cus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their
purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this
ecstacy, is success in life. . . . While all melts under our
feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any
contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to
set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the
senses, strange dyes, strange colors, and curious odors, or
work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not
to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those
about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic
dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of
frost and sun, to sleep before evening."[261:22]

[Sidenote: Development of Utilitarianism. Evolutionary Conception of
Social Relations.]

Sect. 122. In the course of modern philosophy the ethics of naturalism
has undergone a transformation and development that equip it much more
formidably for its competition with rival theories. If the Cynic and
Cyrenaic philosophies of life seem too egoistic and narrow in outlook,
this inadequacy has been largely overcome through the modern conception
of the relation of the individual to society. Man is regarded as so
dependent upon social relations that it is both natural and rational for
him to govern his actions with a concern for the community. There was a
time when this relation of dependence was viewed as external, a barter
of goods between the individual and society, sanctioned by an implied
contract. Thomas Hobbes, whose unblushing materialism and egoism
stimulated by opposition the whole development of English ethics,
conceived morality to consist in rules of action which condition the
stability of the state, and so secure for the individual that "peace"
which self-interest teaches him is essential to his welfare.

"And therefore so long a man is in the condition of mere
nature, which is a condition of war, as private appetite is
the measure of good and evil: and consequently all men agree
on this, that peace is good, and therefore also the ways or
means of peace, which, as I have showed before, are 'justice,'
'gratitude,' 'modesty,' 'equity,' 'mercy,' and the rest of
the laws of Nature, are good; that is to say, 'moral virtues';
and their contrary 'vices,' evil."[262:23]

Jeremy Bentham, the apostle of uti