"satisfaction" on which he repeatedly lays stress. This "satisfaction" is, however, a somewhat elusive notion. "In all willing," he says, "a self-conscious subject seeks to satisfy itself—seeks that which for the time it presents to itself as its good."[1] In this passage, "self-satisfaction" seems equivalent to "good," as elsewhere[2] "self-satisfaction or self-realization" are spoken of as synonymous. Here, of course, good is not the same thing as moral good or 'true good,' nor is seeking self-satisfaction the same thing as finding it. The voluptuary, for instance, seeks self-satisfaction, but it is "impossible that the self-satisfaction should be found in any succession of pleasures."[3] Thus it would appear that self-satisfaction (when found) will be the experience or consciousness of attaining a true good. Now it is owing to the "operative consciousness in man of a possible state of himself better than the actual," that "men come to seek their satisfaction, their good, in objects conceived as desirable because contributing to the best state or perfection of man."[4] The attainment of this "best state" would give us self-satisfaction. But the best state is unattainable, and even inconceivable: "we cannot indeed describe any state in which man, having become all that he is capable of becoming, ... would find rest for his soul."[5] And thus it would appear that the consciousness of satisfaction is something only sought, never found, never experienced, and unable, therefore, to be taken as part of the data of "moral and intellectual experience."
In all this Green has in view the final good,—an unattainable ideal,—and the consciousness of satisfaction which would result from its attainment. His discussion, therefore, would not seem to have anything to do with the facts of moral experience which may be held,—and which he held,—to be the basis of fact with the interpretation of which ethics is concerned. Yet if it is a possible experience, it is surely in some degree also an actual experience. Dissatisfaction, at any rate, is clearly regarded by Green as an actual experience. And if we experience dissatisfaction in connection with certain activities and attainments, is it
