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372 B. BAIN : either to the increase or decrease of human happiness, and cer- tainly not consequences irrespective of any such tendency. He tells us that the Idealist consequences are the results of conduct with regard to their furtherance of " the supreme interest of human life," and that that interest is "the development of a system of activities which depend for their value not on the amount of agreeable consciousness with which they are accompanied, but on their harmony with an ideal of human life ". He does not explain whether this ideal of human life is the only definite ideal that I could discover in his Elements of Ethics (his definition of self- realisation and his list of virtues, all of which I have criticised, but have had no reply to the criticism), or whether it is a different ideal. In an article, " Philosophy at Oxford," which appeared in the first number of MIND, the late Mark Pattison remarked : " The true Hegelian resents explanation ". I must say this mental attitude has seemed to me very apparent throughout Idealistic writings. To reply, however, when you do not know to what you have to reply is necessarily somewhat difficult. But in any case, the ideal of life which, it is expressly stated, is not intended to produce "agreeable consciousness" i.e., neither to promote our own happiness nor the happiness of others is an ideal to which I am wholly indifferent. Nor can I conceive its being otherwise regarded by any one who is not a Neo-Kantian or Neo- Hegelian. I can only imagine the reverse if the Idealists were looked upon as inspired prophets, pointing the way to happiness in another existence, although disregarding it here below. I am next found fault with for being seemingly unaware that the words happiness and well-being have been called ambiguous terms. I am aware that this has been argued, but I do not acknowledge the force of the objection, inasmuch that there is no substitute for these words (perhaps we may add, and scarcely any abstract term whatsoever) which is not open to the same criticism i.e., of which it cannot be contended that it conveys more than one invariable meaning. I am told in effect that I ought to adhere always to the term pleasure a practice which, by the way, is followed by nobody. But how different, for instance, may the word pleasure seem to the scientific hedonist and to the ordinary person ! While the words happiness and well-being are, without doubt, sufficiently unambiguous for all practical purposes, they are preferable from the very fact that they are regarded by the generality of mankind with more respect than is accorded to the term pleasure. And, from the hedonic standpoint, the greatest general well-being and the greatest general happiness are strictly synonymous with the greatest general pleasure. Cavilling at these words, on the part of those whose whole system is rife with in- definiteness, is to me a pronounced example of straining at a. gnat and swallowing a camel. Again, Mr. Muirhead appears to question my right to lay claim to a certain amount of originality in considering ethical theories