happiness. But to attempt to transcend the happiness theory without taking up the full measure of truth which it contains, is to attempt to rear an ethical system on an unsound and false psychological basis. Ethics must square itself with psychology, if it is to be scientific. It must accept the verdict of psychology on psychological questions. One such question has been involved in the present discussion, viz., whether feeling is to be identified with the pleasure-displeasure (or, as a few would still say, with the pleasure-pain) series. This is clearly a problem for the psychologists, and the moralists must accept their findings. If the question be answered in the affirmative, as is the pronounced tendency among psychologists to-day, this verdict must be fully accepted. Nor need one hesitate, from the ethical point of view, to make such an identification, since over against the peculiarly subjective and passive element of feeling, in which all experience is evaluated as good or evil, must be placed the objective and active phase of conscious life, by which all experiences are constituted good or evil.
An important advantage of this view is the fact that it finds an intelligible place for happiness. A striking feature in a good deal of modern anti-hedonistic literature is the pretty frank admission that of course happiness must have its place in an ethical theory. Precisely what that place is, most of these writers fail to tell us. At best its. position is left painfully indefinite. Happiness fares at their hands like a guest whom the host has felt bound to admit to the feast, but for whom no place has been provided. Or it may be likened to an actor who is summoned upon the stage with the rest of the company, but is given no part in the play other than that of supernumerary.
The significance of such a theory of the Good is also evident from the point of view of the historical treatment of the problem. The two opposing schools, which have existed in well-nigh unbroken succession since they first made their appearance in ancient Greece, both find recognition here. The hedonistic school, which has brought its view of the ethical end to the splendid unity of a single psychological state, has indeed rightly described the affective and evaluative principle of conduct; while the rationalistic
