Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/240

228 Do you leave all this out of account in your explanation of things? What a delusion! Why, you are just the same pedant as the teleological theologian, only on the other side.'

'But in every case every action is merely a step in the chasse au bonheur. Beyle's definition beats Darwin's. For Beyle's has no exceptions. That is all.'

'Do you believe that? Does all human action, or even all animal action, seem to you explicable as effort, conscious or unconscious, after happiness? I give you the most generous interpretation, but, when you have used it to the full, do you still hold that the hunt in some shape or other is the unfailing motive?'

'Accepting your gift of the most generous interpretation, I do.'

'Well, I suppose the battle will centre round the word "unconscious." Your theory seems to me to contain in solution the venerable fallacy of free-will. You suppose both men and animals far more deliberately set to a goal than I think they are. You call the goal happiness, and that is a very clever way of putting it. It is more than clever; it is illuminative. But your claim for it is surely too large. Granted that a considerable number—a very considerable number—of our efforts, thoughts, words,