Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/165

No. 2.] to analyze it may seem to them that any happiness will do; but when they come to specify, as they have to do when the time for practical decision arrives, they discover that what they want is their own kind of happiness, not that of some other being; the happiness they really crave is the particular brand which meets their organic needs, and not abstract pleasure in general.

The conclusion of the previous discussion was this: that the only reason discoverable to start from as a basis for the recognition of qualitative differences, in the sense that certain things which meet the abstract definition of good in that they are pleasurable, or objects of desire, are nevertheless considered as lower in quality, or even positively bad, is the facts of the human constitution, which determines what kinds of pleasure are really preferred. We may indeed say that pleasure as such is always and necessarily good, meaning that if we could abstract the feeling from all the circumstances of its appearance, we should find it calling forth the recognition of goodness. But practically we do not, and perhaps cannot, think of it thus abstractly. I do not think of pure feeling tone in the pig, which could never stand alone; I think of guzzling and wallowing; and in view of what I have discovered about the capacities of human enjoyment, this fills me with something of disgust, and I say that although I approve of pleasure, I do not approve of that kind of pleasure, which wouldn't really be pleasure for me as a human being. Assuming, then, that the source of the recognition of 'higher' is something in the makeup of human nature which affects our feelings of approval and disapproval, it remains to ask whether we can say anything further as to what this is.

Suppose we start with a case in particular. It would, I imagine, be pretty generally held that man's intellectual nature is higher than his sensual nature, and that if he doesn't prefer intelligent to merely sensual pleasures, at least he ought to, and it is the worse for him. How are we to justify such a judgment?

One answer might be that intelligence is a power peculiar to man, whereas the senses are what he shares with the brutes.