Synopses & Reviews
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: with any meaning, be assigned to two pleasures or sums of pleasure; so that there can never be any meaning in the assertion ' this pleasure is twice as great as that.' I may add that for the present I am dealing with the comparison of pleasures of the same kind or quality. Afterwards I shall have something to say as to the comparison of pleasures which ' differ in kind.' Meanwhile, the fact that I am confining myself to pleasures of the same kind may perhaps be my excuse if I take my illustrations for the most part from pleasures of a low type, such as those of eating and drinking. I do so simply because what I contend for is most clearly seen in the case of such pleasures. I make this remark to deprecate the wrath of critics who, while apparently not averse to a good dinner, seem to wish it to be understood that the pleasantness of the meal is to them a contemptible?not to say regrettable?accident involved in the pursuit of some higher end, the nature of which they never seem able to indicate with any precision. I need hardly say that I have no desire k1 emphasize the importance of the element contributed to human Well-being by those pleasures of eating and drinking to which the actual conventions of the most refined societies give a greater prominence than it is easy to justify. But however low we place them, and however strictly we think they ought to be limited, it seems impossible to justify any indulgence whatever in such things which goes beyond the imperative requirements of health and efficiency, unless we treat pleasure?even such pleasure?as a good. Firstly, then, it is asserted that a sum of pleasures is not a possible object of desire. This position would appear to be maintained upon one of two possible grounds: ? (a) It may be regarded as a corollary of th...
Synopsis
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