You will soon be saying that the hedonist begs the
question, for even supposing that man does pursue these ends, the
crucial problem of why he thinks one course rather than another likely
to produce pleasure, is untouched. Does the guidance of man's
conscience explain? How then does he happen to have the particular
conscience which he has? The theory of economic self-interest? But how
do men come to conceive their interest in one way rather than another?
The desire for security, or prestige, or domination, or what is
vaguely called self-realization? How do men conceive their security,
what do they consider prestige, how do they figure out the means of
domination, or what is the notion of self which they wish to realize?
Pleasure, pain, conscience, acquisition, protection, enhancement,
mastery, are undoubtedly names for some of the ways people act. There
may be instinctive dispositions which work toward such ends. But no
statement of the end, or any description of the tendencies to seek it,
can explain the behavior which results. The very fact that men
theorize at all is proof that their pseudo-environments, their
interior representations of the world, are a determining element in
thought, feeling, and action. For if the connection between reality
and human response were direct and immediate, rather than indirect and
inferred, indecision and failure would be unknown, and (if each of us
fitted as snugly into the world as the child in the womb), Mr.
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