Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/192

 In examining this view, we must first make clear the meaning of pleasure. In ordinary speech we talk of pleasures as if they were definite things. We say that a certain man is "a lover of pleasures rather than a lover of God," and we speak of the pleasures of the chase or the pleasures of love or the pleasures of reading. In all these cases we ordinarily mean by pleasures the things in which we find satisfaction. Now, strictly, "pleasure" does not mean the object which gives us satisfaction, but the actual feeling of satisfaction which we have when we attain the object of our desire. Pleasure means agreeable feeling: it is, as we have seen, the affective tone of our experience. Pleasures are nothing but the feelings which accompany the attainment (and in some cases the pursuit) of the object of our desire. What we desire is always a particular object or group of objects, or a particular activity or system of activities. The acquisition of these objects and the performance of these activities is accompanied by the agreeable feeling-tone which we call pleasure.

From this analysis it should be clear that (a) while we usually desire objects, the attainment or pursuit of which will be attended by pleasant feeling, (b) we may, and often do, desire objects which we recognise will be accompanied by unpleasant feeling, and (c) we very rarely make mere pleasant feeling the object of our desire. A word or two must be said on each of these points. It will be convenient to take them in reverse order.

(1) In most of our desires two or more objects are involved. One of these is proximate, the other is remote; one is narrow and limited, the other is wide