Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/635

Rh clearly that the problem of ethics is to secure the greatest pleasure. It is discovered that the higher, spiritual pleasures are the most enduring. Although they may lack something of the intensity of the other class they much more than counterbalance this loss by their superior permanence. They thus possess greater volume. It is clear that in securing them the gain is in the direction of more pleasure. This is really the only meaning that the word "gain" can have. The relative worthiness of pleasures is therefore ultimately based on the quantity of pleasure yielded. It is this and nothing else that is meant when virtue is enjoined and vice condemned.

In any attempt to draw up a scale of pleasures in their ascending order the localized sexual feeling would probably be put at the bottom as the most purely physical and least spiritual, but it should be observed that it is the most essential of all, having to do with the preservation not merely of the individual but of the race. Next in order would come the pleasure yielded by the organs of incretion and nutrition (tongue, palate, stomach, etc.). These are also second in importance and serve to preserve the life of the individual. The third place would be taken by the pleasures of hearing and sight upon which the fine arts rest. Although they probably yield to enlightened races more satisfaction than the ones already named, no one will claim that they possess any such importance from the broader standpoint of function and life. The pleasures of the emotions might be given the fourth place. They are both refined and enduring, and make up the greater part of all that the majority of mankind value in the world. Yet except in so far as they are so intimately linked with the sexual instinct as to be virtually a part of it, as maternal and conjugal affection, they seem to exist chiefly for their own sake, neither preserving, perpetuating, nor enhancing life. This class of pleasures passes gradually up, as the result of increasing sympathy, from those of mere friendship and mutual attachment, through love of the helpless, to the purest altruism, which may be set down as a fifth class of pleasures.

The pleasure of "doing good" is among the most delicious of