The ends, also, even the most essential and final ends, may be manifold. It is a mistake which appeared especially in the eighteenth century, nowadays the tendency is more and more to abandon it, that every one seeks the same end, namely, his own highest possible pleasure.[15] Whoever can believe that the martyr facing with full consciousness the most terrible tortures for the sake of his conviction—and there were some who had no hope of recompense hereafter—was thus inspired by a desire after the greatest possible pleasure, such a man must have either a very defective sense of the facts of the case, or, indeed, have lost all measure of the intensities of pleasure and pain.
This, therefore, is certain: even final ends are manifold, between them hovers the choice, which, since the final end is for everything the determining principle, is of the most importance. What ought I to strive after? Which end is the right one, which wrong? This, as Aristotle long ago declared, is the essential, the cardinal question in ethics.[16]
[17.] Which end is right, for which should our choice declare itself?
Where the end is fixed and it is merely a question as to the choice of means, we reply: Choose means which will certainly attain the end. Where it is a question as to the choice of ends we would say: Choose an end which reason regards as really attainable. This answer is, however, insufficient, many a thing attainable is rather to be shunned than sought after; choose the best among attainable ends, this alone is the adequate answer.[17]
But the answer is obscure; what do we mean by “the best”? what can be called “good” at all? and how can we attain to the knowledge that one thing is good and better than another?
[18.] In order to answer this question satisfactorily, we must, above all, inquire into the origin of the conception of the good, which lies, like the origin of all our conceptions, in certain concrete impressions.[18]
We possess impressions with physical content. These exhibit to us sensuous qualities localized in space. Out of this sphere arise the conceptions of colour, sound, space and many others. The conception of the good, however, has not here its origin. It is easily recognizable that the conception of the good like that of the true, which, as having affinity, is rightly placed side by side with it, derives its origin from concrete impressions with psychical content.
[19.] The common feature of everything psychical consists in what has been called by a very unfortunate and ambiguous term, consciousness; i.e. in a subject-attitude; in what has been termed an intentional relation to something which, though perhaps not real, is none the less an inner object of perception[19] No hearing without the heard, no believing without the believed, no hoping without the hoped for, no striving without the striven for, no joy without the enjoyed, and so with other mental phenomena.
[20.] The sensuous qualities which are given in our impressions with physical content exhibit manifold differences. So also do the intentional relations given in our impressions with psychical content. And, as in the former case, the number of the senses is determined by reference to those distinctions between sensuous qualities which are most fundamental (called by Helmholtz distinctions of modality), so in the latter case the number of fundamental classes of mental phenomena is fixed by reference to the most fundamental distinctions of intentional relation.[20]
In this way we distinguish three fundamental classes. Descartes in his Meditations[21] was the first to exhibit these rightly and completely; but sufficient attention has not been paid to his observations, and they were soon quite forgotten, until in recent times, and independently of him, these were again discovered. Nowadays they may lay claim to sufficient verification.[22]