curus says, man should not desire simply the pleasures of the moment. He should aim at pleasures that endure, lasting satisfactions, permanent states of agreeable feeling. Hence the Epicureans maintain that calm satisfaction is preferable to violent excitement. The aim of life is to attain a pleasurable tranquillity, an equable contentment with whatever gifts fortune may deign to bestow. The Epicureans also practised what they preached, and in their quiet garden at Athens they enjoyed a simple life of pleasant contentment and peaceful calm.
§ 3. Utilitarianism. Hedonism was more systematically formulated by Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), and came to be called Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is thus a developed Hedonism. All Utilitarians may be called Hedonists, but all Hedonists are not Utilitarians. Utilitarianism is a kind of Hedonism. Utilitarianism differs in two respects from the Hedonism of the Epicureans.
(1) It is not selfish. It does not bid a man take into account only his own pleasures. It commands him to have regard to the general happiness of the community as a whole. The Epicurean did not explicitly consider the pleasure of others. Each man was concerned only with himself and took an interest only in his own pleasures; and in so far as he took account of the pleasure of other persons, e.g. his friends, it was because his own pleasure lay in consulting their interests and desires. Utilitarianism, on the contrary, insists that the moral end is "not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether." Each person should be just as eager that others should attain
