GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

330
* ETHICS
sort of pleasure and if so, which sort is the most valuable? "
"
The second is, Whose pleasure is it that is entitled to be
taken into account? " I propose to consider Mill's answers
to each of these questions separately.
That there are Different Qualities of Pleasure and that
we Ought to Cultivate the Higher* Bentham refuses,
to make any distinction between kinds or qualities of
pleasure. On his view only quantity of pleasure requires
to be taken into account. If one pleasure is greater than
another then, he held, it is the superior in point of worth.
This position is summed up in Bentham's famous aphorism,
"All other things being equal, push-pin is as good as
poetry." In other words, so long as men are really happy,
the source of their happiness is immaterial. This doctrine
is logical and consistent, for if our scale of value is marked
out only in units of pleasure, quantity of pleasure is the
only value that we can measure.
This view was severely criticized on the score of
immorality. Surely, it was said, some pleasures, those of
the good man, for example, or the man of good taste,
or the scholar, or the sage, are intrinsically more valuable
than those of the pig or of the debauchee? Mill agreed
that they were. He pointed out that the best men who
have access to every kind of pleasure do, as a matter of
fact, prefer certain pleasures to others. These preferred
pleasures taken in sum constitute what is in effect an ideal
which we recognize as being possessed of superior worth.
"Of two pleasures," he writes, "... if one of the two is,
by those who are competently acquainted with both,
placed s6 far above the other that they prefer it, even
though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of dis-
content," (my italics) "and would not resign it for any
quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is
capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred
enjoyment a superiority of quality, so far outweighing
quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account."