"Glücklich allein ist die Seele die liebt!"
The phenomenon is this. There is a movement of the heart and mind, a life of feeling, which are joined with a satisfaction so deep and great that the powerful oscillation between pleasure and pain does not destroy the total feeling of happiness, but strengthens it. Two psychological factors co-operate here. The one is, that the pain (the dis-pleasure or grief), unless it transcends a certain degree, forms the background of the pleasurable feeling and is thereby able to intensify the latter. In this very fact a sufficient motive lies to choose conditions of this sort in preference to such as do not stand so high in intensity but are nevertheless conditions of more unmixed pleasure. The other factor is, that there can be an element of attraction even in grief, simply because intense life, powerful movement, and the straining of faculties that come with it, produce of themselves satisfaction. All exertion of power which is not out of proportion is connected with a feeling of pleasure. The feeling of pleasure that accompanies grief and anxiety asserts itself in the fact that we do not wish to be transported out of it. An important element here is also the organic process connected with every powerful state of mind (the effect of the condition of the brain on the circulation of the blood, on breathing, and on the organs of digestion), granting that it is not the whole cause.
When Auguste Comte lost the woman who exerted so decisive an influence on the direction of his mind in the last period of his life, he said once in an outburst of sorrow evoked by her memory: "I owe it to thee alone that I shall not leave this life without having known in a worthy manner the best emotion of human nature…. Amid the severest pains that this emotion can bring with it I have never ceased to feel that the true condition of happiness is, to have filled the heart—though it be with pain, aye with bitterest pain."
Auguste Comte and Clara are accordingly quite in agreement, and the ethics of welfare is in agreement with them both. If we desire to be wholly secure against pain and anxiety, then we dare not love anything. But what if love were the greatest happiness, even though it brought as much sorrow again with it! With powerful action and great fulness of life come also great costs, great contrasts, and great vibrations. Yet who has said that the highest was to be had for little expenditure?
The feeling of pleasure is the only psychological criterion of health and power of life. That which in all its immediate or remote effects in all the creatures that it touches produces only pleasurable feeling, cannot possibly be condemned. Welfare, therefore, in the sense of permanent pleasurable feeling, is the final test-principle of action. Pain is everywhere the sign of an incipient dissolution of life.[124] This is exhibited in the simplest manner in the "physical" pain that arises through the tearing of organic tissue. But it also holds true of the "mental" pain that arises from anxiety, doubt, or repentance. It points to a disharmony between the different forces and impulses of the mind, a disharmony that can lead to the dissolution of consciousness. If pain is a necessary intermediary step, the fact is partly founded in the two psychological laws above mentioned, partly also in the circumstance that it means the dissolution of something in us that impedes a more free and more varied development of life. Childbirth is accompanied with pain because the new life can only come into the world at the cost of the old. Analogously the knowledge of truth is often gained with pain because prejudices and illusions must first be shattered. In the pain of repentance a lower self is dissolved in order that a new and higher self may develop.
[124] Compare my Psychology (Danish edition, pp. 315-318; German edition, pp. 343-347).
4) A circumstance that has especially fostered the opposition to the principle of welfare is undoubtedly the tendency to think exclusively, in connection with the expression 'pleasurable feeling,' of the most elementary sensual forms of pleasure. The latter are not excluded by the principle of welfare; the principle, however, takes all the aspects of human character into consideration, maintaining that permanent pleasurable feeling is not to be established with certainty if an essential aspect of this character is neglected. The defect of elementary feelings of pleasure is that for the great part they correspond to only momentary and limited relations.
A being whose feeling is of a purely elementary kind can maintain itself as long as the simple conditions of life to which it is adapted do not change. Thus some of the lowest animal forms like the infusoria and rhizopods appear to have existed throughout infinitely long periods of time in exactly their present condition. Here the adaptation to the given conditions is as good as perfect. The same may be the case with beings that at an earlier stage of their development have possessed more developed organs and forms. Animals that live free in their youth, afterwards however as parasites, lead a purely elementary life and lose all the nerves and muscles that do not directly subserve this form of existence. This is also true of man. Of the Fuegians, whose wretched existence (wretched in our eyes) he portrays in vivid colors in his "Journey Around the World," Darwin says: "There is no reason for believing that the Fuegians are diminishing in number; we must therefore assume that they enjoy a sufficient measure of happiness (of whatever character this may be) to give life value in their eyes. Nature, which makes habit an irresistible power and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the products of his wretched country." Primitive peoples of a higher type even (and not only primitive peoples) afford examples of an adaptation to conditions which excludes all motives to change and progress. It is dire necessity that has brought man into the path of progress. Where such a compulsion does not operate human emotional life is conditioned by a narrow sphere of relations only and is therefore itself narrow and restricted. Perhaps more complete, more unmixed satisfaction can be obtained here than would be possible under more manifold and more complicated circumstances. A small vessel may be fuller than a large one although it holds less.[125]
[125] Fieri potest, ut vas aliquod minus majore plenius sit, quamvis liquoris minus contineat. Cartesius, Epistola iv, Ad principem Palatinam de sita beata.
It might perhaps be objected to the principle of welfare, that we should really be obliged, in consistency with it, to make ourselves all little vessels, and that agreeably to the principle an existence limited to the primitive necessities of life and to purely elementary feelings, would stand just as high as a life taken up with intellectual labor and the activity of culture, or even higher, since an existence of the latter kind could scarcely be accompanied with so unmixed and secure a well-being, but would be united with trials and efforts constantly renewed and with unrest ever recurring. If—as it might be suggested—an existence like that of the Fuegians appears poor and wretched to us, since they often suffer from scarcity and want, let us take another example. Alexander von Humboldt came across a tribe in South America that lived from banana trees,—trees so fruitful that an acre of land planted with them would supply food for fifty human beings. The trees require no real expenditure of labor; only the earth about their roots must be broken with implements once or twice a year. The consequence is that the tribe is stupid and uncivilised. But the wants that it has are satisfied.