Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/217

 HEDONISM AMONG IDEALISTS. 203 I should feel very uneasy in differing from the argument of the chapter in question if I believed that by doing so I finally severed myself from the author's position as a whole. But this does not seem to be a necessary consequence. The author's idea of the Hedonic criterion does not depend so much on his doctrine of the nature of reality and the supreme good, as on his view of the means by which approximations to either can be ascertained. And a difference of opinion here, would not, I think, be fatal to agreement there. My object in this paper is twofold : (1) To argue that the use or pleasure as a criterion, advocated by the author, necessarily passes into another criterion of a different kind ; and (2) to explain and defend this other criterion in a way which I believe would harmonise with Green's ideas, but which I do not profess to find definitely stated in his works. (1) I need not explain to the reader of MIND Mr. McTag- gart's theory of Reality. It is enough to say that in this reality, not because it is real, but because it includes the perfection of the nature of individual selves, Mr. McTaggart is prepared to find the Supreme Good. For him, therefore, the Supreme Good contains pleasure, for it contains the satisfaction of conscious beings ; but it is not purely and merely Hedonistic. But, the author contends, the Supreme Good may be one thing, and the criterion of morality may be another. And the criterion, he urges, must be Hedonic so far as a criterion can be operative at all. His chapter aims at establishing this point. That there must be a criterion of morality, as the follow- ing section (100) argues, may be admitted. Moral judgments claim to be objective, and therefore imply a standard by which, at least in theory, their claims are capable of being tested. But in the conception of the criterion as indicated in the sections 100-102, preliminary to the main argument, we must note certain points. i. The criterion, it is said, may be other than the Supreme Good itself. The Supreme Good, indeed, we shall find it argued, is so abstract in our knowledge, and in its abstract completeness so remote from our world of matter and of choice, that it cannot form a practical criterion to be applied by comparison with our actions. But (a) an extraneous criterion is of very doubtful value, and in fact may almost be said to constitute a danger, in all complex -affairs of conduct and science. It is all very well where an arbitrary sign is annexed by convention to ready-made