Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ON QUALITY OF PLEASURE. I Alluded in the last chapter to the two great unsettled questions, to what degree happiness is different for different people, and how far it is in each man’s own power for himself. Both these questions concern the subject of this chapter. If happiness is different for different people, how far ought it to be so ? And how far can we raise the character of our happiness ? There is perhaps a disposition in our age to accept A morality jTi i iT ofhappi- a morality of happiness as better, more like what we ness, espe- expect morality to be, than one of rule: such a hoi,,1 morality may take the form of a utilitarianism recog- rj;e nizing different kinds of pleasures, some worthier and is more c- more to be striven after than others. Religion too than’a mo- has not unfrequently shown itself more in harmony i1ety of with the moral philosophy which speaks much of happiness than with that which speaks much of law. And though it is true that when religion has spoken the language of bare utilitarianism, as in Paley, it has not much commended itself to real human feeling: still when it is presented to us not only as conformable to our desire, but also as what is to regulate our desire, uniting with its promises to make us happy a call upon us for effort after a worthy happiness, and elevation of our idea of happiness (as we are told on the one hand that the ways of religion are pleasantness and her paths peace, while on the other hand we pray that we may love that which God commands and desire that he promises); the morality which is thus proposed to us has charms in our view which do not belong to a morality of rule. But this But then it is to be observed that this more at- worthiness tractive form of utilitarianism involves …
AN EXAMINATION OF THE UTILITARIAN PHILOSOPHY
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ON QUALITY OF PLEASURE. I Alluded in the last chapter to the two great unsettled questions, to what degree happiness is different for different people, and how far it is in each man’s own power for himself. Both these questions concern the subject of this chapter. If happiness is different for different people, how far ought it to be so ? And how far can we raise the character of our happiness ? There is perhaps a disposition in our age to accept A morality jTi i iT ofhappi- a morality of happiness as better, more like what we ness, espe- expect morality to be, than one of rule: such a hoi,,1 morality may take the form of a utilitarianism recog- rj;e nizing different kinds of pleasures, some worthier and is more c- more to be striven after than others. Religion too than’a mo- has not unfrequently shown itself more in harmony i1ety of with the moral philosophy which speaks much of happiness than with that which speaks much of law. And though it is true that when religion has spoken the language of bare utilitarianism, as in Paley, it has not much commended itself to real human feeling: still when it is presented to us not only as conformable to our desire, but also as what is to regulate our desire, uniting with its promises to make us happy a call upon us for effort after a worthy happiness, and elevation of our idea of happiness (as we are told on the one hand that the ways of religion are pleasantness and her paths peace, while on the other hand we pray that we may love that which God commands and desire that he promises); the morality which is thus proposed to us has charms in our view which do not belong to a morality of rule. But this But then it is to be observed that this more at- worthiness tractive form of utilitarianism involves …