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.
(2) Next as to pleasures of passivity. Let us for shortness’ sake exclude artistic pleasures, and take pleasures of sensuous satisfaction. Are passive sensuous pleasures good or bad? In themselves, I think, they are neither good nor bad. Or we may say roughly, they are good when they are not bad.
(a) When are they bad? This is not hard to answer. 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. In short, they are bad when they lower life or prevent its progress. They are not bad per se, but then here again they do not exist per se.
(b) When are they good? They are good when (without the evil results just mentioned) they increase what is ordinarily called happiness, a feeling of general content with one’s existence. That is good, because existence is good, and because without happiness existence is impaired, and with it the good; and because happiness (generally speaking) increases activity. Discontent and unhappiness are great evils, for (even if they do not lead to immorality) they lower life and activity for good. ‘Life is the end of life,’ and so what makes life more liveable is good; and life further must be realized in living men, the basis of whose nature is and must remain animal. To neglect the basis is to make as great a mistake as to regard it as the crown and summit. Life is a whole; and hence pleasures inseparable from life, and pleasures that maintain and heighten a feeling of well-being and joy in living (which again heightens life) are good, because life is good—supposing, that is, that they are not bad, in the sense described above.
We come now to the two questions—Are any pleasures neither good nor bad? Are any pleasures good per se?
(1) Are any pleasures neither good nor bad? The ordinary man would say Yes. A certain amount of pleasure is undeniably good; and (as a rule), if you want more, the more is good (where it is not bad), and this because the satisfaction of the want is good for you, or the non-satisfaction bad. Then again undeniably there is (speaking generally) a too much of any particular pleasure, and
