What wonder that Romola came to have "her new scorn of that thing called pleasure which made men base—that dexterous contrivance for selfish ease, that shrinking from endurance and strain, when others were bowing beneath burdens too heavy for them, which now made one image with her husband." In her own distress she learns from Savonarola that there is a higher law than individual pleasure. "She felt that the sanctity attached to all close relations, and therefore preëminently to the closest, was but the expression in outward law, of that result toward which all human goodness and nobleness must spontaneously tend; that the light abandonment of ties, whether inherited or voluntary, because they had ceased to be pleasant, was the uprooting of social and personal virtue. What else had Tito's crime toward Baldassarre been but that abandonment working itself out to the most hideous extreme of falsity and ingratitude? To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not unarmed with Divine lightnings—lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false." The whole teaching of the book is summed up in the Epilogue. In the conversation between Romola and Tito's illegitimate son Lillo, Lillo says, "I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides—something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of pleasure."
"That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man can be great—he can hardly keep himself from wickedness—unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo—you know why I keep to-morrow sacred; he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure, and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.'"
The trouble with Epicureanism is its assumption that the self is a bundle of natural appetites and passions, and that the end of life is their gratification. Experience shows, as in the case of Tito, that such a policy consistently pursued, brings not pleasure but pain—pain first of all to others, and then pain to the individual through their contempt, indignation, and vengeance. The truest pleasure must come through the development within one of generous emotions, kind sympathies, and large social interests. The man must be made over before the pleasures of the new man can be rightly sought and successfully found. This making over of man is no consistent part of the logical Epicurean programme, and consequently pure Epicureanism is sure to land one in the narrowness, selfishness, and heartlessness of a Tito Melema, and to bring upon one essentially the same condemnation and disaster.
Still, not in criticism or unkindness would we take leave of the serene and genial Epicurus. We may frankly recognise his fundamental limitations, and yet gratefully accept the good counsel he has to give. Parasite as it is,—a thing that can only live by sucking its life out of ideals and principles higher and hardier than itself, it is yet a graceful and ornamental parasite, which will beautify and shield the hard outlines of our more strenuous principles. There are dreary wastes in all our lives, into which we can profitably turn those streams of simple pleasure he commends. There are points of undue strain and tension where Epicurean prudence would bid us forego the slight fancied gain to save the ruinous expense to health and happiness. Let us fill up these gaps with hearty indulgence of healthy appetite, with vigorous exercise of dormant powers, with the eager joys of new-learned recreations. Let us tone down the strain and tension of our anxious, worried, worn, and weary lives by the rigid elimination of the superfluous, the strict concentration on the perpetual present, the resolute banishment from it of all past or future springs of depression and discouragement. Before we are through we shall see far nobler ideals than this; but we must not despise the day of small things. Though the lowest and least of them all, the Epicurean is one of the historical ideals of life. It has its claims which none of us may with impunity ignore. To serve him faithfully in the lower spheres of life is a wholesome preparation for the intelligent and reasonable service of Stoic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Christian ideals which rule the higher realms. He who is false to the humble, homely demands of Epicurus can never be quite at his best in the grander service of Zeno and Plato, Aristotle and Jesus.
VI
THE CONFESSIONS OF AN EPICUREAN HERETIC
A heretic is a man who, while professing to hold the tenets of the sect to which he adheres, and sincerely believing that he is in substantial agreement with his more orthodox brethren, yet in his desire to be honest and reasonable, so modifies these tenets as to empty them of all that is distinctive of the sect in question, and thus unintentionally gives aid and comfort to its enemies. Every vigorous and vital school of thought soon or late develops this species of enfant terrible. Like the Christian church, the Epicurean school has been blessed with numerous progeny of this disturbing sort. The one among them all who most stoutly professes the fundamental principles of Epicureanism, and then proceeds to admit pretty much everything its opponents advance against it, is John Stuart Mill. His "Utilitarianism" is a fort manned with the most approved idealistic guns, yet with the Epicurean flag floating bravely over the whole. He "holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and all desirable things are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain." A more square and uncompromising statement of Epicureanism than this it would be impossible to make.
Having thus squarely identified himself with the Epicurean school, Mr. Mill proceeds to add to this doctrine in turn the doctrines of each one of the four schools which we are to consider later. First he introduces a distinction in the kind of pleasure, "assigning to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation." When asked what he means by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, although he tells us there is but one possible answer, he gives us two or three. First he appeals to the verdict of competent judges. "Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account."
This appeal to competent judges, or, in other words, to authority, involves no philosophical principle at all unless we may call the doctrine of papal infallibility, to which this appeal of Mill is essentially akin, a principle. If these judges are competent, there must be a reason for the preference they give. In the next paragraph Mill tells us what that principle is; but in doing so introduces the principle of the subordination of lower to higher faculties, which we shall see later is the distinguishing principle of Plato. On this point Mill is as clear as Plato himself. "Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence." This appeal to quality rather than quantity of pleasure puts Mill, in spite of himself, squarely on Platonic ground and abandons consistent Epicureanism. An illustration will make this clear. A man professes that money is his supreme end, the only thing he cares for in the world; he tells us that whatever he does is done for money, and whenever he refrains from doing anything it is to avoid losing money. So far he puts his conduct on a consistently mercenary basis. Suppose, however, that in the next sentence he tells us that he prizes certain kinds of money. If we ask him what is the basis of the distinction, he replies that he prizes money honestly earned and despises money dishonestly acquired. Should we not at once recognise, that in spite of his original declaration, he is not the consistently mercenary being he professed himself to be? The fact that he prefers honest to dishonest money shows that honesty, not money, is his real principle; and, in spite of his original profession, this distinction lifts him out of the class of mercenary money lovers into the class of men whose real principle is not money but honesty. Precisely so Mill's confession that he cares for the height and dignity of the faculties employed rather than the quantity of pleasure gained lifts him out of the Epicurean school to which he professes adherence and makes him an idealist.
When asked for an explanation of his preference of higher to lower, Mill at once shifts to Stoic ground in the following sentences: "We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it; but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or another, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their highest faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness—that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior—confounds the two very different ideas of happiness and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which we can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."
When pressed for a sanction of motive Mill appeals to the Aristotelian principle that the individual can only realise his conception of himself through union with his fellows in society: to the social nature of man and his inability to find himself in any smaller sphere, or through devotion to any lesser end. "This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilisation. The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and this association is riveted more and more, as mankind are farther removed from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. In this way people grow up unable to conceive as possible to them a state of total disregard of other people's interests. They are under a necessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from all the grosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection) living in a state of constant protest against them. They are also familiar with the fact of coöperating with others, and proposing to themselves a collective, not an individual, interest, as the aim (at least for the time being) of their actions. So long as they are coöperating, their ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only does all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an ever greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to. This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilisation goes on, is felt to be more and more natural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so by removing the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling those inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing to which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still practicable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. The deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition of education, or a law despotically imposed by the power of society, but as an attribute which it would not be well for them to be without."