GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

INTRODUCTION {3
of the governed. I do not hold in ethics the view that
happiness is the sole end of life, but I do believe that it is'
the only one of which politics can presume to take account.
The business of government then ii, if I am right, to
promote the happiness of the governed.
This view is in the modern world widely disowned. If
I were to put to them the question, " Am I more properly
to be conceived as an expression of the State's will, as a
drop of blood in an ocean of racial purity, as a cog in
a proletarian machine, as a unit in an industrial ant-state,
or as an end in myself with a right to happiness in this life
and a chance of immortality beyond it? " few of those who
dominate the thought and.set the standards ofcontemporary Europe would be found to answer that I am the last of these.
I cannot, then, escape the reflection that in asserting that
I am an end in myself, I am running counter to most of
the theories which are fashionable to-day. Nevertheless, I
cannot help myself. I have my doubts about the immortality,
but I have none about the importance, ofindividuals.
Souls are souls even if their life here is transitory, and
though they may not be immortal, it is none the less, I
conceive, the business of government to treat them as if
they were. The announcement of the importance
of the
individual is, in my view, the great gift of Christianity to
the world.
In ethics I hold that there are certain ends, truth and
beauty for example, which possess value apart from
human consciousness. In the realm of politics, however,
I hold that the states of consciousness of individual men
and women are alone worthy to be taken into account,
and any theory must, in my view, be wrong which suggests
that there can, in this sphere, be anything which is of
greater importance than the experience of individual
persons. I have attempted to defend this view elsewhere, 1
and it is not my purpose to repeat the defence here.
I state my own opinions thus dogmatically, only that the"
reader may be in a better position to discount them when
1 See my Libtrty To-day, Chapters IV and VI.