Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/189

sorts of happiness there are, and about what sorts ought to be sought most of all. He says, as we know, that there are “higher” and “lower” pleasures, and that higher pleasures ought to be sought in preference to the others, the pleasure of the intellect, of generosity, etc., instead of the sensual pleasures. What can be the proof? That happiness was the goal we were to learn, because all men actually seek it. But that the “higher” happiness is the goal, rather than a lower form, how do we learn that? Because men always choose it? In fact they do not. So Mill has to shift the ground a little. They do not all of them actually seek it, but they would seek it if they knew it. Most of them are ignorant of what they would prize most, namely, of these “higher” pleasures. But here again Mill meets a disheartening fact. Most men, if they ever love “higher” pleasures at all, are found loving them more for a while in the ideal enthusiasm of youth than later in the prosaic dullness of middle life. Men who have known the “higher” happiness do then deliberately turn away from it. This is a regular fact of life, well known, and often lamented. How does this agree with Mill’s doctrine? Alas! it does not agree, and only by worthless devices can he conceal from himself the fact. The people who enjoy the higher know the lower and reject it. The people who enjoy the lower do not know of the higher, or, if they ever knew it, they have forgotten it, or if they have not quite forgotten the higher, they have “lost capacity for it.” As if all this could not just as plausibly be said from the