Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/210

Rh man would be able to say: “I, separately regarded, am happy, and so are all my fellows.” Now possibly the very notion of an ideal state, in which the separate selves are as such happy, and in which the blessedness of the whole is an aggregate of the blessedness of the separate individuals, is a contradictory notion. At all events it is a notion whose meaning and validity every hedonist coolly and unquestioningly assumes. Yet it is an assumption that we must examine with care.

If a man sets before himself and his fellows the goal of individual happiness, as the hedonist wants him to do in the supposed ideal state, can he conceivably attain that goal? The hedonist supposes that the only moral limitation to the pursuit of personal happiness is the moral requirement of altruism, according to which no one ought to seek his own pleasure at the cost of a greater misery to another. In the ideal state, as all would be in the moral mood, and all disposed to help one another, and to get happiness only together, this one limitation would be removed. Then, thinks the hedonist, the highest law would be: Get the most happiness, all of you. This happiness the hedonist conceives as an aggregate of states that would exist in the various separate individuals. So each individual will strive after his own joy, but in such wise as to hinder the joy of nobody else. But we oppose to this the question: Is there not some other limitation than this to individual search for happiness? Is not the ideal of individual happiness as such an impossible ideal, not because the individuals in the imperfect state