The Management of Life 71 



from the practical question of what is to be done ; but 

 such divorce leads to confusion in thought and action. 

 To say that a thing is right but is not to be done, or is 

 wrong but is to be done, is contradiction in essence; 

 it means a loss of contact with the foundation on 

 which such judgments rest. 



The process of determining what is to be done (or 

 the right) is accompanied in ourselves by poignant 

 emotions and by painful thought and difficult deci- 

 sions. Other animals are pieces of the same material 

 with ourselves. There is then no reason to suppose 

 that these inner experiences are lacking in them, 

 although they must occur in diverse degrees of dif- 

 ferentiation and intensity in different organisms. 



To determine what is right and what wrong — to 

 decide what is to be done, what not — is not a simple 

 matter even for the single individual taken alone. It 

 would not be a simple matter if the great living 

 organism had never divided into parts, so that all life 

 lay in a single individual. But relatively simple it 

 would be. The task would be only to do those things 

 which promote the life of that individual; and to 

 avoid those things which injure or decrease his life. 

 Even so, for a higher organism with its numerous 

 differentiated parts and functions and its innumer- 

 able relations with the outer world, the task becomes 

 complex and difficult. That which is beneficial and 

 right for one of his functions may be harmful with 

 respect to another. Hence arise difficulties, conflicts, 



