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

is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are
competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that
they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater
amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of
the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are
justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in
quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison,
of small account.

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally
acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying,
both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence
which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would
consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise
of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent
human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would
be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be
selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the
fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than
they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more
than he for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which
they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is
only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they
would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable
in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make
him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and
certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior
type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to
sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. 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 other, and in some, though by no means in exact,
proportion to their higher 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