THE GAY SCIENCE. CHAPTER X. ON PLEASURE. X. of the pre vious argu HE conclusion to which we have been CHAPTER driven in the foregoing chapters is that criticism, if it is to be a science, Summary must be the science of pleasure; and in the last chapter of all we came to some understanding of ment. the sense in which pleasure is to be regarded as the aim of art and as the theme of criticism. That view will be confirmed as we pursue our inquiries into the nature of pleasure. In entering upon this inquest, however, I must remind the reader of what he has already been forewarned, that I profess no more than to spy out the land flowing with milk and honey, and to show of the grapes and the pomegranates and the figs of Eschol. It is one thing to view the X. CHAPTER land, another to possess it; one thing to point out where alone science is to be found, another to exhibit the science in all its fair proportions. The latter of these tasks I do not attempt, and the aim of the present volumes is accomplished if, in the pages that go before, I have succeeded in demonstrating clearly what ought to be the object and the method of critical science, and if, in those which follow, I can indicate broadly the bearings of pleasure. What we are to un pleasure. Now, there are many shades and pitches of derstand by feeling-as pleasure itself, joy, gladness, glee, gaiety, mirth, bliss, delight, luxury, amusement, hilarity, jollity, ecstacy-to which we give the common designation of pleasure. The word pleasure, although sometimes used in a special sense, is for the most part generic; just as pain is the generic name for the opposite class of sensations. What can we conceive more diverse than the pleasures which are at God's right hand for evermore and the pleasures of the reveller glorious in his cups? Yet both are called pleasures. The joy of the Lord and what Isaiah calls the joy of wild asses fall under one and the same appellation. The Cyrenaic philosophers of old, with Aristippus at their head, went so far as to say that pleasure is always one and indivisible; that there is no difference between one pleasure and another in kind or in degree. It is not likely that the X. common sense of mankind will ever give in to CHAPTER such a theory. But we have no difficulty as to giving one name to a feeling which comes to us in many forms. Pleasure is the most general name for the sense of enjoyment, and happiness is the sum of life's pleasures in combination with its pains. pleasure It is right to begin any analysis of pleasure The name of with this bit of dictionary, because the term is ambiguous. sometimes employed not as generic but as of special application to the lower enjoyments of our nature. Thus, a life of pleasure is commonly understood as a life of sensual gratification; and since some good people have such an alarm of pleasure that they are ever prone to put upon it the worst meaning, and the mere mention of it calls up to their view the spectre of human lust, and all the reproaches that—whether deservedly or not-have been heaped on the followers of Aristippus and Epicurus, it behoves one to explain in the outset the much broader sense of which the term is susceptible, and in which alone it is used throughout these pages. Pleasure And somecannot be described as either good or bad until moral we know what it is that gives pleasure; just as odious. love is neither fair nor foul apart from the object of love. If we love what is vile, our love is vile: if we love what is noble, our love is noble. And in the same way we cannot speak of pleasure in the abstract as worthy or unworthy. times in a sense X. CHAPTER Whether we are to praise or to blame it, will depend upon the source from which it is derived. I have already had to point out, and may here repeat, that it is no more immoral for art to aim at pleasure than for science to aim at knowledge. The question of right or wrong depends on the purity of the pleasure, as it does on the modesty of the knowledge. Science may puff up and art may debauch the mind; but this is not because the one gives knowledge and the other pleasure-it is when the knowledge is vain and the pleasure is mean. Be it therefore understood that in the following discussion I speak of pleasure in the widest sense, as including every form of enjoyment, not one in particular. How far is Another caution may not be uncalled-for, it posible namely, as to the amount of definition which, in and neces sary to define plea sure, an inquiry like the present, we have a right to X. What then, it may be asked, is the object of an CHAPTER inquiry into the nature of pleasure? I have given the reply in the end of the last chapter. The best reply is a host of other questions. What is life? what is electricity? what is heat? what is motion? and what is meant by a science of things which are not to be defined? An electric spark is an electric spark: we cannot define it, any more than we can define the thrill of pleasure. It is in our power only to define We can only what are the laws and conditions under which laws and the spark is produced, what are its antecedents, under and what are its consequences. So of heat, so of life itself, and so of pleasure. We know them not in themselves but in their relations. It is the utmost of our science to trace their evolutions. define the conditions which it is produced. has been wards a pleasure. And now, when we look for a science of How little pleasure, we cannot fail to remark how little done totowards it has yet been said or done. Not that science of we think little or talk little about pleasure. We think and talk about it a great deal. The greater part of mankind live entirely for their pleasure, care for nothing else, think of little else; every word they utter, everything they do, goes straight for pleasure and involves an opinion of it. But we may think and speak Though the much about a thing and yet not think and subject is speak about it in the way of science. Millions ever out of people in England every day talk about the thoughts, scarcely of our |