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

be admitted as final. And there needs be the less hesitation to accept
this judgment respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no
other tribunal to be referred to even on the question of quantity.
What means are there of determining which is the acutest of two pains,
or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations, except the general
suffrage of those who are familiar with both? Neither pains nor
pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with
pleasure. What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is
worth purchasing at the cost of a particular pain, except the feelings
and judgment of the experienced? When, therefore, those feelings and
judgment declare the pleasures derived from the higher faculties to be
preferable in kind, apart from the question of intensity, to those
of which the animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is
suspectible, they are entitled on this subject to the same regard.

I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly
just conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive
rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable
condition to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that
standard is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest
amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted
whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness,
there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the
world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism,
therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of
nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by
the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is
concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the bare
enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation
superfluous.

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained,
the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all
other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or
that of other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible
from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of
quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for
measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those
who in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their
habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best
furnished with the means of comparison. This, being, according to
the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily
also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the
rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an
existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest
extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so
far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.

Against this doctrine, however, arises another class of objectors,
who say that happiness, in any form, cannot be the rational purpose of