VALUES AND FINAL CAUSES 91 



from which all friction has been eliminated, and a similar 

 opinion may be found in Mr. Schiller s writings : The success 

 of life will depend on the correspondence, however attained, 

 between the organism and its environment : or, In perfect 

 adaptation, the organism carries on its life with the mini 

 mum of friction. Again, Mr. Schiller defines utility 

 as what contributes to the attainment of any human end, 

 and ultimately to that perfect harmony of our whole life 

 which forms our final aspiration. 



We have here a statement, perhaps sufficiently definite, 

 of both ends, the natural and the human, and they are 

 represented as practically identical. But nowhere in the 

 course of these writings have I been able to discover any 

 serious attempt to establish the assertion that harmony 

 is indeed the real end of either class of actions. The appeal 

 seems to be direct to the human consciousness, which is 

 expected to accept the proposition without inquiry as having 

 the force of an undisputed axiom. To the method itself 

 there is no reason to object. It is true that no other proof 

 is possible in the case of the human end of action, and the 

 proper answer is to state the contradictory, and ask whether 

 that has, or has had, no confirmation in the internal ex 

 perience of human beings. If it has, it is certain that the 

 statement that the sole or even the highest aspiration of 

 men is perfect harmony, is not an axiom, and requires 

 a careful consideration. 



With reference to the whole aggregate of the conflicting 

 impulses, conscious and unconscious, which constitute our 

 personality, it would seem safer to say with Hobbes (Levia 

 than, ch. xi) : 



We are to consider that the felicity of this life con- 

 sisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is 

 no such finis ultimus or summum bonum as is spoken of 

 in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man 

 any more live whose senses and imagination are at a stand. 

 . . . Felicity is a constant progress of the desire from 

 one object to another, so that, in the first place, I put for a 

 general inclination of all mankind a perpetual restless 

 desire for power after power, that endeth only in death. 



