Sensual enjoyment is the
cheaper physician, and ailing mortals mostly resort to that door.
3. "I will omit much usual declamation on the dignity and capacity of
our nature: the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational
to the animal part of our constitution; upon the worthiness,
refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness,
grossness, and sensuality of others: because I hold that pleasures
differ in nothing but in continuance and intensity." (Paley, _Moral
Philosophy_, bk. i., c. vi.)
In opposition to the above it is here laid down that _delights do not
differ in continuance and intensity, that is, in quantity, alone, but
likewise in quality_, that is, some are nobler, better, and more
becoming a man than others, and therefore preferable on other grounds
than those of mere continuance and intensity. I wish to show that the
more pleasant pleasure is not always the better pleasure; that even
the pleasure which is more durable, and thereby more pleasant in the
long run, is not the better of the two simply as carrying the greater
_cumulus_ of pleasure. If this is shown, it will follow that pleasure
is not identical with good; or that pleasure is not happiness, not the
last end of man.
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