" Isolation tends almost inevitably to narrowness, to
an abnormal and cramped outlook, to willfulness or Pharisaism, and
usually to loneliness and depression. The only pervasively happy life
for man is the life of cooperation and loyalty. We may well "withdraw
into the silence," take our daily communion with God in our closets,
or our forty days in the wilderness, to win clearer vision and steadier
purpose. But solitude should, in normal cases, be only an interlude
of rest, or a quiet maturing for service. The ideal is perhaps expressed
in Wordsworth's sonnet on Milton:
"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart. .... And yet thy heart The
lowliest duties on herself did lay."
The organization of life implies a criticism of and control over
altruistic as well as egoistic impulses. There is nothing inherent
in the fact of a good being OTHERS' good to make it necessarily the
greatest good in a given situation. The ultimate criterion must always
be the greatest good of the greatest number; but an altruistic as well
as an egoistic impulse may stand in the way of that end. Our altruistic
inclinations are often perverted, non-representative, a matter of
instinctive and irrational sympathy or shortsighted impulse. And so,
while one of the great tasks of moral education is to make men
unselfish, that alone is not enough; unselfishness must be directed
by reason and tact, rendered far-sighted and intelligent.
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