The Principles of Ethics: In Two Volumes

7. Amusements

Ethics_V1_551-600.indd 5 1/16/12 9:24 AM CHAPTER 7 Amusements 225. I have closed the last chapter with a division, the subject matter of which links it on to the subject matter of this chapter. We pass insensibly from the activities and passivities implied by aesthetic culture, to sundry of those which come under the head of relaxations and amusements. These we have now to consider from the ethical point of view. To the great majority, who have imbibed more or less of that asceticism which, though appropriate to times of chronic militancy and also useful as a curb to ungoverned sensualism, has swayed too much men's theory of life, it will seem an absurd supposition that amusements are ethically warranted. Yet unless, in common with the Quakers and some extreme evangelicals, they hold them to be positively wrong, they must either say that amusements are neither right nor wrong, or, they must say that they are positively right-are to be morally approved. That they are sanctioned by hedonistic ethics goes without saying. They are pleasure-giving activities; and that is their sufficient justification, so long as they do not unduly interfere with activities which are obligatory. Though most of our pleasures are to be accepted as concomitants of those various expenditures of energy conducive to self-sustentation and 555 Ethics_V1_551-600.indd 6 1/16/12 9:24 AM 556 The Ethics of Individual Life sustentation of family; yet the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure 's sake is to be sanctioned, and even enjoined, when primary duties have been fulfilled. So, too, are they to be approved from the physiological point of view. Not only do the emotional satisfactions which accompany normal life-sustaining labors exalt the vital functions, but the vital functions are exalted by those satisfactions which accompany the superfluous expenditures of energy implied by amusements: much more exalted in fact. Such satisfactions serve to raise the tide of life, and taken in due proportion conduce to every kind of efficiency. Yet once more there is the evolutionary justification. In section 534 of The Principles of Psychology, it was shown that whereas, in the lowest creatures, the small energies which exist are wholly used up in those actions which serve to maintain the individual and propagate the species; in creatufes of successively higher grades, there arises an increasing amount of unused energy: every improvement of organization achieving some economy, and so augmenting the surplus power. This surplus expends itself in the activities we call play. Among the superior vertebrata the tendency to these superfluous activities becomes conspicuous; and it is especially conspicuous in man, when so conditioned that stress of competition does not make the sustentation of self and family too laborious. The implication is that in a fully developed form of human life, a considerable space will be filled by the pleasurable exercise of faculties which have not been exhausted by daily activities. 226. In that division of The Principles of Psychology above referred to (sees. 533-40), in which I have drawn this distinction between life-sustaining activities and activities not of a life-sustaining kind, which are pursued for pleasure's sake, I have not drawn the further distinction between those of the sensory structures and those of the motor structures. There is a distinction between gratifications which aesthetic perceptions yield and those yielded by games and sports. This dis- Ethics_V1_551-600.indd 7 1/16/12 9:24 AM Amusements 557 tinction it was left for Mr. Grant Allen to point out in his Physiological Aesthetics. It cannot be made an absolute distinction , however; since gratifications derived from certain excitements of the senses are often associated with, and dependent upon, muscular actions; and since the gratifications of muscular actions, whatever their kind, are achieved under guidance of the senses. Moreover, with each of them there usually exists a large emotional accompaniment more important than either. Still the division is a natural one, and Mr. Grant Allen has established it beyond question. Even ascetically minded people do not repudiate those enjoyments , intellectual and emotional, which traveling yields. Pursuit of the aesthetic delights derived from beautiful scenery , the mountains, the sea-primarily those due to the visual impressions which forms and colors give, but secondarily and mainly those due to the poetical sentiments aroused by association-is approved by all. So, too, in a measure, is pursuit of...