These curious beings, both also
acknowledge, can never rest till they attain a completeness now
incalculable.
Of course there is abundant diversity in the application of such
formulae. In interpreting them we come upon problems no less urgent
and tangled than those which vexed our fathers. Who and what is a
person? How far is he detachable from nature? How far from his fellow
men? Is his individuality an illusion, and each of us only an
imperfect phase of a single universal being, so that in strictness we
must own that there is none good but one, that is God? These and
kindred questions naturally oppress the thought of our time. Yet all
are but so many attempts to push the formula of self-realization into
entire clearness. The considerable agreement in ethical formulae
everywhere noticeable shows that at least so much advance has been
made: morality has ceased to be primarily repressive, and is now
regarded as the amplest exhibit of human nature, free from every
external precept, however sacred. Man is the measure of the moral
universe, and the development of himself his single duty.
But when we thus accept self-realization as our supreme aim, we bring
ourselves into seeming conflict with one of our profoundest moral
instincts. It is self-sacrifice that calls forth from all mankind, as
nothing else does, the distinctively moral response of reverence.
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