"Utilitarianism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mill John Stuart)

impossibility in enabling even the mass of mankind to unite both;
since the two are so far from being incompatible that they are in
natural alliance, the prolongation of either being a preparation
for, and exciting a wish for, the other. It is only those in whom
indolence amounts to a vice, that do not desire excitement after an
interval of repose: it is only those in whom the need of excitement is
a disease, that feel the tranquillity which follows excitement dull
and insipid, instead of pleasurable in direct proportion to the
excitement which preceded it. When people who are tolerably
fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient
enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is,
caring for nobody but themselves. To those who have neither public nor
private affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in
any case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish
interests must be terminated by death: while those who leave after
them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have also
cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of
mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death as
in the vigour of youth and health. Next to selfishness, the
principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental
cultivation. A cultivated mind- I do not mean that of a philosopher,
but any mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and
which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its
faculties- finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that
surrounds it; in the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the
imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind,
past and present, and their prospects in the future. It is possible,
indeed, to become indifferent to all this, and that too without having
exhausted a thousandth part of it; but only when one has had from
the beginning no moral or human interest in these things, and has
sought in them only the gratification of curiosity.

Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an
amount of mental culture sufficient to give an intelligent interest in
these objects of contemplation, should not be the inheritance of every
one born in a civilised country. As little is there an inherent
necessity that any human being should be a selfish egotist, devoid
of every feeling or care but those which centre in his own miserable
individuality. Something far superior to this is sufficiently common
even now, to give ample earnest of what the human species may be made.
Genuine private affections and a sincere interest in the public
good, are possible, though in unequal degrees, to every rightly
brought up human being. In a world in which there is so much to
interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve,
every one who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual
requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable;
and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the
will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of
happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find this enviable
existence, if he escape the positive evils of life, the great