Is Life Worth Living? by William Hurrell Mallock
page 64 of 281 (22%)
page 64 of 281 (22%)
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has greater capacities than we have hitherto given it credit for.
Perhaps this happiness may be really close at hand for each of us, and we have only overlooked it hitherto because it was too directly before our eyes. At all events, wherever it is let it be pointed out to us. It is useless, as we have seen, if not generally presentable. To those who most need it, it is useless until presented. Indeed, until it is presented we are but acting on the maxim of its advocates by refusing to believe in its existence. '_No simplicity of mind_,' says Professor Clifford, '_no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe_.' The question, then, that we want answered has by this time, I think, been stated with sufficient clearness, and its importance and its legitimacy been placed beyond a doubt. I shall now go on to explain in detail how completely unsatisfactory are the answers that are at present given it; how it is evaded by some and begged by others; and how those that are most plausible are really made worthless, by a subtle but profound defect. These answers divide themselves into two classes, which, though invariably confused by those that give them, are in reality quite distinct and separable. Professor Huxley, one of the most vigorous of our positive thinkers, shall help us to understand these. He is going to tell us, let us remember, about the '_highest good_'--the happiness, in other words, that we have just been discussing--the secret of our life's worth, and the test of all our conduct. This happiness he divides into two kinds.[8] He says that there are two things that we may mean when we speak about it. We may mean the happiness of a society of men, or we may mean the happiness of the members of that society. And when we speak of morality, we may mean two things also; and these two things must be kept |
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