in
active operation, and the question is whether the thing or the situation
responds to that intent. So if I ask, Is four really twice two? the
answer is not that most people say so, but that, in saying so, I am not
misunderstanding myself. To judge whether things are _really_ good,
intent must be made to speak; and if this intent may itself be judged
later, that happens by virtue of other intents comparing the first with
their own direction.

Hence good, when once the moral or dialectical attitude has been
assumed, means not what is called good but what is so; that is, what
_ought_ to be called good. For intent, beneath which there is no moral
judgment, sets up its own standard, and ideal science begins on that
basis, and cannot go back of it to ask why the obvious good is good at
all. Naturally, there is a reason, but not a moral one; for it lies in
the physical habit and necessity of things. The reason is simply the
propulsive essence of animals and of the universal flux, which renders
forms possible but unstable, and either helpful or hurtful to one
another. That nature should have this constitution, or intent this
direction, is not a good in itself. It is esteemed good or bad as the
intent that speaks finds in that situation a support or an obstacle to
its ideal. As a matter of fact, nature and the very existence of life
cannot be thought wholly evil, since no intent is wholly at war with
these its conditions; nor can nature and life be sincerely regarded as
wholly good, since no moral intent stops at the facts; nor does the
universal flux, which infinitely overflows any actual synthesis,
altogether support any intent it may generate.

[Sidenote: Estimation the soul of philosophy.]

Philosophers would do a great discourtesy to estimation if they sought
to justify it. It is all other acts that need justification by this one.
The good greets us initially in every experience and in every object.
Remove from anything its share of excellence and you have made it
utterly insignificant, irrelevant to human discourse, and unworthy of
even theoretic consideration. Value is the principle of perspective in
science, no less than of rightness in life. The hierarchy of goods, the
architecture of values, is the subject that concerns man most. Wisdom is
the first philosophy, both in time and in authority; and to collect
facts or to chop logic would be idle and would add no dignity to the
mind, unless that mind possessed a clear