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

Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them
in some of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate
dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end
than pleasure- no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit-
they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy
only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early
period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine are
occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its
German, French, and English assailants.

When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it
is not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a
degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be
capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If
this supposition were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but
would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of
pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the
rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for
the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is
felt as degrading, precisely because a beast's pleasures do not
satisfy a human being's conceptions of happiness. Human beings have
faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once
made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does
not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the
Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in drawing out their
scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do this in
any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements
require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theory of life
which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the
feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher
value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be
admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the
superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater
permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former- that is, in
their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature.
And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but
they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher
ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the
principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of
pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be
absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is
considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should
be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or
what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a
pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one
possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or
almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference,
irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that