92 j. H. MUIBHEAD: Confining myself to the question of "effectiveness" I shall state as shortly as I can the objections which seem to me decisive against Mrs. Bain's contention. 1. This theory sets the pleasure of the individual in competition with general well-being. To lose sight of his own greatest happiness (granting that it is possible at all) is as immoral as to lose sight of the greatest happiness of others. He seems even to be bound to give it prior consideration : " We must work," says Mrs. Bain, following Mr. Spencer, " first for ourselves then for others ". Yet short of the millennium Mr. Spencer foreshadows, when the lion of egoism will lie down with the lamb of altruism, what guarantee have we that these two will coincide ? In the conduct demanded by the higher morality of any time with which we are likely to have any practical acquaintance, are they not almost certain at one point or another to collide ? And in these circumstances with what degree of effectiveness can appeal be made to the waverer? The reader may judge for himself of the power of an appeal to altruistic conduct which on the pain of insincerity and hypocrisy must be crossed by a reminder of the danger which threatens individual happiness. 2. It is only stating the same objection from another point of view to note that Hedonism sets the lower instincts in competition with the higher. In all estimates the pleasure that comes from following the lower must by the consistent hedonist be set against that which comes from the higher. And it is inevitable in the present stage of human development that to the great mass of man- kind the latter should seem distant, problematic and insipid in comparison with the former. These points are of course only the practical side of the theoretical objections that have been urged from all time against Hedonism. It has frequently been pointed out that the task of proving that the happiness of the individual and the happiness of society as esti- mated in terms of pleasure necessarily coincide is a hopeless one. It is in Ethics, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says, what the attempt to square the circle is in Mathematics. Similarly from the side of the individual and his instincts it is of course impossible to show in every case that to follow the higher will produce greater pleasure. It was to meet this difficulty that Mill introduced his celebrated distinction of quality in pleasures. " This conduct," he would say, " cannot be shown to produce more pleasure than that, but it is higher." We all know the passage in Utilitarianism. It is magnificent, but it is not Hedonism. Whatever difficulties stand in the way of the attempt to make Idealism edifying, and of course they are legion, as any one who has ever made the rash attempt is likely to have discovered, it at any rate escapes those that I have pointed out as fatal to Hedonism. In the first place it proposes a definition of social good which recon- ciles instead of merely compromising between the claims of self and others. And in the second place it takes individual well-being to
