Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/341

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286
GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

who maintain that a man's own personal happiness is what he always aims at. I enlarge the question, and take it up as the most enlightened utilitarians state it; and I ask, Is the happiness of ourselves and others the proper end of our exertions, or is something different from this the proper end of our exertions? That, I again say, is the question, and it divides moral philosophers into two opposite camps.

20. As preliminary to the settlement of this question, I remark that man may be viewed in two different characters—first, as man simply; and secondly, as man susceptible of pleasure and pain, enjoyment and suffering, happiness and misery. Now, I conceive that one scheme of morality will be applicable to him when viewed under the first of these relations, and that another scheme of morality will be applicable to him when under the second of these relations. First, let me explain what I mean by man considered as a man simply. By man simply I mean man as a mere being or existence, and not as a happy or miserable being. We can abstract happiness and misery from man, and yet leave him in existence as a man. But there are some qualities which we cannot abstract in thought from man, and leave him in existence as a man; and these qualities are thought, reason, self-consciousness. Take away these qualities, and man ceases to be man, he becomes an animal; but take away enjoyment or take away suffering from a man, and he does not cease