the worth of a life of self-denial and suffering was to be expressed on the self-regarding side, surely it was the joy brought to the world of his fellowmen that measured its worth on the other-regarding side.
If, instead of joy and happiness, 'abundant life' be taken as the aim of the great moral and religious teachers who have adopted an optimistic view, it still remains to ask on what side of his nature man finds the abundant life registered and evaluated. One feels impelled to inquire precisely what is meant by such a statement as the following: "While fulness of life is pleasant, yet it is not so much the pleasure of it that is good as the fulness of life itself."[1] If the meaning be that 'fulness of life' is not good because of its pleasure, as pleasure is vulgarly understood when identified with sensuous feeling, or that it is not good merely on account of pleasure to its possessor, surely no one would for a moment challenge the statement. But if the meaning be that 'fulness of life' is a good in any other sense than as felt and experienced in the sensibility of some being, either of the person who possesses the 'fulness of life,' or of others who are enriched by it, then the author of the sentiment seems to me to have been chasing the shadowy phantom of an abstract good—a good not felt by any sentient being, God, angel, man, or devil.
Thus far I have been concerned with the problem from the point of view of Optimism, and have contented myself with the general proof that the very notion of Good, treated psychologically, necessarily involves an ultimate reference to feeling as the principle of evaluation in all experience. This general proof was chosen as presenting, more fundamentally than an analysis of particular cases could do, the view for which I am contending. In dealing with the pessimistic attitude towards life, I shall attempt a more particular analysis of certain alleged grounds of Pessimism, with the aim of showing that none of them could possibly be the motive of Pessimism, did it not contain implicitly a reference to the evaluation of life in feeling.
- ↑ Sir Frederick Pollock, in Mind, II, p. 271; quoted by James Seth in International Journal of Ethics, VI, p. 424.
