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

being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as
the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its
imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him
envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but
only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections
qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig
satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because
they only know their own side of the question. The other party to
the comparison knows both sides.

It may be objected, that many who are capable of the higher
pleasures, occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone
them to the lower. But this is quite compatible with a full
appreciation of the intrinsic superiority of the higher. Men often,
from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer
good, though they know it to be the less valuable; and this no less
when the choice is between two bodily pleasures, than when it is
between bodily and mental. They pursue sensual indulgences to the
injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is the greater
good.

It may be further objected, that many who begin with youthful
enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in years sink into
indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe that those who undergo
this very common change, voluntarily choose the lower description of
pleasures in preference to the higher. I believe that before they
devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have already become
incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most
natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile
influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of
young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which
their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it
has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in
exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their
intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for
indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures,
not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either
the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they
are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any
one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures,
ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all
ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both.

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there
can be no appeal. 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, apart from its moral attributes and from its
consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge
of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must