Fruits of Philosophy: A Treatise on the Population QuestionKnowlton, Charles
Philosophy
Fruits of Philosophy: A Treatise on the Population Question
Knowlton, Charles
Birth control; Malthusianism
Agreeable consciousness constitutes what we call happiness, and
disagreeable consciousness constitutes misery. As sensations are a
higher degree of consciousness than mere thought, it follows that
agreeable sensations constitute a more exquisite happiness than
agreeable thoughts. That portion of happiness which consists in
agreeable sensations is commonly called pleasure. No thoughts are
agreeable except those which were originally excited by or have been
associated with agreeable sensations. Hence, if a person never had
experienced any agreeable sensations, he could have no agreeable
thoughts, and would, of course, be an entire stranger to happiness.
There are five species of sensations--seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting
and feeling. There are many varieties of feeling--as the feelings of
hunger, thirst, cold, hardness, etc. Many of these feelings are
excited by agents that act upon the exterior of the body, such as solid
substances of every kind, heat, and various chemical irritants. These
latter feelings are called _passions_.
Those passions which owe their existence chiefly to the state of the
brain, or to causes acting directly upon the brain, are called the moral
passion. They are grief, anger, love, etc. They consist of sentient
actions, which commence in the brain and extend to the nerves in the
region of the stomach, etc. But when the cause of the internal feeling
of passion is seated in some organ remote from the brain, as in the
stomach, genital organs, etc., the sentient action which constitutes the
passion commences in the nerves of such organ and extends to the brain,
and the passion is called an _appetite, instinct, or desire_. Some
of these passions are natural, as hunger, thirst, the reproductive
instinct, the desire to urinate, etc. Others are gradually acquired by
habit A _hankering_ for stimulants, as spirits, opium and tobacco, is
one of these.
Such is the nature of things that our most vivid and agreeable
sensations cannot be excited under all circumstances, nor beyond a
certain extent under any circumstances, without giving rise in one
way or another to an amount of disagreeable consciousness or misery,
exceeding the amount of agreeable consciousness which attends such
ill-timed or excessive gratification. To excite agreeable sensations to
a degree not exceeding this certain extent is temperance; to excite
them beyond this extent is intemperance; not to excite them at all is
mortification or abstinence. This certain extent varies with different
individuals, according to their several circumstances, so that what
would be temperance in one person may be intemperance in another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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