Category Archives: James MacKaye

James MacKaye

[J]ust as a boiler is required to utilize the potential energy of coal in the production of steam, so sentient beings are required to convert the potentiality of happiness resident in a given land area into actual happiness, and just as the engineer’s first care is to select a boiler having maximum efficiency of conversion, so the first care of Justice should be to populate the domain over which she has jurisdiction with beings capable of utilizing the available resources in the production of happiness, in a manner which will insure the maximum efficiency of conversion.

James MacKaye, The Economy of Happiness, Boston, 1906, p. 191

James MacKaye

Happiness or misery are no better and no worse in the year 10,000 B. C. than in the year 10,000 A. D. If they are, then there is no reason why they are not better or worse on Wednesdays than on Thursdays.

James MacKaye, The Politics of Utility, Boston, 1909, p. 39

James MacKaye

All writers who have any practical and permanent contribution to make to the guidance of human conduct, perceive and proclaim some aspect or other of the philosophy of utility.  They may not explicitly recognize happiness as the end of life,–indeed they may explicitly repudiate it,–but their instinct enables them to identify means, even if the end eludes them.

James MacKaye, Thoreau: Philosopher of Freedom, New York, 1930, p. ix

James MacKaye

Quantities of pain or pleasure may be regarded as magnitudes having the same definiteness as tons of pig iron, barrels of sugar, bushels of wheat, yards of cotton, or pounds of wool; and as political economy seeks to ascertain the conditions under which these commodities may be produced with the greatest efficiency–so the economy of happiness seeks to ascertain the conditions under which happiness, regarded as a commodity, may be produced with the greatest efficiency.

James MacKaye, The Economy of Happiness, Boston, 1906, p. 183-184