In the writings of one who rejects dogmatic Christianity, together with the Hebrew cult which preceded it, a career of conquest costing tens of thousands of lives is narrated with a sympathy comparable to that rejoicing which the Hebrew traditions show us over destruction of enemies in the name of God. You may find, too, a delight in contemplating the exercise of despotic power, joined with insistance on the salutariness of a state in which the wills of slaves and citizens are humbly subject to the wills of masters and rulers--a sentiment also reminding us of that ancient Oriental life which biblical narratives portray. Along with this worship of the strong man--along with this justification of whatever force may be needed for carrying out his ambition--along with this yearning for a form of society in which supremacy of the few is unrestrained and the virtue of the many consists in obedience to them, we not unnaturally find repudiation of the ethical theory which takes, in some shape or other, the greatest happiness as the end of conduct: we not unnaturally find this utilitarian philosophy designated by the contemptuous title of "pig-philosophy." And then, serving to show what comprehension there has been of the philosophy so nicknamed, we are told that not happiness but blessedness must be the end. Obviously, the implication is that blessedness is not a kind of happiness; and this implication at once suggests the question--What mode of feeling is it? If it is a state of consciousness at all, it is necessarily one of three states--painful, indifferent, or pleasurable. Does it leave the possessor at the zero point of sentiency? Then it leaves him just as he would be if he had not got it. Does it not leave him at the zero point? Then it must leave him below zero or above zero. Each of these possibilities may be conceived under two forms. That to which the term blessedness is applied may be a particular state of consciousness--one among the many states that occur; and on this supposition we have to recognize it as a pleasurable state, an indifferent state, or a painful state. Otherwise, blessedness is a word not applicable to a particular state of consciousness, but characterizes the aggregate of its states; and in this case the average of the aggregate is to be conceived as one in which the pleasurable predominates, or one in which the painful predominates, or one in which pleasures and pains exactly cancel one another. Let us take in turn these two imaginable applications of the word.