F. H. Bradley

“ And now in a spirit of conciliation I would ask the Utilitarian, whose heart is in the right place, who does not care about pleasure, but who wants something definite, to consider this,—whether to take life as the end, the highest and ever a higher life, be more vague than Hedonism; whether it does not give him all he wants; and whether, beside being more in harmony with morality, it is not equally antagonistic to Asceticism. ”

“ Of course one sees quite clearly that, generally speaking, it is a good thing to aim at the increasing of pleasure and diminishing of pain; but it is a good thing because it increases the actuality and possibility of life. To make function the end justifies and demands the increase of pleasure and gives you all you can fairly ask in that way. But to say more pleasure is all the end, and life a mere accompaniment to that, is another matter. ”

“ If our end is to realize the life or the self which is realized in all life, and to develope this in more distinctively human forms, and if we consider that this life to be realized must be realized in living individuals, we shall be far enough from asceticism. There is here no abstract negation of human nature, no sacrifice of detail and fulness to a barren formula. The universal is realized only in the free self-developement of the individual, and the individual can only truly develope his individuality by specifying in himself the common life of all. ”

“ Since pleasure and life are inseparable, can we say that to aim at the realization of life is to aim at pleasure? No, in the sense of making it an object, it is not to aim at pleasure; and this distinction is a vital difference, which we must never slur. Function carries pleasure with it as its psychical accompaniment, but what determines, makes and is good or bad, is in the end function. Function, moreover, is something comparatively definite. It gives something you can aim at, something you can do. ”

“ The questions to be answered would be, how far in what seem the most, or mere, ‘passive pleasures’ of sense function is concerned; how far in contemplative pleasures activity of contemplation comes in; how far, lastly, the very feeling of self, which is pleasure, in being felt implies an activity. To a tired man, for instance, the pleasure of lying down in bed is great; he wants no more; it is complete affirmation of his will, perfect satisfiedness. But as he grows more and more sleepy, does his pleasure increase? When he is asleep does he feel pleasure? ”

“ The pleasure is bad when the activity is bad; and the activity is bad when, in its immediate or ulterior results, it lowers the life of the individual, or of a larger totality, and so diminishes realization of good, or prevents a higher and fuller realization. Here pleasure is bad because it strengthens and intensifies a bad activity. The pleasure per se is not bad, but then there is no such thing except in our heads. ”

“ But, leaving this subject, we must observe that we have no right to assume that higher function and more pleasure do on the whole go together. We have bitter proof that in particular cases and stages of progress this is not the case, and so are forced to separate the two in our minds. We can imagine function without pleasure, since we have experienced decrease of pleasure proportionate to heightening of quality of function. But, when the two come thus before the mind separately, we feel we must choose function and not pleasure. ”

“ Speaking generally, you can not have mere pain, the negative without the positive; painlessness means death; pain appears to involve reaction; and again, wherever there is an active conscious self, it seems there must be pain. To say that pain is an absolute evil, we should have to answer in the affirmative the question, Can you have the positive without the negative, or the negative in this form? And I do not see how we can give this answer. We know that pain is often a stimulus; without some pain little is produced—perhaps nothing. ”

“ The practical man hears of ‘the useful,’ and thinks he has got something solid, while he really is embracing (as I have shown) the cloud of a wild theoretical fiction, from which he would shrink if he saw it apart from its false lights and colours. And on whichever side the balance of advantage lies, no respectable writer can wish to rest on a basis of misunderstanding. ”

“ When the activity is good the pleasure is good, because the two are a psychical whole. You can not have the function without the pleasure: the absence of the pleasure would weaken and perhaps destroy the function, and also generally lower the self to the detriment of other functions; whereas presence of pleasure tends to the heightening of functions in general, beside its own function.—Then what activities are good? ”

“ Taking for granted the asserted fact, that society tends to identify what brings pleasure with what is good, we altogether deny the Hedonistic inference. If society tends to realize life more highly and perfectly, it is obvious that it must also realize the conditions of such life. ”

“ The fact that life can not exist without pleasure does not prove pleasure to be the end of life, unless we are prepared to say (the illustration is not a good one) that because as a man rises in society he wears better clothes, therefore to be dressed like a gentleman was the conscious or unconscious end of his advancement. ”

“ Can pleasure exist without function? We could not enter here on a psychological investigation of the point, even were we able to treat the matter satisfactorily. But taking pleasure to be the feeling of the realizedness of the will or self, we should doubt if apart from some present function or activity pleasure could exist. ”

“ Furthermore, these members are spiritualized animals; everything human stands on the basis of animal life; and to make self-realization the end not only justifies but demands attention to the well-being and happiness of man as a spiritualized animal, because the feeling of inner harmony is required for, is the psychical condition of, maintenance and progress of function. So far as this we go and must go, but no further; we ought not to sacrifice what seems to be maintenance or progress of function to prospect of increased pleasure. ”

“ It seems to us to be an unreal abstraction. Real pain is the feeling of the negatedness of the self, and therefore, as such, it is bad. It is bad also, because it further acts in the direction of the general lowering of life. Both as felt diminution of the good, and as the cause of further diminution, it is an evil. ”

“ But I do not think that the Utilitarian wishes to teach that doctrine; and whatever he wants to teach he can teach without making pleasure the end. To repeat it once more, if self-realization is the end, then pleasure is a relative end and good, because a condition without which good is impossible ”

“ They are bad when they prevent or retard the realization of the good life in us by preventing action. This they do when they produce special results which hinder the good, or when they generally contribute towards a habit of self-indulgence, which is bad because it retards or opposes the activity of the good. ”

“ It is good because it accompanies and makes a whole with good activity, because it goes with that selfrealization which is good; or secondly, because it heightens the general assertion of self, which is the condition of realizing the good in self. ”