interest’ plainly includes, in general, very much more than my own pleasure. It is, indeed, only because and in so far as ‘my own interest’ has been thought to consist solely in my own pleasure, that Egoists have been led to hold that my own pleasure is the sole good. Their course of reasoning is as follows: The only thing I ought to secure is my own interest; but my own interest consists in my greatest possible pleasure; and therefore the only thing I ought to pursue is my own pleasure. That it is very natural, on reflection, thus to identify my own pleasure with my own interest; and that it has generally been done by modern moralists, may be admitted. But when Prof. Sidgwick points this out (III. xiv. § 5, Div. III.), he should have also pointed out that this identification has by no means been made in ordinary thought. When the plain man says ‘my own interest,’ he does not mean ‘my own pleasure’—he does not commonly even include this—he means my own advancement, my own reputation, the getting of a better income etc., etc. That Prof. Sidgwick should not have noticed this, and that he should give the reason he gives for the fact that the ancient moralists did not identify ‘my own interest’ with my own pleasure, seems to be due to his having failed to notice that very confusion in the conception of ‘my own good’ which I am now to point out. That confusion has, perhaps, been more clearly perceived by Plato than by any other moralist, and to point it out suffices to refute Prof. Sidgwick’s own view that Egoism is rational.
What, then, is meant by ‘my own good’? In what sense can a thing be good for me? It is obvious, if we reflect, that the only thing which can belong to me, which can be mine, is something which is good, and not the fact that it is good. When, therefore, I talk of anything I get as ‘my own good,’ I must mean either that the thing I get is good, or that my possessing it is good. In both cases it is only the thing or the possession of it which is mine, and not the goodness of that thing or that possession. There is no longer any meaning in attaching the ‘my’ to our predicate, and saying: The possession of this by me is my good. Even if we interpret this by ‘My possession of this is what I think good,’ the same still holds: for what I think is that my possession of it is good simply; and, if I think rightly,
