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HEDONISM AMONG IDEALISTS. 205 to which solutions are framed to satisfy complex indi- vidual groups of conditions. 1 This the author presupposes in explaining his Hedonic criterion ; but appears to me to forget, in discussing the criterion of perfection. iii. That which can be measured by the criterion can only, it is urged, be likeness to the supreme good and not tend- ency to hasten or to hinder its advent. The view of sec- tion 135, that nothing we can do can hinder (or, I suppose, hasten), the advance of the supreme good, seems to me to supersede this argument, and to be truer. But the interest of the present contention centres on the view advanced in support of it (sect. 102), that a morally good action need not give rise to good, nor an evil one to evil. This is opposed to a well-known passage in Green ; 2 and I believe Green to be right. If, in the temporal succession of events, every characteristic of an action has its necessary sequel and this surely is inevitable then the character of good, that in virtue of which it is able, pro tanto, to satisfy desire, cannot fail to have a relevant consequence, in whatever shape. It is quite true that such a " good " may provoke evil, or from a higher point of view may itself be evil. But this consequence or character will not annihilate the goodness or satisfactoriness contained in the action, to which the nature of the evil which it is or provokes must always be relative. The conduct of a high-minded reformer and of a selfish demagogue may each of them lead to public disorder, which may call for repression and end in reaction. But the elements at work in the sequence will, so far as the reformer at all achieves his purpose (and if not, his relative good will not be attained) , be different in the two cases ; in the one the evil produced will be of a higher type, farther on so to speak in the dialectic succession, and the relative solu- tion arrived at will comprehend larger elements. In short, the necessity of evil is only tenable because evil has a common root and nature with good is, as it were, good in the wrong place, as dirt is matter in the wrong place. It is, therefore, that good can enter into evil, just as evil can enter into good ; and the principle that evil must come, and must come of good, is no obstacle to the view that the good of a good action is always preserved. I am not saying that we can help or hinder the advent of the supreme good, because I do not know that we can act otherwise than we do. But I think it clear that in 1 Green, Prolegomena, sect. 377-379. z lbid., sect. 295.