self into two questions—First, Is happiness the chief end of man? and, secondly, Ought happiness to be the chief end of man? The one of these questions is a question of fact, Is the fact so? The other of them is a question of propriety, Ought the fact to be so? Although our answers to these questions may ultimately coincide, and we may find that what is, is what ought to be—in other words, that happiness both is and ought to be the chief end of man—it may still be well to keep the two questions separate at the outset, and to treat of each in succession.
5. The philosophy of the Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippus, proceeds on the assumption that happiness is, in point of fact, the good, the supreme good, or chief end of man; and this assumption, so far from being discountenanced by the philosophy of Socrates, is involved in that philosophy as one of its most vital principles. Viewed as a matter of fact, we must admit that his own happiness, whatever it may consist in, or whatever may be the means to be employed in the attainment, is the end which each individual has most at heart, and at which he ultimately aims. This is the end after which all men most eagerly strive. Happiness is the goal which, consciously or unconsciously, we are all struggling to reach. Milton has written two epic poems in which he commemorates our fallen and our restored condition. He has written 'Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise Regained.' But the true epic of humanity—the epic
