These remarks concerning end and means, and the pleasure accompanying
use of the means as added to the pleasure derived from the end, I
have made for the purpose of drawing attention to a fact of profound
significance. During evolution there has been a superposing of new and
more complex sets of means upon older and simpler sets of means, and a
superposing of the pleasures accompanying the uses of these successive
sets of means, with the result that each of these pleasures has itself
eventually become an end. We begin with a simple animal which, without
ancillary appliances, swallows such food as accident brings in its
way; and so, as we may assume, stills some kind of craving. Here we
have the primary end of nutrition with its accompanying satisfaction,
in their simple forms. We pass to higher types having jaws for seizing
and biting--jaws which thus, by their actions, facilitate achievement
of the primary end. On observing animals furnished with these organs,
we get evidence that the use of them becomes in itself pleasurable
irrespective of the end: instance a squirrel which, apart from food
to be so obtained, delights in nibbling everything it gets hold of.
Turning from jaws to limbs we see that these, serving some creatures
for pursuit and others for escape, similarly yield gratification by
their exercise; as in lambs which skip and horses which prance. How the
combined use of limbs and jaws, originally subserving the satisfaction
of appetite, grows to be in itself pleasurable, is daily illustrated in
the playing of dogs. For that throwing down and worrying which, when
prey is caught, precedes eating, is, in their mimic fights, carried
by each as far as he dares. Coming to means still more remote from
the end, namely, those by which creatures chased are caught, we are
again shown by dogs that when no creature is caught there is still a
gratification in the act of catching. The eagerness with which a dog
runs after stones, or dances and barks in anticipation of jumping
into the water after a stick, proves that apart from the satisfaction
of appetite, and apart even from the satisfaction of killing prey,
there is a satisfaction in the successful pursuit of a moving object.
Throughout, then, we see that the pleasure attendant on the use of
means to achieve an end, itself becomes an end.
Now if we contemplate these as phenomena of conduct in general, some
facts worthy of note may be discerned--facts which, if we appreciate
their significance, will aid us in developing our ethical conceptions.
One of them is that among the successive sets of means, the later are
the more remote from the primary end; are, as co-ordinating earlier and
simpler means, the more complex; and are accompanied by feelings which
are more representative.
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