Page:Ethical Studies (reprint 1911).djvu/102

 good, or they may not hold good; I may keep them, or break them, whichever I think most likely to issue in pleasure in my particular case. And it is not in earnest with its end. To aim at pleasure is not to get it, and yet the getting of it is a moral duty. We must aim at it then by the way, without caring or trying too much to get it. We are not to think about the rules, except as servants which may be useful or worthless; and about the end perhaps the less we think the better. We are to please ourselves about the rules; we are to please ourselves about the end; for end and rules are neither end nor rules. Our positive aim in life is given up; we may content ourselves, as a substitute, with the resolve to live our life as we find it, to sink useless theories, and follow the bent of our practical leanings; or, saddened at our disenchantment, may embrace the conclusion that, if pleasure can not be found, yet pain at least can be avoided. Not only in the school, but in life around us, does the positive beginning conduct to the negative result, to the making a goal of an absence, to the placing the end in a mere negation.

We have shown, in the first place, the collision between popular opinion and Hedonism as the search for pleasure; we have shown, in the second place, the reason why the seeking of my pleasure gives no practicable end in life. On both points we have dwelt, perhaps, at unnecessary length; but we have not yet done justice to the doctrine which makes virtue a means, not to my pleasure, but to the pleasure of the ‘whole sentient creation’—to modern Utilitarianism, which may be called, I suppose, our most fashionable moral philosophy. This we must now notice, but only so far as our subject compels us. A more detailed examination is not called for here, and, as we think, would not repay us anywhere.

The end, as before, is the greatest amount of pleasurable feeling, yet not now in me, but in the sentient world as a whole. The first thing to observe is that (as we noticed above), if happiness means this, happiness is unrealizable—it can by no possibility be reached. If the greatest happiness, in the sense of the maximum of pleasure, was, as applied to the individual, a mere ‘idea,’ or rather a self-contradictory attempt at an idea, which we saw by its very nature could not exist as a fact; then a fortiori, I