then the truth is that my possession of it is good simply—not, in any sense, my good; and, if I think wrongly, it is not good at all. In short, when I talk of a thing as ‘my own good’ all that I can mean is that something which will be exclusively mine, as my own pleasure is mine (whatever be the various senses of this relation denoted by ‘possession’), is also good absolutely; or rather that my possession of it is good absolutely. The good of it can in no possible sense be ‘private’ or belong to me; any more than a thing can exist privately or for one person only. The only reason I can have for aiming at ‘my own good,’ is that it is good absolutely that what I so call should belong to me—good absolutely that I should have something, which, if I have it, others cannot have. But if it is good absolutely that I should have it, then everyone else has as much reason for aiming at my having it, as I have myself. If, therefore, it is true of any single man’s ‘interest’ or ‘happiness’ that it ought to be his sole ultimate end, this can only mean that that man’s ‘interest’ or ‘happiness’ is the sole good, the Universal Good, and the only thing that anybody ought to aim at. What Egoism holds, therefore, is that each man’s happiness is the sole good—that a number of different things are each of them the only good thing there is—an absolute contradiction! No more complete and thorough refutation of any theory could be desired.
60. Yet Prof. Sidgwick holds that Egoism is rational; and it will be useful briefly to consider the reasons which he gives for this absurd conclusion. ‘The Egoist,’ he says (last Chap. § 1), ‘may avoid the proof of Utilitarianism by declining to affirm,’ either ‘implicitly or explicitly, that his own greatest happiness is not merely the ultimate rational end for himself, but a part of Universal Good.’ And in the passage to which he here refers us, as having there ‘seen’ this, he says: ‘It cannot be proved that the difference between his own happiness and another’s happiness is not for him all-important’ (IV. ii. § 1). What does Prof. Sidgwick mean by these phrases ‘the ultimate rational end for himself,’ and ‘for him all-important’? He does not attempt to define them; and it is largely the use of such undefined phrases which causes absurdities to be committed in philosophy.
