[82] Thus Green (_Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book iii. chap. iv. § 228)
says, “It is the realisation of those objects in which we are mainly
interested, _not the succession of enjoyments which we shall experience
in realising them_, that forms the definite content of our idea of
true happiness, so far as it has such content at all.” Cf. also § 238.
It is more remarkable to find J. S. Mill (_Utilitarianism_, chap.
iv.) declaring that “money”--no less than “power” or “fame”--comes by
association of ideas to be “a part of happiness,” an “ingredient in
the individual’s conception of happiness.” But this seems to be a mere
looseness of phraseology, venial in a treatise aiming at a popular
style; since Mill has expressly said that “by happiness is intended
pleasure and the absence of pain,” and he cannot mean that money is
either the one or the other. In fact he uses in the same passage--as
an alternative phrase for “parts of happiness”--the phrases “sources
of happiness” and “sources of pleasure”: and his real meaning is more
precisely expressed by these latter terms. That is, the distinction
which he is really concerned to emphasise is that between the state
of mind in which money is valued solely as a means of buying other
things, and the state of mind--such as the miser’s--in which the mere
consciousness of possessing it gives pleasure, apart from any idea of
spending it.
[83] See Sermon XI. “... the cool principle of self-love or general
desire of our own happiness.”
[84] _Utilitarianism_, chap. ii.
CHAPTER VIII
INTUITIONISM
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