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. Is there any sense in which a thing can be an ultimate rational end for one person and not for another? By ‘ultimate’ must be meant at least that the end is good-in-itself--good in our undefinable sense; and by ‘rational,’ at least, that it is truly good. That a thing should be an ultimate rational end means, then, that it is truly good in itself; and that it is truly good in itself means that it is a part of Universal Good. Can we assign any meaning to that qualification ‘for himself,’ which will make it cease to be a part of Universal Good? The thing is impossible: for the Egoist’s happiness must _either_ be good in itself, and so a part of Universal Good, _or else_ it cannot be good in itself at all: there is no escaping this dilemma. And if it is not good at all, what reason can he have for aiming at it? how can it be a rational end for him? That qualification ‘for himself’ has no meaning unless it implies ‘_not_ for others’; and if it implies ‘not for others,’ then it cannot be a rational end for him, since it cannot be truly good in itself: the phrase ‘an ultimate rational end for himself’ is a contradiction in terms. By saying that a thing is an end for one particular person, or good for him, can only be meant one of four things. Either (1) it may be meant that the end in question is something which will belong exclusively to him; but in that case, if it is to be rational for him to aim at it, that he should exclusively possess it must be a part of Universal Good. Or (2) it may be meant that it is the only thing at which he ought to aim; but this can only be, because, by so doing, he will do the most he can towards realising Universal Good: and this, in our case, will only give Egoism as a doctrine of _means_. Or (3) it may be meant that