Feuerbach, and John Stuart Mill have recorded such irrefutable criticisms of the Kantian doctrine of the absolute disinterestedness of moral action, that it is unnecessary to add to their arguments.

Only some moral philosophers, and particularly Mill, are guilty of logical inaccuracy when they reject Eudæmonism but retain Utility as the aim of morality. Why do the Utilitarians not realize that they are merely Eudæmonists under another name, and that he who disregards his own immediate interests in order to further the well-being of the community experiences a pleasurable emotion of high order in the satisfaction he derives from the sacrifices whereby he has contributed to the good of the community?

The useless exertions of a section of moral philosophers to eliminate not only Hedonism but also Eudæmonism from moral action are a veritable labour of Sisyphus. Hardly have these two with difficulty been expelled by the door than they return by the window or the chimney. It is a mere conjuring trick to remove them from this world to the next, as do the theologians, or to substitute universal well-being for the feeling of happiness. All the same, the desire to purge moral action of the least admixture of hope of profit or pleasure is comprehensible. Common experience, which is equally forced upon the profound thinker and upon the plain man in the street least inclined to cudgel his brain, teaches us that Morality consists, with very few exceptions, in acting against our own immediate interest, in denying ourselves some coveted pleasure, in renouncing some attainable profit, in undertaking some disagreeable exertion because Reason bids us do so. From this practical experience the man in the street gets the impression that duty is a bitter necessity and that decency is attended by many and varied inconveniences. The theorist, the philosopher, derives a principle from his empirical facts; he observes that the moral man often acts against his own immediate interests, and expresses this in the pretentious axiom: "Morality from the very beginning excludes all thought of profit."

And yet the philosophers are guilty of the same superficiality as the man in the street. They do not go far enough into the matter to perceive that the morality of pleasure, of interest, and of duty, Hedonism, Utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative, all lead in very slightly different ways to the same goal—Eudæmonism. The fulfilment of duty affords spiritual satisfaction, a pre-eminently pleasurable emotion which increases in direct proportion to the effort which its fulfilment demands. Interest also implies pleasure, for every interest ultimately comes to this, that it is an attempt to secure a pleasure. This aim lies at the bottom of all interests; it is the fundamental interest from which all seemingly different interests are derived; it is the universal goal to which all human effort tends, whether it be a question of making money to satisfy ambition, of winning love and friendship, of material, spiritual, personal or social values. Interest is self-assertion and the intensifying of the zest for life. But these are always accompanied by pleasurable emotions; thus interest is forthwith identified with pleasurable emotion, even though one has to work hard, even though at the moment it entails drudgery and discomfort. Hedonism makes no secret of its nature and its tendency. It openly admits what the Categorical Imperative denies and what Utilitarianism veils with vague phrases: that the aim and object of moral action is Pleasure and nothing else.