Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/212

Rh conceived in hedonistic fashion, when the hedonist gives us his picture of a peaceful society, where, in the midst of universal good humor, his ideal, the happiness of everybody concerned, is steadfastly pursued, we find ourselves disappointed and contemptuous. That harmless company of jolly good fellows is unspeakably dull. One listens to the account of their happiness as one might listen to the laughter and merry voices of some evening club of jovial strangers, who had been dining at the hotel in which one happened himself to be eating a late and frugal supper, in sobriety and weariness. Those unknown creatures whose chatter in the next room the traveler dimly hears at such a time, — a confused babble of stupid noises; how insignificant their joys seem to him! Who cares whether that really wretched set of animals yonder, with their full stomachs and their misty brains, think themselves happy or not? To be sure, among them the harmony seems in some sort to have been momentarily realized. One would no doubt seem to enjoy it all jnst as well as they, if he were one of them. But one is viewing it at a distance, from outside; and so looking at it he possibly sees that a mass of individual happiness is not just the ideal of ideals after all.

Just such, however, is the feeling that comes to one in considering Mr. Spencer’s description of his ideal society. And similar feelings have been awakened in many reflective people when they have considered traditional notions of heaven, and have tried to estimate the value of the life of individual bliss therein pictured. Professor William James has recently so