Is Life Worth Living? by William Hurrell Mallock (best ereader for textbooks TXT) π
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of sense is but a small part of the pleasure he actually experiences.That pleasure, as a whole, is a highly complex thing, and rests mainlyon a basis that, by a little knowledge, could be annihilated in amoment. Tell the boy what the champagne really is, he has been praising;and the state of his mind and face will undergo a curioustransformation. Our sense of the worth of life is similar in itscomplexity to the boy's sense of the worth of his wine. Beliefs andassociations play exactly the same part in it. The beliefs in this lastcase may of course be truer. The question that I have to ask is, arethey? In some individual cases certainly, they have not been. MissHarriet Martineau, for instance, judging life from her own experience ofit, was quite persuaded that it was a most solemn and satisfactorything, and she has told the world as much, in no hesitating manner. Buta part at least of the solemn satisfaction she felt in it was due to agrotesque over-estimate of her own social and intellectual importance.Here, then, was a worth in life, real enough to the person who found it,but which a little knowledge of the world would have at once taken awayfrom her. Does the general reverence with which life is at presentregarded rest in any degree upon any similar misconception? And if so,to what extent does it? Will it fall to pieces before the breath of alarger knowledge? or has it that firm foundation in fact that willenable it to survive in spite of all enlightenment, and perhaps even toincrease in consequence of it?
Such is the outline of the question I propose to deal with.
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not interfere with others
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Or, that it is only a high kind of happiness that can be shared by all
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Both of which suppositions are false
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The conditions of social health are a moral end only when we each feel a personal delight in maintaining them
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In this case they will supply us with a small portion of the moral aid needed
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But this case is not a possible one
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There is indeed the natural impulse of sympathy that might tend to make it so
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But this is counterbalanced by the corresponding impulse of selfishness
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And this impulse of sympathy itself is of very limited power
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Except under very rare conditions
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The conditions of general happiness are far too vague to do more than very slightly excite it
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Or give it power enough to neutralise any personal temptation
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At all events they would excite no enthusiasm
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For this purpose there must be some prize before us, of recognised positive value, more or less definite
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And before all things, to be enjoyed by us individually
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Unless this prize be of great value to begin with, its value will not become great because great numbers obtain it
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Nor until we know what it is, do we gain anything by the hope that men may more completely make it their own in the future
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The modern positive school requires a great general enthusiasm for the general good
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They therefore presuppose an extreme value for the individual good
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Our first enquiry must be therefore what the higher individual good is
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CHAPTER IV.
GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD.
CHAPTER V.
LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS.
CHAPTER VI.
LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT.
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