An organism has been more briefly
defined, and the curious mutuality of its support expressed, by saying
that it is a unit made up of cooperant parts. And each of these
definitions expresses the notion of intrinsic goodness which we have
already reached. Intrinsic goodness is the expression of the fullness
of function in the construction of an organism.
I have elsewhere (The Field of Ethics) explained the epoch-making
character in any life of this conception of an organism. Until one has
come in sight of it, he is a child. When once he begins to view things
organically, he is--at least in outline--a scientific, an artistic, a
moral man. Experience then becomes coherent and rational, and the
disjointed modes of immaturity, ugliness, and sin no longer attract.
At no period of the world's history has this truly formative
conception exercised a wider influence than today. It is accordingly
worth while to depict it with distinctness, and to show how fully it
is wrought into the very nature of goodness.
REFERENCES ON THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. ii. ch. ii.
Bradley's Appearance and Reality, ch. xxv.
Sidgwick's Methods, bk. i. ch. ix.
Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. iii.
Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iv. ch.
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