And now let us consider what, according to all positive theories, this supremacy of morality means.  It means that there is a certain course of active life, and a certain course only, by which life can be made by everyone a beautiful and a noble thing:  and life is called earnest, because such a prize is within our reach, and solemn because there is a risk that we may fail to reach it.  Were this not so, right and wrong could have no general and objective meaning.  They would be purely personal matters—­mere misleading names, in fact, for the private likes and the dislikes of each of us; and to talk of right, and good, and morality, as things that we ought all to conform to, and to live by, would be simply to talk nonsense.  What the very existence of a moral system implies is, that whatever may be our personal inclinations naturally, there is some common pattern to which they should be all adjusted; the reason being that we shall so all become partakers in some common happiness, which is greater beyond comparison than every other kind.

Here we are presented with two obvious tasks:  the first, to enquire what this happiness is, what are the qualities and attractions generally ascribed to it; the second, to analyse it, as it is thus held up to us, and to see if its professed ingredients are sufficient to make up the result.

To proceed then, all moral systems must, as we have just seen, postulate some end of action, an end to which morality 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:—­