or an incalculable, finally attainable average bliss of all? And why should morality more especially be the way to reach it? Has it not, speaking generally, opened so many fountains of displeasure as to make us inclined to judge, up to the present, that man, with each new stage of moral refinement, has become more discontented with himself, his neighbour, and his existence ?Has not the hitherto most moral man believed that the only justifiable state of mankind in the face of morals is that of deepest misery?
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‘’Our claim to our folly.’’—How are we to act? Why are we to act? The answer to these questions is easy enough with reference to the most immediate and most urgent pants of the individual ; but in proportion as our provinces of action grow more subtle, more extensive, and more important, the more certain and the more arbitrary will be the answer. But the arbitrariness of decision is the very thing to be excluded here—so commands the authority of morals: a vague anxiety and awe shall forthwith guide man in those very actions, the aims and means of which are not at once clear to him. This authority of morals undermines the thinking faculty in matters on which it might be dangerous to have wrong notions—thus its wonted justification before its accusers. Wrong here means “dangerous"—butdangerous to whom? Usually it is not so much the
