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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: the greatest number was a great original idea when enunciated by Bentham,
which leavened a generation and has left its mark on thought and
civilization in all succeeding times. His grasp of it had the intensity of
genius. In the spirit of an ancient philosopher he would have denied that
pleasures differed in kind, or that by happiness he meant anything but
pleasure. He would perhaps have revolted us by his thoroughness. The
'guardianship of his doctrine' has passed into other hands; and now we seem
to see its weak points, its ambiguities, its want of exactness while
assuming the highest exactness, its one-sidedness, its paradoxical
explanation of several of the virtues. No philosophy has ever stood this
criticism of the next generation, though the founders of all of them have
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