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

62 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
for all tends insensibly to transform itself into a compul-
sion to give free play to appetite.
in Practice* It is in this form that
Self-Development
the doctrine of self-development has been most persistently
advocated. As it has been developed by different thinkers,
its injunctions have been enshrined in a scries of mots and
aphorisms. (It is the devil's prerogative! as moralists will
admit, to monopolise the witticisms.) That the Palace of
Wisdom lies through the gateways of excess, that the best
way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it, that "not
the fruits of experience, but experience itself, is the end"
are typical announcements of a doctrine, which has
received literary expression at the hands of some of the
world's greatest essayists, poets and novelists* The doctrine
has achieved considerable popularity in the post-war
world. D. H. Lawrence, for example, tends in his later
works to represent any attempt on the part of the reason
or the will to restrain the unlimited indulgence of the
passions as a mutilation of the personality of the natural
man by the restricting conventionalities of an artificial
civilization. Restraint of passion is, indeed, for him the
of the stream of life which constitutes our
damming up
very being.
The official, ethical form of the doctrine of passional
indulgence is known as Hedonism, which affirms that
pleasure and pleasure alone is good or is the Good. I have
already referred to this doctrine, 1 and as I am reserving
detailed consideration of it for a later chapter,' I do not
propose to develop it here. It suggests, however, one
reflection which is immediately relevant to our present
discussion. Just a* the doctrine of the all-round development
of our faculties usually turns out in practice to mean
the indulgence of our appetites and passions, so the
philosophy of Hedonism, in which the doctrine receives
official expression, has been usually invoked to justify
forms of conduct which are different from those which
1 Sec above, pp. 46-48.
* See Chapter XI, pp. 396-415.