Mill identifies what he believes to be a paradox in the surprisingly close relationship between “tranquility” and “excitement.” Discussing what he calls a happy or “satisfied life,” Mill writes:
The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two, either of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose: tranquillity and excitement. With much tranquillity, many find that they can be content with very little pleasure; with much excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain. There is assuredly no inherent impossibility of enabling even the mass of mankind to unite both, since the two are so far from being incompatible that they are in natural alliance, the prolongation of either being a preparation for, and exciting a wish for, the other.
Here, Mill rebuts those who consider true happiness impossible, arguing that they falsely conceive of a happy life as one of endless novel pleasures. Instead, Mill argues that a good life consists of some balance between “tranquility” and “excitement.” While those who choose a more tranquil life might be “content with very little pleasure” because they manage to avoid pain, those who choose a more exciting life “can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain.” While other philosophers have debated whether a “tranquil” or “exciting” life is superior, Mill’s model is more flexible, arguing that individuals can choose some balance between these two qualities.
Here, he identifies a paradox in the usual opposition of tranquility and excitement in philosophy. For Mill, they are not only “far from being incompatible,” but in fact they are “in natural alliance.” Too much tranquility, he argues, creates an ironic desire for excitement, and similarly, a life of excitement creates a “wish” for peace. The paradox, for Mill, is that these two seemingly contrasting or opposite values actually reinforce one another.
Mill highlights what he considers to be an ironic or paradoxical aspect of common attitudes regarding morality, which is that people are more invested in rules or principles than in the higher values that supposedly animate those rules. He writes that people tend to follow “customary morality,” which they have learned through either education or common opinion. While they think of the moral rules that they live by as “obligatory,” they cannot truly name the underlying moral principle:
[When] a person is asked to believe that this morality derives its obligation from some general principle round which custom has not thrown the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox; the supposed corollaries seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem; the superstructure seems to stand better without than with what is represented as its foundation. He says to himself, I feel that I am bound not to rob or murder, betray or deceive; but why am I bound to promote the general happiness?
Though people might feel obliged to follow certain rules, they care more about the rule than any “general principle” of morality. Mill identifies this as a paradox. For him, there is a clear irony in the fact that a person feels more “binding force” to obey some specific rule or custom than they do “the original theorem” that provides its rationale. This state of confusion is, for Mill, like imagining that a house looks stronger without its foundation. Mill mocks a hypothetical person who closely follows the rules not to “rob or murder” another person, but who feels no compulsion to “promote the general happiness.”
