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INTRODUCTION CH. II.
Definitions — Dimensions of Happiness
Ch. 3. Of Law in general Measures of its expediency [Of all the speculations of] Mathematicians, there is none more celebrated nor more incontestible
than that concerning the three dimensions of Body, Length, Breadth & depth without the union of
which there is no conceiving it's the union of all which is necessary to the conception of it's existence. If we would attain to the accuracy of their speculations, we must imitate follow their example: & by taking our subject to focus in the same regular manner, & viewing it in the same steady light as they have done theirs, learn to give upon occasion to each of idea which are distinguishable in our subject, it's separate consideration
Analogous too & equally incontestible with these, Happiness has also its dimensions
attributed to a single person, those of 1st Intensity: 2d. Duration: attributed to many
as to a State, another, that of number: i:e: of the persons possessing it.
If we make the comparison of the magnitude of one body for the purpose of proving a conclusion with another, concerning their respective magnitudes we must presently perceive, that [the result of our comparison] our conclusion is not just unless we have in each taken into our comparison the 3 several dimensions of or circumstances of Length breadth & thickness If we make the comparison of one a man's happiness at one time with his happiness at another, or (to make the illustration more easy which comes to the same thing) one man's happiness with another's, we may in like manner perceive circumstances in body These being properties that become the subjects of consideration in measurement, have been termed dimensionsHappiness as to what concerns the amplitude of it's acceptation, has 2 Lenses. The
one may be Sic: according as one only or both of it's dimensions are taken into consideration at a time called collective, the other distributive.
Collective - as if I were to say Cicero was happier than Pompey thus & no more Cicero was a happier man than Catiline; or nor to make preserve the very word proposed least it sho a variation in the logical idea should in part be supposed suspected to arise from the transition substitution of a conjugate grammatical variation of the term. "Cicero experienced. more happiness
than Catiline — here I should be understood to form a comparison in my own
mind between the number and, intensity and duration & of the happyness of the enjoyed by each for the
whole term of his life as collected into one mass, & to judge that the whole total mass of that
of the first exceeded the total mass of that of the second.
Distributive - as if I were to say, Cicero experienced more happiness that Catiline
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when his drove eloquence drove that Traitor out of the Senate-house: Here I confine
my comparison of their respective happinesses to the period during which & to the occasion
whereupon that went took place
Happiness in the second latter sense is a portion of Happiness in the first sense
"Pleasure" would stand with rather more propriety in the stead of Happiness
in the latter sense, especially as it would not stand with any at all in the
former to which the latter is put in contradistinction: for in the former it would
either be a feeble & inadequate expression, or rather else an imperfect one meaning, a mutilated one denoting only
so much only of Happiness as flows from one particular source.
To avoid confusion therefore, & to conform as much as may be to ordinary discourse,
I shall use Pleasure in the stead of Happiness in the distributive
acceptation; giving this notice that I use it as differing from the latter in amplitude
of duration only & not in [amplitude of] kind [or origin]
The pleasure of tasting sugar or of scratching where it itches is as for real pleasure
whatever it may want of being tho' not so great and as truly a portion of Happiness as that of saving a father's the life of
life: a beloved son, or hearing the news of the acquisition of an unexpected legacy the highest prize in the Lottery. just as a mite is as truly Body, tho' not so great a body, as is an Elephant
or a farthing as truly money, tho' not so much money as a Guinea
INTRODUCT. CH. II. Dimensions of Happiness [BR][5]
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