We agree that happiness is the end; and therefore we say pleasure is not the end.
We agree that pleasure is a good; we say it is not the good.
We agree (strange fellowship!) with the author of the Essay on Liberty in affirming the ὅ πᾶσι δοκεῖ τοῦτ' εἷναι φαμέν; and therefore we dissent from a theory which gives the lie to the moral consciousness, and whose psychological basis destroys and makes unmeaning the maxim.
We agree to make the self-evolution of ourselves and of humanity the end. We refuse to place progress in the greater or less amount of ‘grateful feeling.’ We repeat the good old doctrine that the test of higher and lower can not lie in a feeling which accompanies the exercise of every function, but is to be found in the quality of the function itself. To measure that, we are to go to our idea of man, and to his place in creation and his evolution in history.
In one single word, the end and the standard is self-realization, and is not the feeling of self-realizedness.
May we suggest, in conclusion, that of all our Utilitarians there is perhaps not one who has not still a great deal to learn from Aristotle’s Ethics?1
1 Since the above was written Mr. Sidgwick’s book has appeared. I am far from wishing to deny to it a certain value, but on the subject of Hedonism I can not honestly say more than that he seems to me to have left the question exactly where he found it. As other people, however, seem to think otherwise, I am forced to define my position against him. But I labour here under two difficulties,—the first, want of space; the second, my inability to make sure of Mr. Sidgwick’s meaning.
The latter arises in great measure from the character of the work. Ostensibly critical, it goes throughout upon preconceptions, which not only are not discussed, but which often are not even made explicit. With some of these we must begin.
(1.) It is tacitly assumed that the individual and the universal are two independent things (p. 473). Hence the mere individual is not (as with us) an abstraction in our heads, but a real existence.
(2.) The practical result of this dogmatic preconception is seen on p. 374. To find a man’s ultimate end we are to suppose ‘only a single sentient conscious being in the universe.’ This supposition pre-supposes either that the universe is real out of relation to all consciousness, or is real in relation to one finite consciousness. An author no doubt has a right to maintain these or any other
