Three modern seers / by Mrs. Havelock Ellis.

  • Edith Ellis
Date:
[1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Three modern seers / by Mrs. Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    restraint nor asceticism, is not as yet within the range of vision of the majority of people. Before analysing Hinton’s wise and unwise views of this mystery of pleasure, it may be well to imagine that our preconceived con- ceptions of pleasure do not exist. Let us look at the matter from a natural standard and a mystic standard, not from the standard of the sensualist and the ascetic. This is very difficult, as no question is so bound up with terrifying inanities and ugly misconceptions as this one of pleasure. From a biological point of view, pleasure is a guardian angel of the body as much as pain is. One impels the animal to choose the pleasing thing in function which will intensify the vitality of the race, as the other defends the animal from the thing which will injure or extinguish physical life. If we start with the assertion that the condition for taking pleasure is freedom from self and at the same time is a true expression of self, we shall, in following out this apparently
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