effort to improve the character of others as well
as our own; and if this extension of their meaning be well understood,
and it is also understood that the development or perfection of
character implies certain conditions of material comfort and the
gratification, within reasonable limits, of our appetitive nature, there
ought to be no objection on the part of the moralist to their employment
for the purpose of designating the test of right conduct; and, any way,
they are useful as supplementing, correcting, and elevating the
associations attached to the more commonly employed terms, pleasure and
happiness. But are there no terms by which the somewhat exclusive
associations connected with the two sets of phrases already examined may
be avoided? I venture to suggest that such terms may be found by
reverting to the old, but now usually discarded, expressions 'welfare'
and 'well-being.' These words, it seems to me, do not primarily suggest
material prosperity, like happiness, nor the gratification of the lower
parts of our nature, like pleasure, nor the exclusive development of the
higher parts of our nature, like perfection, but cover the whole ground
of healthy human activity and the conditions which are favourable to it.
Corresponding, too, almost exactly with the [Greek: eudaimonia] of
Aristotle, they have the advantage of venerable historic associations.
Lastly, they seem to have less of a personal and more of a social
reference than any of the other terms employed. We speak, I think, more
naturally of the well-being or welfare of society, than of the
happiness, pleasure, or perfection of society. I cannot, therefore, but
think that the moralist would be wise in at least trying the experiment
of recurring to these terms in place of those which, in recent systems
of ethics, have usually superseded them. If it be said that they are
vague, and that different people will attach different meanings to them,
according to their own prepossessions and their own theories of life, I
can only reply that this objection applies with at least equal force to
any of the other terms which we have passed in review. And, if it be
said that our conceptions of well-being and welfare are not fixed, but
that our ideas of the nature and proper proportions of their
constituents are undergoing constant modification and growth, I may ask
if this is less the case with regard to happiness, or the sum of
pleasures, or the balance of pleasures over pa