(2) On the other hand, there are perverse and pathological impulses
which are deserving of no regard and must be simply cast aside in the
organizing process, because they lead only to unhappiness. There is
a difference between the desirable and the desired; morality is not
merely an organizing but a corrective force, bringing sometimes not
peace but a sword. A truer figure would be to represent it as a flowers
and ruthlessly pruning or weeding out others, that the garden may be
the most beautiful place.
(3) Moreover, this definition, while an excellent DESCRIPTIONTION of
what morality in general is, is not a JUSTIFICATION of morality, does
not point to its ultimate raison d'etre. To all this organizing
activity we might say, Cui bono, for what good? WHY should we organize
our interests; why not deny them like the ascetics? The mere existence
of pushes, in this direction and that, affords no material for moral
judgment; a harmonizing of them would make a mathematical resultant,
but it would be of no superior WORTH. If there were no pleasure and
pain in life, it would not MATTER in the least whether the various
life forces were organized or not. In such a colorless world a unison
of human impulses would be as morally indifferent as the convergence
of tributary rivers or the formation of an organized solar system.
It is only, as we long ago pointed out, [Footnote: Cf. ante, p. 74 ]
when consciousness differentiates into its plus and minus values,
pleasure and pain, that a reason arises why any forces in the cosmos
should be thwarted or allowed free play.
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