502 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



still exclusively self -regarding, namely, their amount as compared with 

 the exhaustion of the nervous power ; the pleasures of music and of 

 scenery are higher than those of stimulating drugs. But the superi- 

 ority that makes a distinction of quality, that rises clearly and effec- 

 tually above the swinish level, is the superiority of the gratifications 

 that take our fellow beings along with us ; such are the pleasures of 

 affection, of benevolence, of duty. To have met opponents upon this 

 ground alone would have been the proper undertaking for the object 

 Mill had in view. It surprises me that he has not ventured upon such 

 a mode of resolving pleasures. He says, " On a question which is the 

 best worth having of two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence 

 is the most grateful to the feelings, opart from its moral attributes and 

 consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge 

 of both must be admitted to be final," Apart from moral attributes 

 and consequences, I do not see a difference of quality at all ; and, when 

 these are taken into account, the difference is suflicient to call forth 

 any amount of admiring preference. A man's actions are noble if they 

 arrest misery or diffuse happiness around him ; they are not noble if 

 they are not directly or indirectly altruistic ; his pleasures are essen- 

 tially of the swinish type. 



Still rasher, I think, is his off-hand formula of a happy life,* if he 

 meant that this was to be a stone in the building of a utilitarian phi- 

 losophy. As a side-remark upon some of the important conditions of 

 happiness, it is interesting enough, but far from being rounded or pre- 

 cise. It was only to be expected that this utterance should have the 

 same fate as Paley's chapter on " Happiness," namely, to be analyzed 

 to death, and its mangled remains exposed as a memento of the weak- 

 ness of the philosophy that it is intended to support. It was clearly 

 his business, in conducting a defense of utility, to avoid all question- 

 able suppositions, and to be content with what everybody would allow 

 on the matter of happiness. 



His third chapter, treating of the " Ultimate Sanction of the Prin- 

 ciple of Utility," has been much caviled at in detail, but is, I con- 

 sider, a very admirable statement of the genesis of moral sentiment 

 under all the various influences that are necessarily at work. Here 

 occurs that fine passage on the social feelings of mankind which ought, 

 I think, to have been the framework or setting of the whole chapter. 

 Perhaps he should have avoided the word " sanction," so rigidly con- 

 fined by Austin and the jurists to the penalty or punishment of wrong. 



The real stress of the book lies in the last chapter, which is well 

 reasoned in every way, and free from damaging admissions. Under 

 the guise of an inquiry into the foundations of justice, he raises the 



* Happiness was " not a life of rapture ; but moments of such, in an existence made 

 up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance 

 of the active over the passive, and having, as the foundation of the whole, not to expect 

 more from life than it is capable of bestowing." 



