COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



namically, everything is shown in a new light. 

 Admitting the truth of the Kantian position, 

 that there exists in us a moral sense for analyz- 

 ing which our individual experience does not 

 afford the requisite data, and which must there- 

 fore be regarded as ultimate for each individual, 

 it is nevertheless open to us to inquire into the 

 emotional antecedents of this organized moral 

 sense as exhibited in ancestral types of psychical 

 life. The inquiry will result in the conviction 

 that the moral sense is not ultimate, but deriva- 

 tive, and that it has been built up out of slowly 

 organized experiences of pleasures and pains. 



But before we can proceed directly upon the 

 course thus marked out, it is necessary that we 

 should determine what are meant by pleasures 

 and pains. What are the common characteris- 

 tics, on the one hand, of the states of conscious- 

 ness which we call pleasures, and, on the other 

 hand, of the states of consciousness which we 

 call pains ? According to Sir William Hamilton, 

 " pleasure is a reflex of the spontaneous and un- 

 impeded exertion of a power of whose energy 

 we are conscious ; pain is a reflex of the over- 

 strained or repressed exertion of such a power.** 

 That this theory, which is nearly identical with 

 that of Aristotle, is inadequate to account for all 

 the phenomena of pleasure and pain, has been, 

 I think, conclusively proved by Mr. Mill. With 

 its complete adequacy, however, we need not 

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