Doubtless it is conceivable that all
wills should become co-operative, and that nature should be ruled
magically by an exact and universal sympathy; but this situation must
be actually attained in part, before it can be conceived or judged to
be an authoritative ideal. The tigers cannot regard it as such, for it
would suppress the tragic good called ferocity, which makes, in their
eyes, the chief glory of the universe. Therefore the inertia of
nature, the ferocity of beasts, the optimism of mystics, and the
selfishness of men and nations must all be accepted as conditions for
the peculiar goods, essentially incommensurable, which they can
generate severally. It is misplaced vehemence to call them
intrinsically detestable, because they do not (as they cannot)
generate or recognise the goods we prize.
In the real world, persons are not abstract egos, like _A_ and _B_, so
that to benefit one is clearly as good as to benefit another. Indeed,
abstract egos could not be benefited, for they could not be modified
at all, even if somehow they could be distinguished. It would be the
qualities or objects distributed among them that would carry, wherever
they went, each its inalienable cargo of value, like ships sailing
from sea to sea. But it is quite vain and artificial to imagine
different goods charged with such absolute and comparable weights; and
actual egoism is not the thin and refutable thing that Mr.
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