directed towards pleasure, and ‘extra-regarding’ impulses which do not
aim at pleasure,--though much, perhaps most, of our pleasure consists
in the gratification of these latter, and therefore depends upon
their existence. I there argued that in many cases the two kinds of
impulse are so far incompatible that they do not easily coexist in the
same moment of consciousness. I added, however, that in the ordinary
condition of our activity the incompatibility is only momentary, and
does not prevent a real harmony from being attained by a sort of
alternating rhythm of the two impulses in consciousness. Still it
seems undeniable that this harmony is liable to be disturbed; and that
while on the one hand individuals may and do sacrifice their greatest
apparent happiness to the gratification of some imperious particular
desire, so, on the other hand, self-love is liable to engross the mind
to a degree incompatible with a healthy and vigorous outflow of those
‘disinterested’ impulses towards particular objects, the pre-existence
of which is necessary to the attainment, in any high degree, of the
happiness at which self-love aims. I should not, however, infer from
this that the pursuit of pleasure is necessarily self-defeating
and futile; but merely that the principle of Egoistic Hedonism,
when applied with a due knowledge of the laws of human nature, is
practically self-limiting; _i.e._ that a rational method of attaining
the end at which it aims requires that we should to some extent put
it out of sight and not directly aim at it. I have before spoken of
this conclusion as the ‘Fundamental Paradox of Egoistic Hedonism’;
but though it presents itself as a paradox, there does not seem to
be any difficulty in its practical realisation, when once the danger
indicated is clearly seen. For it is an experience only too common
among men, in whatever pursuit they may be engaged, that they let the
original object and goal of their efforts pass out of view, and come
to regard the means to this end as ends in themselves: so that they
at last even sacrifice the original end to the attainment of what is
only secondarily and derivatively desirable. And if it be thus easy and
common to forget the end in the means overmuch, there seems no reason
why it should be difficult to do it to the extent that Rational Egoism
prescribes: and, in fact, it seems to be continually done by ordinary
persons in the case of amusements and pastimes of all kinds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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