The teaching of Thomas Aquinas has often been so represented as though it were pure subjectivism. It is true that much of his teaching sounds quite subjectivistic (cf. e.g. Summ. theol. 1a. q. 80, art. 1, especially the objections and replies as well as the passages in which he declares that the happiness of each is the highest and final end, asserting even of the saints in heaven that each rightly desires more his own blessedness than the blessedness of all others). Along with these, however, are to be found statements in which he soars above this subjectivistic view as, for example, when he declares (as Plato and Aristotle before him and Descartes and Leibnitz after) that everything which exists is good as such, not good merely as a means but also--a point which pure subjectivists (as recently Sigwart, _Vorfr. d. Ethik_, p. 6) expressly deny--good in itself, and again, when he affirms that in case any one--an impossible case--had at any time to choose between his own eternal ruin and an injury to the Divine love, the right course would be to prefer his own eternal unhappiness. There the moral feeling of western Christendom touches the feeling of the heathen Hindu, as is shown in a somewhat strange story of a maiden who renounces her own everlasting blessedness for the salvation of the rest of the world; as also that of a positivist thinker like Mill when he declares sooner than bow in prayer before a being not truly good, “to hell he will go.” I knew a Catholic priest who, on account of this utterance of Mill’s, voted for him at the parliamentary election.] Whoever, as I have said, has once accepted the view that nothing can please except in so far as it is really good, nothing displease, except in so far as it is really bad, is on a way which, if consistently followed, must lead him to subjectivism. This is evident as soon as it is admitted (and at first sight, it is true, it may be denied) that opposite tastes, here desire, there dislike, may be associated with the same sense phenomenon. One might, in defence, argue that here, in spite of the similarity of the external stimulus the corresponding subjective idea may have an essentially different content. But such a view refutes itself in those cases where we ourselves repeatedly experience the same phenomenon, and, in consequence of a further development in age or by reason of a changed habit (cf. text 25, p. 16) thereby experience a different feeling, dislike for desire, or desire for dislike. There remains, then, no doubt, that as a fact the feelings may take an opposed attitude towards the same phenomenon: and again, in the case where ideas instinctively repel us, while at the same time arousing within us a pleasure of a higher kind (cf. note 32, p. 92), what has been said is also clearly evident.