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Why should living beings struggle against each other, except as they struggle to advance the general welfare? Happiness is just as valuable and just as beautiful a thing in one being as in another. Some have greater talent for it than have others but it is a state of sweetness and elation always and everywhere. And each living being, in deliberating on the problem of the proprieties, should realize the fact that, as a matter of fact, it is a matter of indifference whether this relation belongs to his sensorium or to some other sensorium. It is insane for each being to insist that he, as an organism, is the one organism to whom pleasure is indispensable. The only indispensable is that pleasure be maximized. If a definite amount of happiness is to be experienced, it is, in the eyes of the absolute, a matter of indifference whether this happiness is experienced by one individual or by another, by self or by some other conscious portion of the universe. (en) |