The Book of John Stuart Mill 2 · Written by himself, from On Liberty and his Autobiography
John Stuart Mill, born in London in 1806, died at Avignon in France in 1873. His father educated him himself: Greek at three, Latin at eight, and no company of children his own age. At twenty his mind gave way, and he came back to himself reading Wordsworth. On Liberty appeared in 1859, The Subjection of Women in 1869, and the Autobiography after his death. He entered the Commons in 1865, and in 1867 moved to give women the vote, the first such motion in the British parliament. This volume rests on what he wrote himself, not on another man’s record of him. He is the only one in this scripture who never had a religion — not that he threw it off, but that he never had it. Chapters 3 and 4 supply what the scripture was missing: the reason The Rule 7 lets the Stoa contradict the canon.
2.1Here I must argue against a man with whom I am broadly on one side.
2.2Some say that pleasure is pleasure, differing only in quantity, and that there is no higher and lower.
2.3On that account a man need only count the quantity, and need not ask where it came from.
2.4I do not agree. Pleasures differ in height, and the difference is not one I have imposed. It can be tested.
2.5How tested? I lay down a rule:
2.6If of two pleasures there is one to which all, or almost all, who have full experience of both give a decided preference — that one is the higher.
2.7Mark the words "full experience of both." The whole weight of the chapter rests there.
2.8A man who has known only one does not count. He cannot bear witness — not because he is low, but because he has not seen both sides.
2.9If it is asked which of two pleasures is the more worth having, there is no other tribunal to appeal to than the verdict of those who know both. Even on the question of which is the greater in quantity, there is no other tribunal than this one.
2.10Now see what the test turns up.
2.11Of those who have known both, hardly one will consent to change down — even when the lower side promises him its fullest allowance.
2.12No person of understanding would consent to be a fool; no instructed person would be ignorant; no person of feeling would be selfish and base.
2.13Not even if you assure him that after the change he will be better satisfied than he is now.
2.14Why is this? Because there is a thing in a human being called dignity.
2.15In whoever has it strongly, what conflicts with it can be wanted for a moment and cannot be wanted for long.
2.16So I say: better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
2.17And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because he knows only his own side of the question. The other party knows both sides.
2.18I must add something unwelcome: the higher pleasure can be lost.
2.19The capacity for it is, in most natures, a very tender plant. It dies unwatered, and the man in whom it dies does not know it has died.
2.20Many people did not choose the lower. They arrived at a certain age no longer able to receive the higher.
2.21Socrates said that the unexamined life is a living death. (cf. The Highest Covenant 1.3)
2.22This chapter only supplies the reason under that sentence — why Socrates dissatisfied is better than a fool satisfied.