Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/189

 GEEEN'S ETHICS. 177 enjoyed successively, and under the condition of being suc- cessively desired such a man, I venture to think, is not a typical (frpovifios. I have digressed somewhat from the main line of my Discussion, because I could hardly avoid noticing the anti- hedonistic controversy which occupies so large a space in the Prolff/omena : but as my primary object is not to criticise Green's view from the outside, but rather to exhibit the difficulties of framing a clear and consistent notion of it, I will assume for the present that the true good of man must be a " permanent " or " abiding" good, and therefore can- not be pleasure. What then is it ? and what ground have we for supposing it attainable by man '? It does not appear that the path of moral progress, even as pursued with the most stoical contempt for attendant pleasures and pains, is one in which the effort of the moral agent finds " rest," at least in this earthly sphere. Green, at any rate, does not maintain this : he says of the " man who calmly faces a life of suffering in the fulfilment of what he conceives to be his mission," that " if he could attain the consciousness of having accomplished his work, ... he would find satisfaction in the consciousness," but adds that "probably just in proportion to the elevation of his character he is unable t<? do so " (p. 166) : it would seem therefore that he no less than the voluptuary is always pursuing and never attaining. Perhaps it may be said that if the " abiding good " is not d by the man who is seeking perfection, it is at any rate approached by him ; the moral aspirant who is daily grow- ing less imperfect may not experience the satisfaction of attainment, but at any rate he is getting towards it. 1 But what can this avail him if he never actually attains ? and - even granting that the consciousness of approximation is the best substitute available to him for the consciousness of attainment in this earthly life, I cannot conceive in what sense this can be regarded as an " abiding satisfaction," unless there is a reasonable prospect of the continuance^ of his personal existence after death, and I do not see that Green's reasonings give him any justification for such an expectation. We are told, indeed, that " a capacity con-, .ing in a self-conscious personality cannot be supposed to pass away. It partakes of the nature of the eternal." But granting this, still everything depends on the extent and manner in which this participation is conceived : however 1 P. 256. " But of particular forms of life we may say- that they are better, because in them there is ... a nearer approach to the end in which alone man can find satisfaction for himself."