y practical. The actually
possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded;
and there is always a _pinch_ between the ideal and the actual which
can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind. There is
hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the
possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined
good. Every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of
some other end of desire. Shall a man drink and smoke, _or_ keep his
nerves in condition?--he cannot do both. Shall he follow his fancy for
Amelia, _or_ for Henrietta?--both cannot be the choice of his heart.
Shall he have the {203} dear old Republican party, _or_ a spirit of
unsophistication in public affairs?--he cannot have both, etc. So that
the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination
in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of
the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a
tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has
to deal.

Now we are blinded to the real difficulty of the philosopher's task by
the fact that we are born into a society whose ideals are largely
ordered already. If we follow the ideal which is conventionally
highest, the others which we butcher either die and do not return to
haunt us; or if they come back and accuse us of murder, every one
applauds us for turning to them a deaf ear. In other words, our
environment encourages us not to be philosophers but partisans. The
philosopher, however, cannot, so long as he clings to his own ideal of
objectivity, rule out any ideal from being heard. He is confident, and
rightly confident, that the simple taking counsel of his own intuitive
preferences would be certain to end in a mutilation of the fulness of
the truth. The poet Heine is said to have written 'Bunsen' in the
place of 'Gott' in his copy of that author's work entitled "God in
History," so as to make it read 'Bunsen in der Geschichte.' Now, with
no disrespect to the good and learned Baron, is it not safe to say that
any single philosopher, however wide his sympathies, must be just such
a Bunsen in der Geschichte of the moral world, so soon as he attempts
to put his own ideas of order into that howling mob of desires, each
struggling to get breathing-room for the ideal to which it clings? The
very best of men must not only be insensible, but {204} be ludicrous