This new ethics is a mixture of self-deception, arrogance, sensuality and irresponsibility. In their works these realists reveal their cold, absolutely surfeited, caring for nothing. They measure a man’s strength not by the power to subdue but by the weakness of being subdued by passion. They preach that there is no merit in self-control, sex-repression, generosity, service, and proclaim that man’s unpardonable sin is that of denying his nature, his greatest crime against life is the rigid repression of the blood. They know of nothing holier than the sumptuous, sensuous, time-worshipping world of paganism. All their writings are replete with unending thrills and climaxes, all taken from the domain of sex. Their gaze roves in voluptuous quest over the nudity of erotic sin and social transgression. Such high-sounding phrases as “live to fulfill your nature, profess the faith of life, or woman’s desire for self-expression, her desire to live and find her true destiny” crope out everywhere in their writings and only serve to befuddle weak minds. What does self-expression, nature, destiny, mean in the mouths of people, drunk with the ravages of sensual pleasure? What will it profit to these apostles of sensuality, when they have fulfilled their nature, when they have found their destiny? At the hour of death they hold in their hands only the ashes of spent fancies.[DN] _Philosophy of pleasure._—Another philosophy of life akin to the morality of love is the philosophy of pleasure or rather of happiness. The partisans of the hedonic philosophy proclaim the sole reason of man’s existence is to procure the greatest possible amount of happiness in this world.