tory. For when we would form a judgment of the
comparative value of the goal to which the actions
of a nation or of the race appear to be tending, or
of the several tendencies which compose its entire
course, we have to ask what feelings and thoughts
that goal or course will consist of, what capacities
for enjoyment will be developed, what characters will
be produced, what the minds of the men will be.
This necessity for entering on the subjective analysis
of feelings in order to determine their comparative
value to consciousness is irrespective of the view
which we may take as to the merits of the Utilitarian
school or its opposite. All consideration of motive
or of end, whether these consist of pleasure only or
also of duty, all practical enquiry, involves the taking
up a subjective point of view. Pleasure and pain in
all their kinds and degrees are subjective feelings,
the names of them do not even appear to have a
meaning apart from such feeling, nor can we reason
about them without bearing in mind their subjective
significance. But physical objects, actions of men
and events of history, though equally consisting of
subjective feelings in their last analysis, and there-
fore capable of being subjectively treated, yet can be
also analysed as objective things, and their laws dis-
covered, without the necessity of a constant reference
to the fact of this subjective constitution and nature;
we need not be constantly translating the terms de-
scribing them and their sequences into terms signi-
ficant of their subjective aspect; it is enough that
they can be so translated if occasion for such veri-
fication should arise; otherwise the course of investi-
gation would be interrupted, the objects being suffi-
ciently well known in their objective aspect.

-25-