III. The Relative Value of Pleasures.
The learned have established what they call “a hierarchy of the sciences,” a scheme which shows the relative value and scope of the various departments of knowledge, and how the one rises upon the other. So in the Science of Happiness there is a series of degrees, a gradus ad gaudium, which measures the relative value of human enjoyments and the dependence of the higher upon the lower.
The ignorance or the disregard of this fact has led to the ruin of more individual lives, and to more fatal misfortunes to the race, than any other error whatsoever. The poison of all false religions and philosophies lies either in condemning pleasure or in commending low forms of it; and the one is as hurtful as the other. The religion which to-day numbers more believers than any other, Buddhism, aims its loftiest aspirations to the extinction of all desire and the abolition of all enjoyment. These are the words of Buddha himself:—
“Let no man look for what is pleasant; for not to find it is pain.
“Let no man love anything; for the loss of the beloved is sorrow.
“After pleasure follows grief, and from affection comes fear.
“I have run through many births, and painful it is to be born again and again; but now, O Thou Builder of
this house, Thou hast been seen, and not again shalt Thou rebuild it. The mind has attained to the extinction of all desire.”
This is the ideal of happiness that four hundred millions of human beings hold before their minds to-day. If there is any truth in the modern philosophy which teaches that pleasure lies in functional activity, no more pernicious message could be commended to mankind than that which Buddha brought.