Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/195

 desirable that the affective tone of our experience should be as pleasant as possible. But the point to note is that pleasure is morally valuable precisely in proportion as it is not definitely and directly sought for itself. There is no more futile life than that of the "pleasure-seeker." It is a commonplace, confirmed by the experience of ages, that the life of the pleasure-seeker is often the most unhappy of lives. The very term "pleasure-seeker" is suggestive: it suggests that he never attains. And it is the experience of the pleasure-seeker that when he thinks he has attained the pleasures that he covets, they become Dead-Sea fruit. It is natural and necessary that the pleasure-seeker's life should be futile and feckless. His only aim is to secure a changing variety of pleasurable feeling. Now, nothing is so transient as a feeling. One moment it is felt, the next it is gone for ever. The life of pleasure is a life of isolated pleasurable moments. It is a string of beads without the string. Such a life has nothing to give it unity and coherence. Its only aim is aimlessness; its only purpose confesses a lack of purpose.

Hence the maxim that the only way to get pleasure is to forget it. Pleasant feeling naturally accompanies the healthy exercise of our faculties and the pursuit and attainment of the objects of our desire. The less we think about our pleasures, the more pleasant will our lives become. As Sidgwick has said, "Of our active enjoyments generally &hellip; it may certainly be said that we cannot attain them, at least in their highest degree, so long as we concentrate our aim on them. &hellip; Similarly, the pleasures of thought and study can only be enjoyed