Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/163

No. 2.] if it were true it would not serve our purpose. For to say that it is better, is to imply just the qualitative difference which we are trying to avoid; it is not that there is more good produced, but that the man who chooses the greater quantity is qualitatively a better sort of man than the other.

The question comes down, therefore, to the meaning to be assigned to qualitative differences. Now the claim that quality is an intellectual content sui generis, affects me in much the same way as the similar claim made for good itself; I cannot seem to get concretely any real sense of its meaning. The clearest thing I seem able to say about qualitative superiority is that, even though I do not prefer it, I ought to; and consequently it might be maintained, with Mr. Rashdall, that better means simply 'what we ought to prefer.' But while I might admit that 'ought' represents an irreducible feeling, I cannot see that it represents an irreducible intellectual content. To say that the better is that in which I perceive intellectually the quality of 'oughtness' or 'rightness,' appears to me, I must confess, a purely verbal statement; it conveys to me no sense at all of what the quality may be.

Where shall we look, then, for a more positive account of what is involved in the perception of the better, or of qualitative superiority? In spite of the obloquy that has fallen on the head of Mill, it nevertheless seems to me that he is on the road to a true answer when he makes quality dependent somehow on the mere fact of the preference of experts. Consider for a moment the sentence: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." One can easily imagine that the life of a well-cared-for, healthy pig,—granted that his nervous system is sufficiently delicate to make his pleasures genuinely pleasant to him,—is a distinctly enviable one from the standpoint of an undiscriminating pleasure philosophy. It perhaps comes as near being one continuous round of enjoyment, unhampered by mental or spiritual cares, as it is easy to conceive. And yet I imagine it very doubtful whether the unhappiest of human beings ever genuinely desired to be the most fortunate and contented of pigs. He may unhesitatingly choose to die to escape his troubles;