(4) But the most imperious need of life lies in the tracing-out and paying heed to these extrinsic values, these after effects of conduct. The drinking of alcoholic liquors, for example, not only stills a craving that arises in a man's mind, not only brings pleasure of taste and comfort of oblivion, not only brings the quick revulsion of emotional staleness and headache, but has its gradual and inevitable effects in undermining the constitution, lessening the power of resistance to disease, and decreasing the vitality of offspring. Quite commonly these ultimate consequences are the most important, and so the determining, factors in deciding our ideals. Among them may be included the influence of single acts in increasing or decreasing the power to resist future temptations, and the gradual paralysis of the will through unchecked self-indulgence.
(5) Another important aspect of any moral situation lies in the rejection which every choice involves. Not only must we ask what a given impulse has to offer us, in immediate and remote satisfaction; we must consider what alternative goods its adoption precludes. What might we have been doing with our time and strength or money? Is this act not only a good one, is it the best one for that moment of our lives? An important function of ideals is to point us to realms of happiness into which our preexisting impulses might never have led us, and whose existence we might scarcely have suspected.
(6) Finally, we may ask of every proposed line of conduct, what will be its worth to us in memory? Not only in our leisure hours, but in a current of subconscious reflection that accompanies our active life, we constantly live in the presence of our past. And the nature of memory is such that it cannot well retain the traces of certain of our keenest pleasures, but can continually feed us upon other joys of our past. It is imperative, then, for a happy life, so to live that the years are pleasant to look back upon. Vicious self-indulgence and selfishness are rarely satisfying in retrospection, whereas all courage and heroism and tenderness are a source of unending comfort. For better or worse, we are, and cannot shirk being, judges of our own conduct. We may be prejudiced, and may properly try to correct our prejudices; we may discount our own disapprovals, and seek to escape from our own self- condemnation. But after all, we must live with ourselves; and it pays to aim to please not only the evanescent impulses whose disapproval will soon be forgotten, but that more deeply rooted and insistent judgment that cannot wholly be stilled. Regret and remorse are among the greatest poisoners of happiness, and prospective ideals must bear that truth in mind. "No matter what other elements in any moment of consciousness may tend to give it agreeable tone, if there is not the element of approval, there is not yet any deep, wide, and lasting pleasantness for consciousness. A flash of light here, a casual word there, and it is gone. "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset- touch; A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus ending from Euripides, And that's enough" to bring the shock of disapproval, and with it disagreeable feeling- tone continues till disapproval is removed or approval is won. If there be won this approval, other elements of disagreeableness, however great, can be endured. The massive movement of the complex unified consciousness of a Socrates drinking hemlock, of a Jesus dying on the cross, whatever strong eddies of pain there be in it, is still toned agreeably, as it makes head conqueringly toward that end which each has ideally constructed as fit." [Footnote: H. G. Lord, in Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James, p. 388-89.] No reference has been made, in this summary of the factors which determine our estimate of the worth of personal ideals, to the bearing of these ideals upon other people's lives. Actually, of course, the social values of even primarily personal ideals are impossible to overlook, and often bulk larger than the merely personal values. This whole side of the matter will be left for convenience, however, to the following chapter.
Epicureanism vs. Puritanism.
Personal ideals have swung historically between two magnets, richness and purity, self-expression and self-repression, indulgence and asceticism. The crux of the individual's problem is the question how much repression is necessary; and man's answer has wavered somewhere between these extremes, which we may designate by the names of their best-known exemplars, Epicureanism and Puritanism. Many differences in degree or detail there have been, of course, in the various historic embodiments of these ideals; but for the sake of making clear the fundamental contrast we may neglect these individual divergences and group together those on the one hand who have called men to a fuller, completer life and those who have summoned them to an austerer and purer life, free from taint of sin and regret. We shall then put in the first group such well-known seers and poets as Epicurus, Lucretius, Horace, Goethe, Shelley, Byron, Walter Pater, Walt Whitman; we shall think of the Greek gods, of the Renaissance artists, the English cavaliers. We shall think of the motto, "Carpe diem," and "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"; and perhaps of Stevenson's
"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." [Footnote: An excellent brief plea for this ideal of the life that shall be rich in experience can be found in Walter Pater's Renaissance, the "Conclusion.">[ In contrast to these followers are afraid of impulse, those who warn and rebuke and seek to save life from its pitfalls. We shall think of Buddha, the Stoics, the Hebrew prophets, the mediaeval saints, Dante and Savonarola, the English and American Puritans, or, in modern times, of Tolstoy. The ideal of such men is expressed not by the wholesomely happy and carefree Greek gods, but by haloed saint, by the calm-eyed Buddha of Eastern lands, by the figure of Christ on the cross. The answer to the Epicurean's heedlessness is expressed in such lines as "What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright."
It is condensed in the familiar "Respice finem"; the peace of its self- denial shines out in Christ's "Not my will but thine," and in Dante's "In His will is our peace." Meager and cold and repellent as this ideal in its extreme expressions often seems, it appeals to us as the softer and irresponsible ideal of the Epicureans cannot. But obviously our way lies between the extremes. And after all that has now been said, our summary of the dangers inherent in each ideal may be very brief.
What are the evils in undue self-indulgence?
Apart from the selfishness of self-indulgence, which is obvious upon the surface, but with which we are not now concerned,
(1) Self-indulgence, if unbridled, leads almost inevitably to pain, disease, and premature death. For in the majority of men there are certain instincts so strong and so dangerous -as, the sex-instinct, the craving for stimulants and excitement-that where no repressive principle exists they tend to override the grumblings of prudence and drag their possessor to disaster. It is impossible for most men, if they give themselves over to the pursuit of personal pleasure, to keep to the quiet, refined, healthful pleasures which Epicurus advocated. Their feet go down to death.