We are in a position now to decide whether it exists, or does not exist.

It consists primarily and before all things in the choice by the individual of one out of many modes of happiness--the election of a certain '_way_,' in George Eliot's words, '_in which he will make his life pleasant_.' There are many sets of pleasure open to him; but there is one set, it is said, more excellent, beyond comparison, than the others; and to choose these, and these alone, is what will give us part in the holy value of life.

The choice and the refusal of them is the Yea and the Nay of all that makes life worth living; and is the source, to the positivists, of the solemnity, the terrors, and sweetness of the whole ethical vocabulary.

'_What then are the alternative pleasures that life offers_ me?
_In how many ways am_ I _capable of feeling_ my _existence a blessing?
and in what way shall_ I _feel the blessing of it most keenly_ ?' This is the great life-question; it may be asked indifferently by any individual; and in the positivist answer to it, which will be the same for all, and of universal application, must lie the foundation of the positive moral system.
And that system, as I have said before, professes to be essentially a _moral_ one, in the old religious sense of the word.

It retains the old ethical vocabulary; and lays the same intense stress on the old ethical distinctions.