Page:Ethical Studies (reprint 1911).djvu/137

 not. It is not a state or collection of states of the self, as feeling pleasure, to be produced either in me or outside me. To know what it is we must go to the moral consciousness. We find there that the end is for me as active, is a practical end. It is not something merely to be felt, it is something to be done.

And it is not something to be done, in which, when done, the doer is not to be involved. The end does not fall outside the doer. I am to realize myself; and, as we saw, I can not make an ultimate end of anything except myself, can not make myself a mere means to something else. Nor, again, does the end fall outside the activity. If the production in me of a mere passive state were the end, the activity would be a mere means to that. But the moral consciousness assures us that the activity is an end in itself. The end is a doing which is to be done; the activity is good in itself, not for the sake of a result beyond. The end, then, is not to be felt, but is to be done: it is to be done and not made; it falls not outside the self of the doer, nor further outside his activity.

In short, the good is the Good Will. The end is will for the sake of will; and, in its relation to me, it is the realization of the good will in myself, or of myself as the good will. In this character I am an end to myself, and I am an absolute and ultimate end. There is nothing which is good, unless it be a good will.

This is no metaphysical fiction. It is the truth of life and of the moral consciousness. A man is not called good because he is rich, nor because he is handsome or clever. He is good when he is moral, and he is moral when his actions are conformed to and embody a good will, or when his will is good.

But ‘good will’ tells us little or nothing. It says only that will