PROLEGOMENA TO ETHICS. 123 



qualitative distinction of pleasures on the com- 

 parative excellence of those who pursue them. 

 This, no doubt, is valid reasoning for any one 

 who makes self-realization and not pleasure the 

 end of action, but 



"It is altogether against Utilitarian principles that a 

 pleasure should be of more value because the man who 

 pursues it is better. They only entitle us to argue back 

 from the amount of pleasure to the worth of the man who 

 acts so as to produce it " (p. 170). 



If, then, the Utilitarian attempt to establish a 

 criterion of right and wrong in a difference in kind 

 among pleasures fails us, what answer have they to 

 give who speak of self-realization as the end of 

 action ? The impulse of self-realization according 

 to the direction it takes is, we are told, " the source 

 both of vice and virtue." Only the vicious self- 

 seeking and self-assertion the quest, for instance, 

 for self-satisfaction in the life of the voluptuary 

 is ultimately self-defeating, while the differentia of 

 the virtuous life is that it is governed by the con- 

 sciousness that there is 



" Some perfection which has to be attained, some vocation 

 which has to be fulfilled, some law which has to be obeyed, 

 something absolutely desirable, whatever the individual may 

 for the time desire" (p. 184). 



What this ideal is we do not know at once. 

 We only know that disinterested obedience to 



