ABSTRACT
Furthermore, happiness or welfare is not an 'end' in the usual sense of 'end' in which going to sleep or passing an examination can be regarded as ends. Happiness is no extra state of affairs supervenient on activities. It is a term for describing ways of life where needs are not grossly frustrated, where there is absorption in interests, and where the interests are mutually compossible. Activities, as Mill himself admitted, are better regarded as parts of happiness rather than as means to it. This admission involves abandoning the linear conception of means to an end. It also helps us to see that activities may be undesirable because they are in themselves manifestations of misery and not merely because they are means to it. The promotion of happiness is therefore largely a matter of removing or altering conditions that obviously frustrate the satisfaction of people's needs and which prevent them developing interests which may absorb them. Some therefore prefer to state the Utilitarian criterion in terms of the minimization of misery rather than in terms of the promotion of happiness. For pain and the frustration of needs are more palpable to an outside observer than the more idiosyncratic conditions necessary for individual happiness. Also concern for promoting happiness too often leads to attempts to impose high-level personal preferences on people whose temperaments, interests, and
social habits are quite different-a practice which it is difficult to reconcile with respect for persons. It is difficult enough to make those whom we love happy; with people outside our immediate circle it is wiser and less dangerous to concentrate on the obvious causes of pain and frustration when we are considering the social effects of social practices. The individual, as Mill said, is much more likely than any external agent to know what will make him happy; morality is only concerned with removing conditions which palpably prevent him from finding out.
