xv CONCEPTUAL THOUGHT 



of the self, any broad principles or any conception of his 

 own permanent welfare to the test of which he brings his 

 action. No doubt the broad tendencies of his nature 

 operate unconsciously within the dog as they operate for 

 the most part unconsciously within us. But we can also, 

 with varying degrees of accuracy, understand and formulate 

 them, and this there is no evidence that the dog can do. 

 Thus, so far as the conscious co-ordination of action is con- 

 cerned, the Practical Judgment, resting on concrete ex- 

 perience alone without the power of summing up masses 

 of experience into general conceptions, is limited to the 

 adjustment of means to a desired end, or the preference of 

 one end over another. The judgment of Enlightened Self- 

 interest in its theoretical perfection would subordinate all 

 immediate and even remoter ends to the requirements of 

 the self as a whole. In actual life, it guides its action 

 rather by certain broad purposes, each of which fills a great 

 part of life, but which are not brought into such system- 

 atic harmony with one another that we can speak of the 

 whole life as forming a rational unity. 1 Just as masses of 

 past experience are summed up in the form of universal 

 judgments, so the broad purposes of life, masses as we may 

 say of future experiences, are summed up in the conception 

 of the self and of the various broad ends of life that fall 

 within it ; and actual conduct is correlated with both. 



2. With the conception of Self comes the conception of 

 other Selves. Indeed, as many thinkers have been fond of 

 insisting, the two conceptions are in constant interaction. 

 We form our conceptions of others from ourselves, and of 

 ourselves from others. It follows that the conception of 

 Personality in another will tend to be of the same broken 

 and partial character as the conception of Self. We know 

 one person merely as a " good fellow " at the club, another 

 purely as a professional colleague. Even our nearest and 

 dearest, whom we think we know through and through, 

 we find, tragically, to be u strangers yet." As are the 



1 It is perhaps superfluous to point out the obverse truth, that the 

 cheapest way of approaching unity is to starve the self by suppressing all 

 sides of it save one, as, e.g., by consistent asceticism, or sensualism, or 

 even professionalism. 



