their real task is still before them. A number of the phrases which philosophers have used to describe the end of human conduct, or the Summum Bonum, are in reality no more than descriptions in this sense of the de facto end identifiable with the character of life as such; they are blanket terms that do not by themselves give us any practical directions about the road we ought to take for the attainment of the best. Thus even if it were the case that what every human being really is after is to secure his own pleasure, we should still have the ethical problem on our hands: what kinds of pleasure are we to select if the end is to be successfully attained?
Of the various formulas that profess to describe the character of life, that of pleasure is historically the most wide-spread; but its inadequacy has been so often pointed out that it is unnecessary to consider its claims here. All men, at one time or another, set pleasure among their aims of conduct; some men, it may be, make it the one rule of life. But that the normal mind reckons life only as a means to the gratification of its private feelings, is simply not the case. In instructed circles, a different type of formula is now therefore chiefly current, pointing back in one form or another to that scientific fact which traditional hedonism failed sufficiently to take into account—the biological life with its predisposed mechanism. The first way of putting the matter which this suggests, is that we stick to the fact in its lowest terms, and interpret life in accordance with the scientific notion of 'self-preservation.' And as a matter of fact such a formula has had a very considerable vogue. It is too simple, however, and too bare of content, to stand any chance of justifying itself to impartial inspection. To hold with Hobbes that men actually regard the preservation of themselves in existence as the one self-evident goal never to be lost sight of, is to be blind to the greater part of human experience; it gives no heed to the deep-lying recklessness of human nature, its fondness for taking a sporting chance, and is quite inconsistent with intentional self-sacrifice. Nor does science overlook this; and if biological preservation is its watchword, it at least is not self-preservation, but the preservation of the race. But this only brings into relief
