The Five Great Philosophies of LifeHyde, William De Witt
Philosophy
The Five Great Philosophies of Life
Hyde, William De Witt
Ethics; Philosophy, Ancient
class of mercenary money lovers into the class of men whose real
principle is not money but honesty. Precisely so Mill's confession that
he cares for the height and dignity of the faculties employed rather
than the quantity of pleasure gained lifts him out of the Epicurean
school to which he professes adherence and makes him an idealist.
When asked for an explanation of his preference of higher to lower, Mill
at once shifts to Stoic ground in the following sentences: "We may give
what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to
pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to
some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we
may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an
appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for
the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of
excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it; but
its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human
beings possess in one form or another, and in some, though by no means
in exact, proportion to their highest faculties, and which is so
essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that
nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an
object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes
place at a sacrifice of happiness--that the superior being, in anything
like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior--confounds
the two very different ideas of happiness and content. It is
indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has
the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed
being will always feel that any happiness which we can look for, as the
world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its
imperfections if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him
envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only
because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied;
better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the
fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only
know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison
knows both sides."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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