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32, if the virtues, which the most cultured races have hitherto pronounced the supreme excellences of human life, are proved by reflective reason to be incapable of vindication on reasonable grounds. Still this conclusion does not deny the possibility of attaining the happiness, to which Hedonism points as the only reasonable end of existence; it only denies the possibility of attaining that end by living a virtuous life. It therefore remains an open question still, whether happiness may not be attainable in some other way.

This brings us to the question referred to above as the second problem of hedonistic Ethics. It does not appear that this problem was ever entertained by Theodorus. Apparently he taught that the wise man will simply seek his happiness in life without much regard for the popular code of morality; and probably he assumed that in this way the wise man might be reasonably certain of attaining his end. But this assumption cannot long escape the uncomfortable suspicion suggested by the very conclusion of Theodorus. For reason cannot rest in the mere negation, that happiness is not attainable by the common virtues. Men in general, therefore, and hedonists in particular, will demand to know by what mode of life happiness is to be attained. The pressure of this demand, and a critical attitude towards any reply, will inevitably, sooner or later, raise the doubt, whether happiness can be reached by any means whatever under the conditions of human existence. It was therefore but a necessary evolution of speculative thought that made Hegesias force this query on the Cyrenaic School.

Nor is it surprising that the query receives at his hands a negative reply. The precise line of reflection by which he was led to this reply, cannot indeed be gathered with certainty from the brief account of Diogenes Laërtius. But apparently there were two facts by which he was mainly influenced. The first was his theory of pleasure and pain, — a theory which seems to have been held by the Cyrenaic School in general. It is the theory which explains all the pleasures and pains of human life by analogy with those which are derived from the alternate cravings and satisfactions of bodily appetite. As in these the