Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/353

352 s. COIT : THE FINAL AIM OF MORAL ACTION. final aim in life is the positive side of the act of self-renuncia- tion. It would therefore bring with it the peculiarly Christian virtues of humility and self-denial. For if a man pursues peace of conscience, he renounces his own greatest pleasure, in that he binds himself to the conditions inexorably set in the nature of things for the promotion of universal hap- piness. But the notion of the final aim of conduct has significance not simply for each man separately. It is equally important in the solution of social questions. It sets for us the moral social ideal. That must be a state in which every man pursues the true aim of life. From the mere notion of a state of universal happiness we cannot deduce the relative proportion in which the various human appetites and desires are to be gratified. But add to it the notion of the universal aim which will best promote universal happiness, and we get a useful conception. Those desires and activities are to be chiefly gratified and stimulated which psychologically are found to lead to the adoption of that aim, and those re- pressed which hinder its adoption. The social ideal is a state of universal happiness and universal virtue. Not every increase, therefore, in general happiness is to be called a moral advance, but only those social changes which make men's characters tend more to promote the common welfare. And yet, if the inner satis- faction of living in conformity to the interests of mankind be the highest aim of conduct, moral reform becomes a message of glad tidings to men. It is instructive to note what pleasures our secular philanthropists suggest in despair of anything more effective, for the poor and illiterate, as a foil to baser pleasures. Is there, then, no pleasure of the moral sense to promise men and assure them of? What the poor, what the illiterate, what all men need is fellowship in the moral life. For through such fellowship the neglected moral instincts are cherished and strengthened.