And the pleasure afforded by the various faculties with which the human being is endowed is the immediate and direct result of their exercise. With the exception of the organic organs, and the reason for the exception in regard to them has been assigned, the action of the organs is directly pleasurable. From the exercise of the organs of sense, from the operation of the intellectual faculties, from appetite, passion, and affection, pleasure flows as directly as the object for which the instrument is expressly framed.
And pleasure is the ordinary result of the action of the organs; pain is sometimes the result, but it is the extraordinary not the ordinary result. Whatever may be the degree of pain occasionally produced, or however protracted its duration, yet it is never the natural, that is, the usual or permanent state, either of a single organ, or of an apparatus, or of the system. The usual, the permanent, the natural condition of each organ, and of the entire system, is pleasurable. Abstracting, therefore, from the aggregate amount of pleasure, the aggregate amount of pain, the balance in favour of pleasure is immense. This is true of the ordinary experience of ordinary men, even taking their physical and mental states such as they are at present; but the ordinary physical and mental states, considered as sources of pleasure of every human being, might be prodigiously improved; and some attempt will be made, in a subsequent part of this work, to show in what manner and to what extent.
It has been already stated that there are cases in which pleasure is manifestly given for its own sake; in which it is rested in as an ultimate object: but the converse is never found: in no case is the excitement of pain gratuitous. Among all the examples of secretion, there is no instance of a fluid, the object of which is to irritate and inflame: among all the actions of the economy, there is none, the object of which is the production of pain.
Moreover, all such action of the organs, as is productive of pleasure, is conducive to their complete development, and consequently to the increase of their capacity for producing pleasure; while all such action of the organs as is productive of pain is preventive of their complete development, and consequently diminishes their capacity for producing pain. The natural tendency of pleasure is to its own augmentation and perpetuity. Pain, on the contrary, is self-destructive.
Special provision is made in the economy, for preventing pain from passing beyond a certain limit, and from enduring beyond a certain time. Pain, when it reaches a certain intensity, deadens the sensibility of the sentient nerve; and when it lasts beyond a certain time, it excites new actions in the organ affected, by which the organ is either restored to a sound state, or so changed in structure that its function is wholly abolished. But change of structure and abolition of function, if extensive and permanent, are incompatible with the continuance of life. If, then, the actions of the economy, excited by pain, fail to put an end to suffering by restoring the diseased organ to a healthy state, they succeed in putting an end to it by terminating life. Pain, therefore, cannot be so severe and lasting as materially to preponderate over pleasure, without soon proving destructive to life.
But the very reverse is the case with pleasure. All such action of the organs as is productive of pleasure is conducive to the perpetuation of life. There is a close connexion between happiness and longevity. Enjoyment is not only the end of life, but it is the only condition of life which is compatible with a protracted term of existence. The happier a human being is, the longer he lives; the more he suffers, the sooner he dies; to add to enjoyment, is to lengthen life; to inflict pain, is to shorten the duration of existence. As there is a point of wretchedness beyond which life is not desirable, so there is a point beyond which it is not maintainable. The man who has reached an advanced age cannot have been, upon the whole, an unhappy being; for the infirmity and suffering which embitter life cut it short. Every document by which the rate of mortality among large numbers of human beings can be correctly ascertained contains in it irresistible evidence of this truth. In every country, the average duration of life, whether for the whole people or for particular classes, is invariably in the direct ratio of their means of felicity; while, on the other hand, the number of years which large portions of the population survive beyond the adult age may be taken as a certain test of the happiness of the community. How clear must have been the perception of this in the mind of the Jewish legislator when he made the promise, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God hath given thee—the sanction of every religious observance, and the motive to every moral duty!
Deeply then are laid the fountains of happiness in the constitution of human nature. They spring from the depths of man's physical organization; and from the wider range of his mental constitution they flow in streams magnificent and glorious. It is conceivable that from the first to the last moment of his existence, every human being might drink of them to the full extent of his capacity. Why does he not? The answer will be found in that to the following question. What must happen before this be possible? The attainment of clear and just conceptions on subjects, in relation to which the knowledge hitherto acquired by the most enlightened men is imperfect. Physical nature, every department of it, at least, which is capable of influencing human existence and human sensation; human nature, both the physical and the mental part of it; institutions so adapted to that nature as to be capable of securing to every individual, and to the whole community, the maximum of happiness with the minimum of suffering—this must be known. But knowledge of this kind is of slow growth. To expect the possession of it on the part of any man in such a stage of civilization as the present, is to suppose a phenomenon to which there is nothing analogous in the history of the human mind. The human mind is equally incapable of making a violent discovery in any department of knowledge, and of taking a violent bound in any path of improvement. What we call discoveries and improvements are clear, decided, but for the most part gentle, steps in advancement of the actual and immediately-preceding state of knowledge. The human mind unravels the great chain of knowledge, link by link; when it is no longer able to trace the connecting link, it is at a stand; the discoverer, in common with his contemporaries, seeing the last ascertained link, and from that led on by analogies which are not perceived by, or which do not impress, others, at length descries the next in succession; this brings into view new analogies, and so prepares the way for the discernment of another link; this again elicits other analogies which lead to the detection of other links, and so the chain is lengthened. And no link, once made out, is lost.
Chemists tell us that the adjustment of the component elements of water is such, that although they readily admit of separation and are subservient to their most important uses in the economy of nature by this very facility of decomposition, yet that their tendency to recombination is equal, so that the quantity of water actually existing at this present moment in the globe is just the same as on the first day of the creation, neither the operations of nature, nor the purposes to which it has been applied by man, having used up, in the sense of destroying, a single particle of it. Alike indestructible are the separate truths that make up the great mass of human knowledge. In their ready divisibility and their manifold applications, some of them may sometimes seem to be lost; but if they disappear, it is only to enter into new combinations, many of which themselves become new truths, and so ultimately extend the boundaries of knowledge. Whatever may have been the case in time past, when the loss of an important truth, satisfactorily and practically established, may be supposed possible, such an event is inconceivable now when the art of printing at once multiplies a thousand records of it, and, with astonishing rapidity, makes it part and parcel of hundreds of thousands of minds. A thought more full of encouragement to those who labour for the improvement of their fellow beings there cannot be. No onward step is lost; no onward step is final; every such step facilitates and secures another. The savage state, that state in which gross selfishness seeks its object simply and directly by violence, is past. The semi-savage or barbarous state, in which the grossness of the selfishness is somewhat abated, and the violence by which it seeks its object in some degree mitigated, by the higher faculties and the gentler affections of our nature, but in which war still predominates, is also past. To this has succeeded the state in which we are at present, the so-called civilized state—a state in which the selfish principle still predominates, in which the justifiableness of seeking the accomplishment of selfish purposes by means of violence, that of war among the rest, is still recognized, but in which violence is not the ordinary instrument employed by selfishness, its ends being commonly accomplished by the more silent, steady, and permanent operation of institutions. This state, like the preceding, will pass away. How soon, in what precise mode, by what immediate agency, none can tell. But we are already in possession of the principle which will destroy the present and introduce a better social condition, namely, the principle at the basis of the social union, THE MAXIMUM OF THE AGGREGATE OF HAPPINESS; THE MAXIMUM OF THE AGGREGATE OF HAPPINESS SOUGHT BY THE PROMOTION OF THE MAXIMUM OF INDIVIDUAL HAPPINESS!