That there is difficulty in applying the distinction, and determining
which function is high and which low, is evident. To fix the purposes
of an object would often be presumptuous. With such perplexities I am
not concerned. I merely wish to point out a perfectly legitimate and
even important signification of the terms high and low, quite apart
from their popular employment as laudatory or depreciative epithets.
It surely is not amiss to call the legibility of a book a higher good
than its shape, size, or weight, though in each of these some quality
of the book is expressed.
IV
A further point of possible misconception in our diagram is the number
of factors represented. As here shown, these are but four. They might
better be forty. The more richly functional a thing or person is, the
greater its goodness. Poverty of powers is everywhere a form of evil.
For how can there be largeness of organization where there is little
to organize? Or what is the use of organization except as a mode of
furnishing the smoothest and most compact expression to powers? Wealth
and order are accordingly everywhere the double traits of goodness,
and a chief test of the worth of any organism will be the diversity of
the powers it includes. Throughout my discussion I have tried to help
the reader to keep this twofold goodness in mind by the use of such
phrases as "fullness of organization.
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