GREEN'S ETHICS. 17-5 plicitly made are too numerous and umnistakeable to leave any doubt that they express a doctrine deliberately held. Such a doctrine indeed is indispensable as a basis to the in- termittent controversy with Hedonism which Green carries on throughout the treatise ; since, so far as I can see, his only substantial objection to the Hedonistic end relates to its tran- sient quality : it is not a " permanent " or " abiding " good. He still indeed clings to the paradox maintained by him on previous occasions cf controversy 1 that " a greatest sum of* pleasures is "intrinsically unmeaning"; but a Hedonist, I think, need not seriously concern himself with the refuta- tion of this paradox, since in another passage Green explains that he does not intend to " deny that there may be in fact such a thing as desire for a sum or contemplated series of pleasures, or that a man may be so affected by it as to judge that some particular desire should not be gratified" ; and I need hardly say that he does not intend to deny that certain courses of action " tend to make life more pleasant on the whole," or that " an overbalance of pain on the whole would result to those capable of being affected by it " from certain other courses of action in fact he expressly affirms both these propositions in the very words that I have used. In these propositions it is implied that pleasure and pain, SK distinguished from their conditions, can be subjected in some degree at least to quantitative measurement ; and there- fore, when in another passage Green lays down that " pleasure (in distinction from the facts conditioning it) is not an object of the understanding," the Hedonist need not be troubled at the strange statement ; for he will perceive that it is to be understood in some subtle metaphysical sense with which he is not concerned. 2 In short, the one anti-hedonistic argu- ment on which our author now appears seriously to rely is that pleasures are of " perishing nature " and " do not? admit of being accumulated in enjoyment" : 3 that, there- 1 Cf. MIND, VI., 267-9 ; and the Introduction to Hume's Treatise on Human Xature, 7. " I must confess that I cannot even conjecture in what sense Green lays down this proposition ; since it appears to me that in this very dis- cussion he conducts long arguments which are only intelligible if the dis- tinction between pleasure and the facts conditioning it is thoroughly grasped and steadily contemplated by the understanding. And I may add. that this di-tinction is carried to a degree of subtlety far beyond that which the Hedonist requires, or would be disposed to adopt ; for Green insists on his distinguishing " pleasure " from the " satisfaction " involved in the conscious realisation of a desired object.
- i In some passages I incline to think that Green's argument proceeds on
the tacit and surely quite unwarrantable assumption that an "end," in
