Now I think we shall not regard this truth as paradoxical after we
have duly analyzed the pleasure of pursuit. The chief components
of this pleasure are: First, a renewed consciousness of personal
efficiency (made vivid by actual success and partially excited by
impending success) which consciousness of personal efficiency,
connected in experience with achieved ends of every kind, arouses
a vague but massive consciousness of resulting gratifications; and
second, a representation of the applause which recognition of this
efficiency by others has before brought, and will again bring. Games
of skill show us this clearly. Considered as an end in itself, the
good cannon which a billiard player makes yields no pleasure. Whence
then does the pleasure of making it arise? Partly from the fresh proof
of capability which the player gives to himself, and partly from the
imagined admiration of those who witness the proof of his capability:
the last being the chief, since he soon tires of making cannons
in the absence of witnesses. When from games which, yielding the
pleasures of success, yield no pleasure derived from the end considered
intrinsically, we pass to sports in which the end has intrinsic value
as a source of pleasure, we see substantially the same thing. Though
the bird which the sportsman brings down is useful as food, yet his
satisfaction arises mainly from having made a good shot, and from
having added to the bag which will presently bring praise of his skill.
The gratification of self-esteem he immediately experiences; and the
gratification of receiving applause he experiences, if not immediately
and in full degree, yet by representation; for the ideal pleasure is
nothing else than a faint revival of the real pleasure. These two
kinds of agreeable excitement present in the sportsman during the
chase constitute the mass of the desires stimulating him to continue
it; for all desires are nascent forms of the feelings to be obtained
by the efforts they prompt. And though while seeking more birds these
representative feelings are not so vividly excited as by success just
achieved, yet they are excited by imaginations of further successes;
and so make enjoyable the activities constituting the pursuit.
Recognizing, then, the truth that the pleasures of pursuit are much
more those derived from the efficient use of means than those derived
from the end itself, we see that "the fundamental paradox of hedonism"
disappears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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