against my opinion? Is the latter course right and justifiable? Will it, so to speak, excuse me in the Hedonistic judgment-day, when charged with having missed my end by misconduct, to plead that I did what others did, and that, when my own belief would have brought me right, I followed the multitude, and therefore did evil?
It appears to me that, if I am to seek my pleasure, it must be left to me to judge concerning my pleasure; and, this being so, the Almanack is not a law to me. It was made to be used by me according to my private views, not to be followed against them. And herewith all moral legislation disappears.
For obviously, (1) circumstances get into strange tangles, which can not be provided against; and the course laid down in the Almanack as a law may, in peculiar cases, lead to pain instead of pleasure; and here I must disregard the Almanack. And obviously, (2) not outward situations only, but men’s temperaments differ. What brings pleasure to one brings none to another; and so with pain. You can speak generally beforehand, but it may not apply to this or that man. And the consequence is, that the Almanack and its moral rules are no authority. It is right to act according to them. It is right to act diametrically against them. In short they are not laws at all; they are only rules, and rules, as we know, admit of and imply exceptions. As Mr. Stephen has said,[1] ‘A given road may be the direct way from one place to another, but that fact is no reason for following the road when you are offered a short cut. It may be a good rule not to seek for more than 5 per cent. in investments, but if it so happens that you can invest at 10 per cent. with perfect safety, would not a man who refused to do so be a fool?’
And with this, if Hedonism be taken as the seeking my private pleasure, we have come to the end of Hedonism as a practical creed. Its aim was the getting for myself a maximum surplus of pleasurable feeling, and it gave me rules which it was my duty to follow. But it is not in earnest with its rules; they may hold
- ↑ Liberty, &c., p. 363, ed. ii. Mr. Stephen has put this part of the case so strongly, that I have not thought it worth while to enlarge upon it. Kant is very clear and successful on this point.
