Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/220

Rh any one individual now seeks for himself. It would aim at the fullest and most organized life conceivable. And this its aim would become no longer merely a negative seeking for harmony, but a positive aim, demanding the perfect Organization of Life.

But the postulate of all hedonism, utilitarian or other, this postulate of the absolute worth of individual satisfaction, finds its practical refutation for every growing character in yet another form. Everybody has tried to realize the ideal of individualism, this ideal of a happy or satisfied self, either for himself or for some loved one; and everybody finds, if he tries the thing long enough, what a hollow and worthless business it all is. If there is, or is possible anywhere, a really satisfied self, it certainly has no place in any fleshly body; and the reason is not alone what disappointed people call the “disagreeable order of things in this wicked world,” but the inner contradictions of this notion of a perfected human self. Let us remind ourselves of some of these contradictions.

Hedonism has no meaning, unless the satisfied human self is logically possible. The ideal of hedonism, with all its vagueness, has at least one essential element, in that it demands the satisfaction of human selves by the free supply of all that they desire for themselves. Hedonism therefore must and does assert that what a man desires is his own contentment; so that, if you could, physically speaking,