its practical aspect, to do anything he pleases-provided he makes clear the significance of what he is saying or doing. And in spite of all race prejudices, any racial trait tends to justify itself and to compel recognition when it expresses itself consciously and responsibly. The unconscious racetendency is a trait merely brutal; the self-conscious expression of tendency is a contribution to life.

§ 47

So much for the justification by knowledge. Now I fear very much that some obstinately practical reader will be certain at this point to ask me what we are going to do about it when the carefully meditated purposes of different persons issue in conflicting lines of action—when, for example, one of a married pair is thoughtfully resolved upon divorce, the other no less thoughtfully resolved against

it. To him I can only repeat what has been said before, namely, that it is not the purpose of moral philosophy to draft a schedule of what to do. Such a task is reserved for those the law, or possibly the police-whose function it is to frame utilitarian schemes of social order; in which I am here not interested.

Meanwhile I may remind him once more of the difference between settling a question and answering it, between the disposal of a problem and its solution. The only conceivable moral resolution of a conflict is that which issues in mutual understanding after conference and discussion. The moral world knows nothing of judges, umpires, courts, and laws. If the parties should appeal to me I could give them only the rather easy advice to state their case, each to the other, with the utmost possible frankness. Putting it very vulgarly I might say, Begin by laying your cards on the table-if only you know what cards you are really holding. Any card-player will be reminded by this figure that consciousness makes an important difference; after seeing your careless opponent's hand at bridge it is very difficult to play as if you had not seen it you do not now know what your own hand alone would have suggested. In like fashion your own case is likely to look very different after you have grasped the point of view of the other party; and the difference makes the two more negotiable, more capable of a resolution satisfying to both.

But it may be that with the best will to negotiate there will remain elements of flat opposition of interest. This will mean only that, humanly speaking, the problem is morally insoluble. But if the problem is not morally soluble, in the sense of yielding complete mutual satisfac

tion, there may still be found a compromise, involving reciprocal sacrifice, which it will pay both parties to accept. Let us not, however, mistake this mutual sacrifice for a moral solution. And if no practicable compromise is discoverable—well, if I were one of the parties I should then make the typical utilitarian calculation of profit and loss and ask myself how far it would pay me to yield the points now left in dispute, how far to fight for them. But when it comes to this we have left the moral world well in the distance.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ENJOYMENT OF LIFE

§ 48. The Epicurean attitude. § 49. An Epicurean confession. § 50. Epicurus and Pater. § 51. Enjoyment and imagination. § 52. The enjoyment of friendship and the enjoyment of religion. § 53. Serious enjoyment.

'N connection with the pragmatic attitude it was said

I

that the significance of any temporal moment of life,

or the meaning of any present desire, might be anything you please; "the present" is a question of the present scope of imagination. The same indefinite possibility confronts us when we think to define the boundaries of human nature. Could we think of the human being simply as an organism with a definite habitat and a restricted span of life, we might then formulate a definite "science of ethics", based upon human nature as a natural fact, undisturbed by suggestions metaphysical. But such a science of ethics would hardly merit the name of moral philosophy. The "moral nature" of man implies that he is not a mere organism but an organism which is selfconscious and critical, an organism with imagination. To human nature as thus conceived it seems difficult to assign any "natural" boundaries.

In the previous chapters I have found it convenient to take human nature, generally speaking, as it "is". But now it seems that to leave the story at this point is to omit all the deeper issues of moral philosophy; and to impose upon the critical life a termination artificially abrupt

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