pleasures of sensibility, such as observation, thought, feeling, or
a taste for poetry or culture, music, learning, reading, meditation,
invention, philosophy and the like. As regards the value, relative
worth and duration of each of these kinds of pleasure, a great deal
might be said, which, however, I leave the reader to supply. But every
one will see that the nobler the power which is brought into play,
the greater will be the pleasure which it gives; for pleasure always
involves the use of one's own powers, and happiness consists in a
frequent repetition of pleasure. No one will deny that in this respect
the pleasures of sensibility occupy a higher place than either of
the other two fundamental kinds; which exist in an equal, nay, in
a greater degree in brutes; it is this preponderating amount of
sensibility which distinguishes man from other animals. Now, our
mental powers are forms of sensibility, and therefore a preponderating
amount of it makes us capable of that kind of pleasure which has to do
with mind, so-called intellectual pleasure; and the more sensibility
predominates, the greater the pleasure will be.[1]

[Footnote 1: Nature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the
mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding
to the vegetable, with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the
animal world, where intelligence and consciousness begin, at first
very weak, and only after many intermediate stages attaining its last
great development in man, whose intellect is Nature's crowning point,
the goal of all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her
works. And even within the range of the human intellect, there are a
great many observable differences of degree, and it is very seldom
that intellect reaches its highest point, intelligence properly
so-called, which in this narrow and strict sense of the word, is
Nature's most consummate product, and so the rarest and most precious