Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/236

222 BEENAED BOSANQUET : The " arduous" pleasures, or better, satisfactions, have a complex character which embodies the whole ethical and aesthetic difficulty of which we have been speaking. No one doubts that the satisfaction which they give is fuller and more harmonious than that of the bodily pleasures or those which relatively approach the nature of the latter. 1 But every one, except perhaps remarkably gifted natures, ex- periences a certain resistance in the enjoyment of them. They involve an exertion comparable to that of serious intellectual work, a resolution of discrepancies, and a main- tenance of unusual and exhausting moods of feeling. Nearly every one, I take it, has some little shrinking from reading or seeing on the stage the " Oedipus Tyrannus" or King Lear". The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The contradic- tions in a great tragedy are no doubt resolved, but their presence and the tension which they imply are just what gives the depth to aesthetic satisfaction. And so in ethics. To conduct a great enterprise bringing into unity jarring passions and interests is perhaps the fullest satisfaction in the world ; but the man who is doin'g it would often possess greater pleasure if he were cultivating his garden. The distinction we are speaking of is the same that James refers to when he points out that we do not speak of a victory over our ideals, but we do speak of a victory over our self-indulgence. And it is the foundation I suppose of Spinoza's contrast between the strength of passion and the weakness of " active " emotions, 2 or between titillatio, local or partial pleasure, and hilaritas, 3 the pleasure attending upon a fully organised intelligence. It is the old primd facie dis- tinction between yielding to temptation and doing right. The rejection of egoism does not destroy the difficulty in principle. We can yield to temptation for others as much as for ourselves. Now it is a very heroic measure, as it seems to me, to assert in the teeth of this fundamental difficulty that quantity of pleasure is the clue to greatest satisfaction. Of course we are not to argue that the object which de facto we prefer must be preferred qua the greater pleasure ; if we said that, we should be back in psychological Hedonism. Yet no doubt we must maintain, what all experience and science agree to, the greater happiness or satisfaction of the more harmonious living. But to maintain this on the quantitative 1 Cf. in Mackail's Life of Morris " the physical craving for reading was unknown to him ". I quote from memory. -Joachim's Spinoza, p. 258. * Ibid., 263 n.