ence at all, any of them, beyond themselves. To realize, as such, the self which feels pleasure and pain, means to realize this infinite perishing series.[1] And it is clear at once that this is not what is required for a practical end. Let us see the problem a little closer.
On the one side our Hedonist is aware, however dimly, of himself not as this, nor that, nor the other particular feeling or satisfaction, but as something which is not this, that, or the other, and yet is real, and is to be realized. Self-realization, as we saw, was the object of desire; and so, as above, on the one hand is the self, which we are forced to look on as a whole which is in its parts, as a living totality, as an universal present throughout, and constituted by its particulars: and this self is setting out, however unaware, to find itself as such and to satisfy itself as such, or not to find itself and not to satisfy itself at all. On the other side is the mere feeling self, the series of particular satisfactions, which the self has come (how, we need not here enquire) to take as its reality, and as the sole possible field for its self-realization.
The point to observe is the heterogeneous nature of the self to be satisfied, and of the proposed satisfaction, and the consequent impossibility of a solution for the problem. The practical difficulty is soon forced on the seeker after pleasure.
Pleasures, we saw, were a perishing series. This one comes, and the intense self-feeling proclaims satisfaction. It is gone, and we are not satisfied. It was not that one, then, but this one now; and this one now is gone. It was not that one, then, but another and another; but another and another do not give us what we want: we are still left eager and confident, till the flush of feeling dies down, and when that is gone there is nothing left. We are where we began, so far as the getting happiness goes; and we have not found ourselves, and we are not satisfied.
This is common experience, and it is the practical refutation of
- ↑ It is an abstraction, no doubt, to consider pleasurable feelings as mere pleasures, but it is not our abstraction but the Hedonist’s. It is an abstraction, again, to consider feelings as merely particular. They can not be that, if they are our feelings, if they are the feelings of a self. But we can make our mere feeling self, as the self which feels mere pleasure and pain an object only in the series of its feelings, and these (as such a series) have no relations, each either within itself or beyond itself.
