Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/334

 THE FINAL AIM OF MORAL ACTION. 333 circumstances which do now, and may always, prevent the realisation of universal happiness. Historians, economists, statesmen and moral philosophers, all who are best ac- quainted with the forces in human nature which determine the course of history, are never pleasant optimists. The results of their insight and experience are as likely to crush one with a foreboding sense of ultimate failure as to inspire with the hope of ultimate success. Perhaps human society will continue for ever in the same mixed state of vice and virtue, of misery and joy, as at present, in spite of individual moral efforts. Perhaps the majority of men will grow more selfish and short-sighted, and the sum of misery increase. The course of history does not prove the contrary tendency. There has perhaps been a gradual development toward indi- vidual self-consciousness and an increasing subjection of nature to the human will, but there is no evidence that human life has become any the happier. History could never be a proof, however, that justice and happiness will finally triumph. The physical, emotional and intellectual energies of the race may become weaker; a period of de- generation may set in. It is a matter which cannot be determined ; too many factors in the problem are unknown. If then the final triumph of joy and righteousness on earth be the final aim of conduct, what ground is there for believing that all moral effort may not be in the end thwarted ? Suppose right and happiness should finally triumph, still is the race immortal ? Would the physical conditions of the universe favour a society of the good ? "Would such a society be somehow caught up and preserved eternally, away from the conditions of heat and motion that are destructive to organic life ? And yet such an hypothesis must be assumed, if universal happiness be the final aim of conduct, in order to secure an unfailing stimulus to moral effort and to prevent moral despair. The belief in the immortality of the race is as essential to a man who makes the final triumph of social righteousness the aim of life, as belief in the immortality of the soul is to any one who makes- his own perfection of character and bliss his aim. The thought of the ultimate extinction of all human conscious- ness is as terrible to a man whose ultimate aim is the realisation of the social ideal, as the thought of the annihila- tion of one's own soul is to one whose heart is bent upon the realisation of absolute perfection in himself. The former would say concerning society as the latter concerning indi- vidual personality : If it be not immortal, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Therefore, if the attainment of