Hedonism, or of the seeking happiness in pleasure. Happiness, for the ordinary man, neither means a pleasure nor a number of pleasures. It means in general the finding of himself, or the satisfaction of himself as a whole, and in particular it means the realization of his concrete ideal of life. 'This is happiness,' he says, not identifying happiness with one pleasure or a number of them, but understanding by it, 'in this is become fact what I have at heart.' But the Hedonist has said, Happiness is pleasure, and the Hedonist knows that happiness is a whole.[1] How, then, if pleasures make no system, if they are a number of perishing particulars, can the whole that is sought be found in them? It is the old question, how find the universal in mere particulars? And the answer is the old answer, In their sum. The self is to be found, happiness is to be realized, in the sum of the moments of the feeling self. The practical direction is, get all pleasures, and you will have got happiness; and we saw above its well-known practical issue in weariness and dissatisfaction.
The theoretical reason is simple. The sum, or the All of pleasures is a self-contradiction, and therefore the search for it is futile. A series which has no beginning, or, if a beginning, yet no end, can not be summed; there is no All, and yet the All is postulated, and the series is to be summed. But it can not be summed till we are dead, and then, if we have realized it, we, I suppose, do not know it, and we are not happy; and before death we can not have realized it, because there is always more to come, the series is always incomplete. What is the sum of pleasures,
- ↑ I am quite aware that with some Hedonistic writers 'happiness' is not distinguished from 'pleasure.' They are said to be simply the same. This is an outrage on language, which avenges itself in the confusion described below, foot-note, p. 109. But the argument of the text is not affected by it. If happiness = pleasure, then 'get happiness' = 'get pleasure.' What is pleasure? It is a general name, and 'get happiness' will mean 'get a general name.' But a general name is not a reality, and can not be got. The reality is the particular. 'Get happiness' will mean then, 'get some one pleasure.' Is that it? No, we are to get all the happiness we can. And so, after all our quibbling, 'get happiness' does mean 'get the largest possible sum or collection of pleasures.' Mr Green, in his Introduction to Hume's Treatise (ii. 7), has made this so clear, that one might have hoped it could not have been misunderstood. On the whole subject of this Essay let me recommend the student to consult him.
