[Is Life Worth Living? by William Hurrell Mallock]@TWC D-Link bookIs Life Worth Living? CHAPTER III 32/41
What shall I get? and I? and I? and I? What do you offer me? and me? and me? This is the first question that the common sense of mankind asks.
'_You must promise something to each of us_,' it says, '_or very certainly you will be able to promise nothing to all of us_.' There is no real escape in saying that we must all work for one another, and that our happiness is to be found in that. The question merely confronts us with two other facets of itself.
What sort of happiness shall I secure for others? and what sort of happiness will others secure for me? What will it be like? Will it be worth having? In the positivist Utopia, we are told, each man's happiness is bound up in the happiness of all the rest, and is thus infinitely intensified.
All mankind are made a mighty whole, by the fusing power of benevolence.
Benevolence, however, means simply the wishing that our neighbours were happy, the helping to make them so, and lastly the being glad that they are so.
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