PROLEGOMENA TO ETHICS. 125 



with Whom the human spirit is identical in the 

 sense that He is all which the human spirit is 

 capable of becoming" (p. 198). 



Such an ideal, known only at first vaguely and 

 in outline, creates its own filling, and in history 

 we can trace the process. The first step in the 

 process, or rather that which the whole process 

 implies, is the realizing of the fact that a perfect 

 self-development is only possible when others 

 share in the same development. The idea of an 

 absolute good is seen to be the idea of a common 

 good. The supposed objection that this notion 

 of a common good is but the development of a 

 gregarious instinct, which we see in brutes, calls 

 forth a criticism which is of far wider application 

 than that in which it is here used. However 

 dependent upon feelings of animal origin social 

 interest may be, it cannot be a product of them 

 nor evolved from them : 



"Any history that might be offered of it, which should 

 enable us to connect its more complex with its simpler forms, 

 would be much to be welcomed. But the same cannot be 

 said for a history which should seem to account for it by 

 ignoring its distinctive character, and by deriving it from 

 forms of animal sympathy from which, because they have 

 no element of identity with it, it cannot in the proper sense 

 have been developed " (p. 211). 



Similarly when the idea of an absolute and common 

 good expresses itself in social requirements, in laws 

 written or unwritten, in the recognition of some- 



