or will of each individual. No doubt it assigns to
prudence or wisdom the task of selecting and regu-
lating pleasures; but, unfortunately, wisdom has no
idea or ideal to guide it in the task. It may be said,
that it will be determined in the choice by the consi-
deration of what is best for the development and
welfare of man. Such an ideal of self-realization,
however, cannot be formed out of the individual
consciousness alone : it implies the recognition of the
solidarity and unity of man with man, as a body in
which none lives unto himself, and where we are all
members one of another. That unity had been detected
by Aristotle and Plato in the Greek State. Epicurus
saw that the merely political bond was often a hind-
rance to development; and he cast it aside as only
an accident. Yet particular duties all presuppose
the general conception of duty as the obligation of
the individual towards something more than his
natural self. Hence Epicureanism, which ignores any
such obligation, must, if unchecked by other tacit
motives, lead to a life of quietism, of indifference to
all save intimate friends; and, at the worst, to
sensuality and mere selfishness. But similar charges
may be brought against all systems which emphasize
exclusively one side of the truth.

Modern hedonism--the doctrine which measures
the worth of life by its pleasures--refuses, Proteus-
like, to be caught in any definite shape. Sometimes it
appears in the bright hues of artistic culture; some-
times in the gross garb of sensuality; sometimes in
the gray abstractions of utilitarianism. It declines to

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