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Updated: May 21, 2025
III. His Theory of Happiness, or the Summum Bonum, would follow from his analysis of the Feelings and Will. But Felicity being a continual progress in desire, and consisting less in present enjoyment than in assuring the way of future desire, the chief element in it is the Sense of Power.
Be this as it may, we find the ancient Persians resemble the Jews in sacrificing upon high places, in paying divine honor to fire, in keeping up a sacred flame, in certain ceremonial cleansings, in possessing an hereditary priesthood who alone were allowed to offer sacrifices, and in making their summum bonum the possession of a numerous offspring."
A slave dealer will convey a score or two of female slaves from Mourzuk to Tripoli, and change the unhappy objects of his brutal lust every night. This is, he considers, the summum bonum of human existence, and to obtain it, he will continue this nefarious trade, without the smallest gain, or prospect of gain, and die a beggar when his vile passions become extinct.
Each of the ancient sects of philosophy held some tenet on this subject which served for a distinguishing badge. The summum bonum of the Utilitarians, as far as we can judge from the passage which we are now considering, is the not being hanged. That it is an unpleasant thing to be hanged, we most willingly concede to our brother.
But this is as like the philosophy of Epicurus as the holding of virtue to be the summum bonum is stoicism. Before we seek to discover those higher moral ends which the animal nature assists us in attaining to, we must establish their physical necessity, and come to an agreement as to some fundamental conceptions. But each branch is sound and healthy, and has as much life and vigor as the other.
Beat and battered altogether, By fellow-men, by wind and weather; Hounded on through fens and bogs, Chased by men and bit by dogs: And, in thy weakly way of judging, So kindly taught the art of trudging; Or, with a moment's happier lot, Pitied, pensioned, and forgot Cutty-pipe thy regium donum; Poverty thy summum bonum; Thy frigid couch a sandstone stratum; A colder grave thy ultimatum; Circumventing, circumvented; In short, excessively tormented, Everything combines to scare Charity's dear pensioner!
§ 15. Returning then to Locke's comparison between the certainty of this argument and that which proves the sum of the angles of a triangle to be equal to two right-angles, I should say that there is a virtual, though not a formal, fallacy in his presentation. For mathematical science being confessedly but of relative significance, any comparison between the degree of certainty attained by reasoning upon so transcendental a subject as the present, and that of mathematical demonstrations regarding relative truth, must be misleading. In the present instance, the whole strain of the argument comes upon the adequacy of the proposed test of truth, viz., our being able to conceive it if true. Now, will any one undertake to say that this test of truth is of equivalent value when it is applied to a triangle and when it is applied to the Deity. In the one case we are dealing with a geometrical figure of an exceedingly simple type, with which our experience is well acquainted, and presenting a very limited number of relations for us to contemplate. In the other case we are endeavouring to deal with the summum genus of all mystery, with reference to which experience is quite impossible, and which in its mention contains all the relations that are to us unknown and unknowable. Here, then, is the oversight. Because men find conceivability a valid test of truth in the affairs of everyday life as it is easy to show
III. -His Summum Bonum, or Theory of Happiness, is contained in his much iterated doctrine of the deliciousness of virtuous conduct, by which he proposes to effect the reconciliation of our own good with the good of others prudence with virtue.
These opposing sects sprang from Sokrates, and passed, with little modification, the one into the Stoics, the other into the Epicureans. Both ANTISTHENES, the founder of the Cynics, and ARISTIPPUS, the founder of the Cyrenaics, were disciples of Sokrates. Their doctrines chiefly referred to the Summum Bonum the Art of Living, or of Happiness.
How presume to rebuke those earnest philanthropists, who, to judge from their habitual language, are firmly of opinion that annihilation of one half of mankind would be a small price to pay for conversion of the other moiety into citizens of a world-wide Red Republic; or those admirers of Prince Bismarck, who, holding national aggrandisement to be the national summum bonum, deem the most solemn treaties that might impede it to be obstacles which it is obligatory on a patriot to set aside?
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