s empty and as devoid of allegiance as if it had never
existed; pleasure is sand, though it have the colour of gold. But this is
evidently true of all existence. Each living moment, each dead man, each
cycle of the universe leaves nothing behind it but a void which perhaps
something kindred may refill. A Hegel, after identifying himself for a
moment with the Absolute Idea, is in his existence no less subject to
sleepiness, irritation, and death than if he had been modestly satisfied
with the joys of an oyster. It is only their common form, or their common
worship, that can give to the quick moments of life any mutual relevance
or sympathy; and existence would not come at all within sight of a good,
either momentary or final, if it were not inwardly directed upon realising
some definite essence. For the rest this essence may be as simple as you
will, if the nature directed upon it is unified and simple; and it would
be mere intellectual snobbery to condemn pleasure because it has not so
many subdivisions in it as an encyclopaedia of the sciences. For the
moralist pleasure and pain may even be the better guides, because they
express more directly and boldly the instinctive direction of animal life,
and thereby mark more clearly the genuine difference between good and
evil.

We may well say with Bradley that the good is self-realisation; but what
is the self? Certainly not the feeling or consciousness of the moment, nor
the life of the world, nor pure spirit. The self that can systematically
distinguish good from evil is an animal soul. It grows from a seed; its
potentiality is definite and its fate precarious; and in man it requires
society to rear it and tradition to educate it. The good is accordingly
social, in so far as the soul demands society; but it is the nature of the
individual that determines the kind and degree of sociability that is good
for him, and draws the line between society that is a benefit and society
that is a nuisance. To subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or
the individual to the state is sheer barbarism: the Greeks, sometimes
invoked to support this form of idolatry, were never guilty of it; on the
contrary, their lawgivers were always reforming and planning the state so
that the soul might be perfect in it. Discipline is a help to the spirit:
but even social relations, when like love, friendship, or sport they are
spontaneous and good in themselves, retire as far as possible from the
p