Ever since man has begun to look a little beyond his daily and immediate wants, he has asked if there be a goal for his life, and what that goal may be. As he has generally failed to find such a goal, he has gone the length of believing life to be a mere accident, and of thinking it idle to seek a goal. He has formed depressing and pessimistic conclusions. Humanity may be compared to a boy that has not yet acquired the sexual instinct, but has asked the meaning of the reproductive organs. As these organs play no part in the functions of his life, he might easily think their existence not only absolutely useless but absurd. Man, because of the fundamental disharmonies in his constitution, does not develop normally. The earlier phases of his development are passed through with little trouble; but, after maturity, greater or lesser abnormality begins, and ends in old age and death that are premature and pathological. Is not the goal of existence the accomplishment of a complete and physiological cycle, in which occurs a normal old age ending in the loss of the instinct of life and the appearance of the instinct of death. The pessimistic school has often spoken of death as the true goal of human life. Schopenhauer,[339] for instance, said: “Death must really be regarded as the true goal of life; when it comes it at once adjusts all that has been preparing in the course of life.” Baudelaire[340] has exactly the same idea in his verse: “C’est la mort qui console, hélas! et qui fait vivre; _C’est le but de la vie_, et c’est le seul espoir Qui, comme un élixir, nous monte et nous enivre Et nous donne le cœur de marcher jusqu’au soir.” “Alas! it is death that comforts and gives us life; it is the goal of our days, it is our only hope that like a wine goes to our head and makes us drunk, and puts heart into us to journey on till the night.” The normal end, coming after the appearance of the instinct of death, may truly be regarded as the ultimate goal of human existence. But before attaining it, a normal life must be lived: a life filled all through with the feeling that comes from the accomplishment of function. Knowledge of the true goal of life clears up the problem and shows us the right conduct of life. In my first chapter, I tried to lay before the reader a summary of the views that have been held as to right conduct. Ever since the attempt has been made to discover a rational basis of morality, human nature, regarded essentially as good, has been taken as that basis. Religions and systems of philosophy, on the other hand, which have tried to find another foundation for morality, have regarded human nature as vicious at the roots. Science has been able to tell us that man, the descendant of animals, has good and evil qualities in his nature, and that his life is made unhappy by the evil qualities. But the constitution of man is not immutable, and perhaps it may be changed for the better.