orality is the only road. Further,
this end is the one thing in life that is really worth attaining; and
since we have to do with no life other than this one, it must be found
amongst the days and years of which this short life is the aggregate. On
the adequacy of this universal end depends the whole question of the
positive worth of life, and the essential dignity of man.

That this is at least one way of stating the case has been often
acknowledged by the positive moralists themselves. The following
passage, for instance, is from the autobiography of J.S. Mill. '_From
the winter of 1821_,' he writes, '_when I first read Bentham.... I had
what might truly be called an object in life, to be a reformer of the
world.... I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by the
way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon,
my whole reliance was placed on this.... But the time came when I
awakened from this as from a dream.... It occurred to me to put the
question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life
realised; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you
were looking forward to, could be completely effected in this very
instant, would this be a very great joy and happiness to you?" And an
irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered "No!" At this my
heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was
constructed fell down.... The end had ceased to charm, and how could
there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing
left to live for.... The lines in Coleridge's "Dejection" exactly
describe my case_:--

"_O grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet nor relief
In word, or sigh, or tear.

* * * * *

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And life without an object cannot live._"'

And the foregoing confession is made more significant by the author's
subsequent comment on it. '_Though my dejection,' he says, 'honestly
looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the
ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of
mankind was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own.
I felt that the flaw in my life must be a flaw in life itself; and that
the question was whether, if the reformers of society and government
could succeed in th