Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/211

186 lack harmony, but because, even in the supposed harmonious state, there would be an inner hindrance to the pursuit of this ideal by any individual? Would not the moral insight detect the hindrance, and so reject this ideal? There are at least some very familiar reasons for thinking this to be the case. These reasons do not of themselves prove, but they certainly suggest, that the notion of a progressive individual happiness has in it some strange contradiction.

First, then, we have the old empirical truth that individual happiness is never very nearly approached by any one, so long as he is thinking about it. The happy man ought to be able to say, “I am happy.” He can much more easily say, “I was happy;” for present reflection upon happiness interferes in most cases with happiness. So here is an inner difficulty, very well known, in the way of njaking individual happiness the goal of life. We have no desire to dwell here upon this difficulty, which has so often been discussed. We do not exaggerate its importance. We consider it only the first suggestion that the hedonistic ideal of life has some inner contradiction in its very nature, so that there is some deeper conflict here going on than that between selfishness and altruism.

In the second place, we notice that, if anybody tries to sketch for us the ideal state of human life as the hedonist conceives it, we are struck with a sense of the tameness and insignificance of the whole picture. The result is strange. Here we have been making peace and harmony among men the proximate goal of life, yet when this harmony has to be