278 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



the feeling and its conditions, and we mean here by har- 

 mony a definite mutual support between a succession of 

 feelings on the one hand and a set of conditions out of 

 which the feeling arises on the other. The feeling is at 

 the root of efforts to create or maintain these conditions, 

 and the conditions as they are realised give rise to the 

 feeling. We may thus consider satisfied feeling as a state 

 of harmony between the mind and certain conditions 

 (whether external or internal) that affect it, and dissatisfied 

 feeling as a disharmony. Now if we seek for a moment to 

 imagine that there were only one mind in existence, and 

 that it could experience only one type of feeling secured 

 only by the presence of certain conditions, the whole work 

 of reason on the practical side would be that of supplying 

 the knowledge which would be utilised as a means to secur- 

 ing the requisite conditions. So far there would be no 

 particular object in introducing the conception of a prac- 

 tical reason or a rational impulse in practice. When, how- 

 ever, we consider, even within the limits of one mind, the 

 possibility of many types of feeling, which may rest on 

 discrepant and even contradictory conditions, a new ques- 

 tion arises, which feeling is to be preferred, and why ? We 

 need now a rational ground of preference among satisfac- 

 tions or feelings, and if we are to apply our former prin- 

 ciples we shall look for a connected or systematic order, 

 which satisfies as a whole, in which subordinate or consti- 

 tuent elements of satisfaction find their place in relation to 

 the whole, and in which no discord or contradiction of 

 feeling with feeling is tolerated that cannot ultimately be 

 resolved into a more deep-lying concord. The only differ- 

 ence will be that here the principle of interconnection, the 

 test by which consistency and inconsistency are to be 

 judged, is that of practical reconcilability. Feeling must 

 harmonise with feeling, as each feeling harmonises with its 

 conditions. There must be the relation of practical mutual 

 support throughout the order. The impulse of the Prac- 

 tical Reason will then be to establish a practical harmony, 

 a life of feeling in which the parts are so interrelated as to 

 form a connected whole. Lastly, if we introduce the con- 

 ception of a multiplicity of persons or relatively indepen- 



