begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in
years sink into indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe that
those who undergo this very common change, voluntarily choose the lower
description of pleasures in preference to the higher. I believe that
before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have already
become incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in
most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile
influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young
persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position
in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them,
are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose
their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because
they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict
themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer
them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have
access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.
It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally
susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly
preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an
ineffectual attempt to combine both.

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be
no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two
pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to
the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences,
the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if
they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final.
And there needs be the less hesitation to accept this judgment
respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to
be referred to even on the question of quantity. What means are there of