Therefore, knowledge, clear of the pleasure it occasions,
can alone be man's highest good. The pleasure may be in-
separable from the knowledge, but this is far from consti-
tuting the pleasure knowledge itself. God known is man's
absolutely highest good, and virtue is his relatively highest
good, his highest good in this life. Altruism cannot be man's
highest good, because, as understood by the Utilitarians, it
neglects two important factors in the makeup of virtue, self
and God. Again, if their Altruism means virtue, if it means
measuring up to the objective order of things, the exact pay-
ment of all our debts to the neighbor, self and God, we have
no quarrel with Utilitarianism, and we are Altruists as well
as they. But, whatever their real sentiments, the writings of
Utilitarians are proof conclusive that they ignore the interior
life of the soul, the inner man of the heart, and give human



160 GENERAL ETHICS

society, the neighbor, the place that belongs to God. They
mistake the political for the ethical end of life. They provide
for a good citizen, a good husband, a good father; but not
for a good man. They exaggerate a secondary concern, to
minimize or altogether nullify what ought to be man's pri-
mary concern and first consideration. Therefore, the Al-
truism of the Utilitarians is no more man 's highest good than
the Hedonism of Epicureans. It wears a more decent ap-
pearance, but there is more logic or common sense in Hedon-
ism than in Altruism. Both are vile errors, one from the
viewpoint of gentility, the other from the viewpoint of phi-
losophy; and only in the eyes of shallow thinkers are of-
fenses against gentility viler than offenses against philosophy.
