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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: other words, to increase the sum of pleasure in the world. But all
pleasures are not the same: they differ in quality as well as in quantity,
and the pleasure which is superior in quality is incommensurable with the
inferior. Neither is the pleasure or happiness, which we seek, our own
pleasure, but that of others,--of our family, of our country, of mankind.
The desire of this, and even the sacrifice of our own interest to that of
other men, may become a passion to a rightly educated nature. The
Utilitarian finds a place in his system for this virtue and for every
other.'
Good or happiness or pleasure is thus regarded as the true and only end of
human life. To this all our desires will be found to tend, and in
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