Henry Sidgwick

CHAPTER I
THE PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF EGOISM

§ 1. The object of the present Book is to examine the method of determining reasonable conduct which has been already defined in outline under the name of Egoism: taking this term as equivalent to Egoistic Hedonism, and as implying the adoption of his own greatest happiness as the ultimate end of each individual’s actions. It may be doubted whether this ought to be included among received “methods of Ethics”; since there are strong grounds for holding that a system of morality, satisfactory to the moral consciousness of mankind in general, cannot be constructed on the basis of simple Egoism. In subsequent chapters[96] I shall carefully discuss these reasons: at present it seems sufficient to point to the wide acceptance of the principle that it is reasonable for a man to act in the manner most conducive to his own happiness. We find it expressly admitted by leading representatives both of Intuitionism and of that Universalistic Hedonism to which I propose to restrict the name of Utilitarianism. I have already noticed that Bentham, although he puts forward the greatest happiness of the greatest number as the “true standard of right and wrong,” yet regards it as “right and proper” that each individual should aim at his own greatest happiness. And Butler is equally prepared to grant “that our ideas of happiness and misery are of all our ideas the nearest and most important to us ... that, though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is right and good as such; yet, when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it.”[97]

And even Clarke[98]—notwithstanding the emphatic terms in which he has maintained that “Virtue truly deserves to be chosen for its own sake and Vice to be avoided”—yet admits that it is “not truly reasonable that men by adhering to Virtue should part with their lives, if thereby they eternally deprived themselves of all possibility of receiving any advantage from that adherence.”

And, generally, in the ages of Christian faith, it has been obvious and natural to hold that the realisation of virtue is essentially an enlightened and far-seeing pursuit of Happiness for the agent. Nor has this doctrine been held only by persons of a cold and calculating turn of mind: we find it urged with emphasis by so chivalrous and high-minded a preacher as Bishop Berkeley. No doubt this is only one side or element of the Christian view: the opposite doctrine, that an action done from motives of self-interest is not properly virtuous, has continually asserted itself as either openly conflicting or in some manner reconciled with the former. Still the former, though less refined and elevated, seems to have been the commoner view. Indeed, it is hardly going too far to say that common sense assumes that ‘interested’ actions, tending to promote the agent’s happiness, are prima facie reasonable: and that the onus probandi lies with those who maintain that disinterested conduct, as such, is reasonable.

But, as has been before said, in the common notions of ‘interest,’ ‘happiness,’ etc., there is a certain amount of vagueness and ambiguity: so that in order to fit these terms for the purposes of scientific discussion, we must, while retaining the main part of their signification, endeavour to make it more precise. In my judgment this result is attained if by ‘greatest possible Happiness’ we understand the greatest attainable surplus of pleasure over pain; the two terms being used, with equally comprehensive meanings, to include respectively all kinds of agreeable and disagreeable feelings. Further, if this quantitative definition of the end be accepted, consistency requires that pleasures should be sought in proportion to their pleasantness; and therefore the less pleasant consciousness must not be preferred to the more pleasant, on the ground of any other qualities that it may possess. The distinctions of quality that Mill and others urge may still be admitted as grounds of preference, but only in so far as they can be resolved into distinctions of quantity. This is the type to which the practical reasoning that is commonly called ‘Egoistic’ tends to conform, when we rigorously exclude all ambiguities and inconsistencies: and it is only in this more precise form that it seems worth while to subject such reasoning to a detailed examination. We must therefore understand by an Egoist a man who when two or more courses of action are open to him, ascertains as accurately as he can the amounts of pleasure and pain that are likely to result from each, and chooses the one which he thinks will yield him the greatest surplus of pleasure over pain.

§ 2. It must, however, be pointed out that the adoption of the fundamental principle of Egoism, as just explained, by no means necessarily implies the ordinary empirical method of seeking one’s own pleasure or happiness. A man may aim at the greatest happiness within his reach, and yet not attempt to ascertain empirically what amount of pleasure and pain is likely to attend any given course of action; believing that he has some surer, deductive method for determining the conduct which will make him most happy in the long-run. He may believe this on grounds of Positive Religion, because God has promised happiness as a reward for obedience to certain definite commands: or on grounds of Natural Religion, because God being just and benevolent must have so ordered the world that Happiness will in the long-run be distributed in proportion to Virtue. It is (e.g.) by a combination of both these arguments that Paley connects the Universalistic Hedonism that he adopts as a method for determining duties, with the Egoism which seems to him self-evident as a fundamental principle of rational conduct. Or again, a man may connect virtue with happiness by a process of a priori reasoning, purely ethical; as Aristotle seems to do by the assumption that the ‘best’ activity will be always attended by the greatest pleasure as its inseparable concomitant; ‘best’ being determined by a reference to moral intuition, or to the common moral opinions of men generally, or of well-bred and well-educated men. Or the deduction by which Maximum Pleasure is inferred to be the result of a particular kind of action may be psychological or physiological: we may have some general theory as to the connexion of pleasure with some other physical or psychical fact, according to which we can deduce the amount of pleasure that will attend any particular kind of behaviour: as (e.g.) it is widely held that a perfectly healthy and harmonious exercise of our different bodily and mental functions is the course of life most conducive to pleasure in the long-run. In this latter case, though accepting unreservedly the Hedonistic principle, we shall not be called upon to estimate and compare particular pleasures, but rather to define the notions of ‘perfect health’ and ‘harmony of functions’ and consider how these ends may be attained. Still those who advocate such deductive methods commonly appeal to ordinary experience, at least as supplying confirmation or verification; and admit that the pleasantness and painfulness of pleasures and pains are only directly known to the individual who experiences them. It would seem, therefore, that—at any rate—the obvious method of Egoistic Hedonism is that which we may call Empirical-reflective: and it is this I conceive that is commonly used in egoistic deliberation. It will be well, therefore, to examine this method in the first instance; to ascertain clearly the assumptions which it involves, and estimate the exactness of its results.

CHAPTER II
EMPIRICAL HEDONISM

§ 1. The first and most fundamental assumption, involved not only in the empirical method of Egoistic Hedonism, but in the very conception of ‘Greatest Happiness’ as an end of action, is the commensurability of Pleasures and Pains. By this I mean that we must assume the pleasures sought and the pains shunned to have determinate quantitative relations to each other; for otherwise they cannot be conceived as possible elements of a total which we are to seek to make as great as possible. It is not absolutely necessary to exclude the supposition that there are some kinds of pleasure so much more pleasant than others, that the smallest conceivable amount of the former would outweigh the greatest conceivable amount of the latter; since, if this were ascertained to be the case, the only result would be that any hedonistic calculation involving pleasures of the former class might be simplified by treating those of the latter class as practically non-existent.[99] I think, however, that in all ordinary prudential reasoning, at any rate, the assumption is implicitly made that all the pleasures and pains that man can experience bear a finite ratio to each other in respect of pleasantness and its opposite. So far as this ratio can be made definite the Intensity of a pleasure (or pain) can be balanced against its Duration:[100] for if we conceive one pleasure (or pain), finite in duration, to be intensively greater than another in some definite ratio, it seems to be implied in this conception that the latter if continuously increased in extent—without change in its intensity—would at a certain point just balance the former in amount.

If pleasures, then, can be arranged in a scale, as greater or less in some finite degree; we are led to the assumption of a hedonistic zero, or perfectly neutral feeling, as a point from which the positive quantity of pleasures may be measured. And this latter assumption emerges still more clearly when we consider the comparison and balancing of pleasures with pains, which Hedonism necessarily involves. For pain must be reckoned as the negative quantity of pleasure, to be balanced against and subtracted from the positive in estimating happiness on the whole; we must therefore conceive, as at least ideally possible, a point of transition in consciousness at which we pass from the positive to the negative. It is not absolutely necessary to assume that this strictly indifferent or neutral feeling ever actually occurs. Still experience seems to show that a state at any rate very nearly approximating to it is even common: and we certainly experience continual transitions from pleasure to pain and vice versa, and thus (unless we conceive all such transitions to be abrupt) we must exist at least momentarily in this neutral state.

In what I have just said, I have by implication denied the paradox of Epicurus[101] that the state of painlessness is equivalent to the highest possible pleasure; so that if we can obtain absolute freedom from pain, the goal of Hedonism is reached, after which we may vary, but cannot increase, our pleasure. This doctrine is opposed to common sense and common experience. But it would, I think, be equally erroneous, on the other hand, to regard this neutral feeling—hedonistic zero, as I have called it—as the normal condition of our consciousness, out of which we occasionally sink into pain, and occasionally rise into pleasure. Nature has not been so niggardly to man as this: so long as health is retained, and pain and irksome toil banished, the mere performance of the ordinary habitual functions of life is, according to my experience, a frequent source of moderate pleasures, alternating rapidly with states nearly or quite indifferent. Thus we may venture to say that the ‘apathy’ which so large a proportion of Greek moralists in the post-Aristotelian period regarded as the ideal state of existence, was not really conceived by them as “without one pleasure and without one pain”; but rather as a state of placid intellectual contemplation, which in philosophic minds might easily reach a high degree of pleasure.

§ 2. We have yet to give to the notions of pleasure and pain the precision required for quantitative comparison. In dealing with this point, and in the rest of the hedonistic discussion, it will be convenient for the most part to speak of pleasure only, assuming that pain may be regarded as the negative quantity of pleasure, and that accordingly any statements made with respect to pleasure may be at once applied, by obvious changes of phrase, to pain.

The equivalent phrase for Pleasure, according to Mr. Spencer,[102] is “a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there”; and similarly, Mr. Bain says that “pleasure and pain, in the actual or real experience, are to be held as identical with motive power.” But—granting that pleasures normally excite desire—it still does not seem to me that I judge pleasures to be greater and less exactly in proportion as they stimulate the will to actions tending to sustain them. Of course neither Mr. Bain nor Mr. Spencer must be understood to lay down that all pleasures when actually felt actually stimulate to exertion of some kind; since this is obviously not true of the pleasures of repose, a warm bath, etc. The stimulus must in such cases be understood to be latent and potential; only becoming actual when action is required to prevent the cessation or diminution of the pleasure. Thus a man enjoying rest after fatigue is vaguely conscious of a strong clinging to his actual condition, and of a latent readiness to resist any impulse to change it. Further, the stimulus of moderate pleasures and pains may become unfelt through habitual repression. For instance, in a habitually temperate man the stimulus to prolong the pleasure of eating or drinking usually ceases before the pleasure ceases: it is only occasionally that he feels the need of controlling an impulse to eat or drink up to the point of satiety. So again, a protracted pain of moderate intensity and free from alarm—such as a dull prolonged toothache—seems sometimes to lose its felt stimulus to action without losing its character as pain. Here again the stimulus may be properly conceived as latent: since if asked whether we should like to get rid of even a mild toothache, we should certainly answer yes.

But even if we confine our attention to cases where the stimulus is palpable and strong, Mr. Bain’s identification of “pleasure and pain” with motive power does not appear to me to accord exactly with our common empirical judgments. He himself contrasts the “disproportionate strain of active powers in one direction,” to which “any sudden and great delight may give rise,” with the “proper frame of mind under delight,” which is “to inspire no endeavours except what the charm of the moment justifies.”[103] And he elsewhere explains that “our pleasurable emotions are all liable to detain the mind unduly,” through the “atmosphere of excitement” with which they are surrounded, carrying the mind “beyond the estimate of pleasure and pain, to the state named ‘passion,’” in which a man is not “moved solely by the strict value of the pleasure,” but also by “the engrossing power of the excitement.”[104] It is true that in such cases Mr. Bain seems to hold that these “disturbances and anomalies of the will scarcely begin to tell in the actual feeling,”[105] but it seems to me clear that exciting pleasures are liable to exercise, even when actually felt, a volitional stimulus out of proportion to their intensity as pleasures; and Mr. Bain himself seems to recognise this in a passage where he says that “acute pleasures and pains stimulate the will perhaps more strongly than an equivalent stimulation of the massive kind.”[106] I also find that some feelings which stimulate strongly to their own removal are either not painful at all or only slightly painful:—e.g. ordinarily the sensation of being tickled. If this be so, it is obviously inexact to define pleasure, for purposes of measurement, as the kind of feeling that we seek to retain in consciousness. Shall we then say that there is a measurable quality of feeling expressed by the word “pleasure,” which is independent of its relation to volition, and strictly undefinable from its simplicity?—like the quality of feeling expressed by “sweet,” of which also we are conscious in varying degrees of intensity. This seems to be the view of some writers: but, for my own part, when I reflect on the notion of pleasure,—using the term in the comprehensive sense which I have adopted, to include the most refined and subtle intellectual and emotional gratifications, no less than the coarser and more definite sensual enjoyments,—the only common quality that I can find in the feelings so designated seems to be that relation to desire and volition expressed by the general term “desirable,” in the sense previously explained. I propose therefore to define Pleasure—when we are considering its “strict value” for purposes of quantitative comparison—as a feeling which, when experienced by intelligent beings, is at least implicitly apprehended as desirable or—in cases of comparison—preferable.

Here, however, a new question comes into view. When I stated in the preceding chapter, as a fundamental assumption of Hedonism, that it is reasonable to prefer pleasures in proportion to their intensity, and not to allow this ground of preference to be outweighed by any merely qualitative difference, I implied that the preference of pleasures on grounds of quality as opposed to quantity—as ‘higher’ or ‘nobler’—is actually possible: and indeed such non-hedonistic preference is commonly thought to be of frequent occurrence. But if we take the definition of pleasure just given—that it is the kind of feeling which we apprehend to be desirable or preferable—it seems to be a contradiction in terms to say that the less pleasant feeling can ever be thought preferable to the more pleasant.

This contradiction may be avoided as follows. It will be generally admitted that the pleasantness of a feeling is only directly cognisable by the individual who feels it at the time of feeling it. Thus, though (as I shall presently argue), in so far as any estimate of pleasantness involves comparison with feelings only represented in idea, it is liable to be erroneous through imperfections in the representation—still, no one is in a position to controvert the preference of the sentient individual, so far as the quality of the present feeling alone is concerned. When, however, we judge of the preferable quality (as ‘elevation’ or ‘refinement’) of a state of consciousness as distinct from its pleasantness,[107] we seem to appeal to some common standard which others can apply as well as the sentient individual. Hence I should conclude that when one kind of pleasure is judged to be qualitatively superior to another, although less pleasant, it is not really the feeling itself that is preferred, but something in the mental or physical conditions or relations under which it arises, regarded as cognisable objects of our common thought. For certainly if I in thought distinguish any feeling from all its conditions and concomitants—and also from all its effects on the subsequent feelings of the same individual or of others—and contemplate it merely as the transient feeling of a single subject; it seems to me impossible to find in it any other preferable quality than that which we call its pleasantness, the degree of which is only cognisable directly by the sentient individual.

It should be observed that if this definition of pleasure be accepted, and if, as before proposed, ‘Ultimate Good’ be taken as equivalent to ‘what is ultimately desirable,’ the fundamental proposition of ethical Hedonism has chiefly a negative significance; for the statement that ‘Pleasure is the Ultimate Good’ will only mean that nothing is ultimately desirable except desirable feeling, apprehended as desirable by the sentient individual at the time of feeling it. This being so, it may be urged against the definition that it could not be accepted by a moralist of stoical turn, who while recognising pleasure as a fact refused to recognise it as in any degree ultimately desirable. But I think such a moralist ought to admit an implied judgment that a feeling is per se desirable to be inseparably connected with its recognition as pleasure; while holding that sound philosophy shows the illusoriness of such judgments. This, in fact, seems to have been substantially the view of the Stoic school.

However this may be, I conceive that the preference which pure Hedonism regards as ultimately rational, should be defined as the preference of feeling valued merely as feeling, according to the estimate implicitly or explicitly made by the sentient individual at the time of feeling it; without any regard to the conditions and relations under which it arises. Accordingly we may state as the fundamental assumption of what I have called Quantitative Hedonism,—implied in the adoption of “greatest surplus of pleasure over pain” as the ultimate end,—that all pleasures and pains, estimated merely as feelings, have for the sentient individual cognisable degrees of desirability, positive or negative; observing further, that the empirical method of Hedonism can only be applied so far as we assume that these degrees of desirability are definitely given in experience.

There is one more assumption of a fundamental kind, which is not perhaps involved in the acceptance of the Hedonistic calculus considered as purely theoretical, but is certainly implied if it be put forward as a practical method for determining right conduct: the assumption, namely, that we can by foresight and calculation increase our pleasures and decrease our pains. It may perhaps be thought pedantic to state it formally: and in fact no one will deny that the conditions upon which our pleasures and pains depend are to some extent cognisable by us and within our own control. But, as we shall see, it has been maintained that the practice of Hedonistic observation and calculation has an inevitable tendency to decrease our pleasures generally, or the most important of them: so that it becomes a question whether we can gain our greatest happiness by seeking it, or at any rate by trying to seek it with scientific exactness.

Note.—It is sometimes thought to be a necessary assumption of Hedonists that a surplus of pleasure over pain is actually attainable by human beings: a proposition which an extreme pessimist would deny. But the conclusion that life is always on the whole painful would not prove it to be unreasonable for a man to aim ultimately at minimising pain, if this is still admitted to be possible; though it would, no doubt, render immediate suicide, by some painless process, the only reasonable course for a perfect egoist—unless he looked forward to another life.

CHAPTER III
EMPIRICAL HEDONISM—Continued

§ 1. Let, then, pleasure be defined as feeling which the sentient individual at the time of feeling it implicitly or explicitly apprehends to be desirable;—desirable, that is, when considered merely as feeling, and not in respect of its objective conditions or consequences, or of any facts that come directly within the cognisance and judgment of others besides the sentient individual. And let it be provisionally assumed that feelings generally can be compared from this point of view, with sufficient definiteness for practical purposes, and empirically known to be more or less pleasant in some definite degree. Then the empirical-reflective method of Egoistic Hedonism will be, to represent beforehand the different series of feelings that our knowledge of physical and psychical causes leads us to expect from the different lines of conduct that lie open to us; judge which series, as thus represented, appears on the whole preferable, taking all probabilities into account; and adopt the corresponding line of conduct. It may be objected that the calculation is too complex for practice; since any complete forecast of the future would involve a vast number of contingencies of varying degrees of probability, and to calculate the Hedonistic value of each of these chances of feeling would be interminable. Still we may perhaps reduce the calculation within manageable limits, without serious loss of accuracy, by discarding all manifestly imprudent conduct, and neglecting the less probable and less important contingencies; as we do in some of the arts that have more definite ends, such as strategy and medicine. For if the general in ordering a march, or the physician in recommending a change of abode, took into consideration all the circumstances that were at all relevant to the end sought, their calculations would become impracticable; accordingly they confine themselves to the most important; and we may deal similarly with the Hedonistic art of life.

There are, however, objections urged against the Hedonistic method which go much deeper; and by some writers are pressed to the extreme of rejecting the method altogether. A careful examination of these objections seems to be the most convenient way of obtaining a clear view, both of the method itself and of the results that may reasonably be expected from it.

I should, however, point out that we are now only concerned with what may be called intrinsic objections to Egoistic Hedonism; arguments, that is, against the possibility of obtaining by it the results at which it aims. We are not now to consider whether it is reasonable for an individual to take his own happiness as his ultimate end; or how far the rules of action deduced from the adoption of this end, and from the actual conditions of the individual’s existence, will coincide with current opinions as to what is right. These questions, according to the plan of my work, are postponed for future consideration:[108] our sole concern at present is with objections tending to show the intrinsic impracticability of Hedonism as a rational method.

We are met, in the first place, by an objection which, if valid at all, must be admitted to be decisive. It has been affirmed[109] by Green that “pleasure as feeling, in distinction from its conditions that are not feelings, cannot be conceived.” If so, Rational Hedonism would certainly be impossible: but the proposition seems equally opposed to common sense, and to the universal assumption of empirical psychologists; who, in investigating elaborately and systematically the conditions, mental and physical, of pleasure and pain, necessarily assume that these feelings can be distinguished in thought from their “conditions which are not feelings.” I also find that the writer himself from whom I have quoted, in a later treatise,[110] conducts long arguments respecting pleasure which are only intelligible if the distinction between pleasure and its conditions is thoroughly grasped and steadily contemplated. Indeed he carries a distinction of this kind to an extreme point of subtlety; as he requires us to distinguish the “self-satisfaction sought in all desire that amounts to will” from the “pleasure” that “there is in all self-satisfaction if attained”: whereas other moralists regard self-satisfaction as a species of pleasure.[111] To maintain that we can distinguish pleasure from self-satisfaction, and cannot distinguish it from its conditions, seems to me too violent a paradox to need refutation. It is possible that Green may only mean that pleasure cannot be thought to exist apart from conditions which are not feelings, and that it necessarily varies with any variation in its conditions. The statement thus interpreted I do not deny: but it is quite irrelevant to the question whether pleasure can be estimated separately from its conditions, or whether pleasures received under different conditions can be quantitatively compared. I cannot have the pleasure of witnessing a tragedy or the pleasure of witnessing a farce, without having along with either a complex of innumerable thoughts and images, very diverse in quality in the two cases: but this does not prevent me from deciding confidently whether the tragedy or the farce will afford me most pleasure on the whole.

I pass to another objection made by the same writer to the Hedonistic conception of the supreme end of action as “the greatest possible sum of pleasures.” (It should be “the greatest possible surplus of pleasure over pain”: but the difference is unimportant for the present argument.) The phrase, he says, is “intrinsically unmeaning”: but his justification for this statement appears to be different in different treatises. At first he boldly affirmed that “pleasant feelings are not quantities that can be added,”[112] apparently because “each is over before the other begins.” The latter statement, however, is equally true of the parts of time: but it would be obviously absurd to say that hours, days, years are “not quantities that can be added.” Possibly this consideration occurred to Green before writing the Prolegomena to Ethics: at any rate in the latter treatise he admits that states “of pleasant feeling” can be added together in “thought,” only denying that they can be added “in enjoyment or imagination of enjoyment.”[113] But this concedes all that is required for the Hedonistic valuation of future feelings; no Hedonist ever supposed that the happiness he aims at making as great as possible was something to be enjoyed all at once, or ever wanted to imagine it as so enjoyed. And unless the transiency of pleasure diminishes its pleasantness—a point which I will presently consider—I cannot see that the possibility of realising the Hedonistic end is at all affected by the necessity of realising it in successive parts. Green, in another passage,[114] appears to lay down that “an end” which is “to serve the purpose of a criterion” must “enable us to distinguish actions that bring men nearer to it from those which do not.” This, however, would only be the case if by an “end” is necessarily meant a goal or consummation, which, after gradually drawing nearer to it, we reach all at once: but this is not, I conceive, the sense in which the word is ordinarily understood by ethical writers: and certainly all that I mean by it is an object of rational aim—whether attained in successive parts or not—which is not sought as a means to the attainment of any ulterior object, but for itself. And so long as any one’s prospective balance of pleasure over pain admits of being made greater or less by immediate action in one way or another,[115] there seems no reason why ‘Maximum Happiness’ should not provide as serviceable a criterion of conduct as any ‘chief good’ capable of being possessed all at once, or in some way independent of the condition of time.

§ 2. If, however, it be maintained, that the consciousness of the transiency of pleasure either makes it less pleasant at the time or causes a subsequent pain, and that the deliberate and systematic pursuit of pleasure tends to intensify this consciousness; the proposition, if borne out by experience, would certainly constitute a relevant objection to the method of Egoistic Hedonism. And this view would seem to be in the mind of the writer above quoted (though it is nowhere clearly put forward): since he affirms that it is “impossible that self-satisfaction should be found in any succession of pleasures”;[116] as self-satisfaction being “satisfaction for a self that abides and contemplates itself as abiding” must be at least relatively permanent:[117] and it is, I suppose, implied that the disappointment of the Hedonist, who fails to find self-satisfaction where he seeks for it, is attended with pain or loss of pleasure.[118] If this be so, and if the self-satisfaction thus missed can be obtained by the resolute adoption of some other principle of action, it would certainly seem that the systematic pursuit of pleasure is in some danger of defeating itself: it is therefore important to consider carefully how far this is really the case.

So far as my own experience goes, it does not appear to me that the mere transiency of pleasures is a serious source of discontent, so long as one has a fair prospect of having as valuable pleasures in the future as in the past—or even so long as the life before one has any substantial amount of pleasure to offer. But I do not doubt that an important element of happiness, for all or most men, is derived from the consciousness of possessing “relatively permanent” sources of pleasure—whether external, as wealth, social position, family, friends; or internal, as knowledge, culture, strong and lively interest in the wellbeing of fairly prosperous persons or institutions. This, however, does not, in my opinion, constitute an objection to Hedonism: it rather seems obvious, from the hedonistic point of view, that “as soon as intelligence discovers that there are fixed objects, permanent sources of pleasure, and large groups of enduring interests, which yield a variety of recurring enjoyments, the rational will, preferring the greater to the less, will unfailingly devote its energies to the pursuit of these.”[119] It may be replied that if these permanent sources of pleasure are consciously sought merely as a means to the hedonistic end, they will not afford the happiness for which they are sought. With this I to some extent agree; but I think that if the normal complexity of our impulses be duly taken into account, this statement will be found not to militate against the adoption of Hedonism, but merely to signalise a danger against which the Hedonist has to guard. In a previous chapter[120] I have, after Butler, laid stress on the difference between impulses that are, strictly speaking, directed towards pleasure, and ‘extra-regarding’ impulses which do not aim at pleasure,—though much, perhaps most, of our pleasure consists in the gratification of these latter, and therefore depends upon their existence. I there argued that in many cases the two kinds of impulse are so far incompatible that they do not easily coexist in the same moment of consciousness. I added, however, that in the ordinary condition of our activity the incompatibility is only momentary, and does not prevent a real harmony from being attained by a sort of alternating rhythm of the two impulses in consciousness. Still it seems undeniable that this harmony is liable to be disturbed; and that while on the one hand individuals may and do sacrifice their greatest apparent happiness to the gratification of some imperious particular desire, so, on the other hand, self-love is liable to engross the mind to a degree incompatible with a healthy and vigorous outflow of those ‘disinterested’ impulses towards particular objects, the pre-existence of which is necessary to the attainment, in any high degree, of the happiness at which self-love aims. I should not, however, infer from this that the pursuit of pleasure is necessarily self-defeating and futile; but merely that the principle of Egoistic Hedonism, when applied with a due knowledge of the laws of human nature, is practically self-limiting; i.e. that a rational method of attaining the end at which it aims requires that we should to some extent put it out of sight and not directly aim at it. I have before spoken of this conclusion as the ‘Fundamental Paradox of Egoistic Hedonism’; but though it presents itself as a paradox, there does not seem to be any difficulty in its practical realisation, when once the danger indicated is clearly seen. For it is an experience only too common among men, in whatever pursuit they may be engaged, that they let the original object and goal of their efforts pass out of view, and come to regard the means to this end as ends in themselves: so that they at last even sacrifice the original end to the attainment of what is only secondarily and derivatively desirable. And if it be thus easy and common to forget the end in the means overmuch, there seems no reason why it should be difficult to do it to the extent that Rational Egoism prescribes: and, in fact, it seems to be continually done by ordinary persons in the case of amusements and pastimes of all kinds.

It is true that, as our desires cannot ordinarily be produced by an effort of will—though they can to some extent be repressed by it—if we started with no impulse except the desire of pleasure, it might seem difficult to execute the practical paradox of attaining pleasure by aiming at something else. Yet even in this hypothetical case the difficulty is less than it appears. For the reaction of our activities upon our emotional nature is such that we may commonly bring ourselves to take an interest in any end by concentrating our efforts upon its attainment. So that, even supposing a man to begin with absolute indifference to everything except his own pleasure, it does not follow that if he were convinced that the possession of other desires and impulses were necessary to the attainment of the greatest possible pleasure, he could not succeed in producing these. But this supposition is never actually realised. Every man, when he commences the task of systematising his conduct, whether on egoistic principles or any other, is conscious of a number of different impulses and tendencies within him, other than the mere desire for pleasure, which urge his will in particular directions, to the attainment of particular results: so that he has only to place himself under certain external influences, and these desires and impulses will begin to operate without any effort of will.

It is sometimes thought, however, that there is an important class of refined and elevated impulses with which the supremacy of self-love is in a peculiar way incompatible, such as the love of virtue, or personal affection, or the religious impulse to love and obey God. But at any rate in the common view of these impulses, this difficulty does not seem to be recognised. None of the school of moralists that followed Shaftesbury in contending that it is a man’s true interest to foster in himself strictly disinterested social affections, has noted any inherent incompatibility between the existence of these affections and the supremacy of rational self-love. And similarly Christian preachers who have commended the religious life as really the happiest, have not thought genuine religion irreconcilable with the conviction that each man’s own happiness is his most near and intimate concern.

Other persons, however, seem to carry the religious consciousness and the feeling of human affection to a higher stage of refinement, at which a stricter disinterestedness is exacted. They maintain that the essence of either feeling, in its best form, is absolute self-renunciation and self-sacrifice. And certainly these seem incompatible with self-love, however cautiously self-limiting. A man cannot both wish to secure his own happiness and be willing to lose it. And yet how if willingness to lose it is the true means of securing it? Can self-love not merely reduce indirectly its prominence in consciousness, but directly and unreservedly annihilate itself?

This emotional feat does not seem to me possible: and therefore I must admit that a man who embraces the principle of Rational Egoism cuts himself off from the special pleasure that attends this absolute sacrifice and abnegation of self. But however exquisite this may be, the pitch of emotional exaltation and refinement necessary to attain it is comparatively so rare, that it is scarcely included in men’s common estimate of happiness. I do not therefore think that an important objection to Rational Egoism can be based upon its incompatibility with this particular consciousness: nor that the common experience of mankind really sustains the view that the desire of one’s own happiness, if accepted as supreme and regulative, inevitably defeats its own aim through the consequent diminution and desiccation of the impulses and emotional capacities necessary to the attainment of happiness in a high degree; though it certainly shows a serious and subtle danger in this direction.

§ 3. There is, however, another way in which the habit of mind necessarily resulting from the continual practice of hedonistic comparison is sometimes thought to be unfavourable to the attainment of the hedonistic end: from a supposed incompatibility between the habit of reflectively observing and examining pleasure, and the capacity for experiencing pleasure in normal fulness and intensity. And it certainly seems important to consider what effect the continual attention to our pleasures, in order to observe their different degrees, is likely to have on these feelings themselves. The inquiry at first sight seems to lead to irreconcilable contradiction in our view of pleasure. For if pleasure only exists as it is felt, the more conscious we are of it, the more pleasure we have: and it would seem that the more our attention is directed towards it, the more fully we shall be conscious of it. On the other hand Hamilton’s statement that “knowledge and feeling” (cognition and pleasure or pain) are always “in a certain inverse proportion to each other,” corresponds prima facie to our common experience: for the purely cognitive element of consciousness seems to be neither pleasurable nor painful, so that the more our consciousness is occupied with cognition, the less room there seems to be for feeling.

This view, however, rests on the assumption that the total intensity of our consciousness is a constant quantity; so that when one element of it positively increases, the rest must positively—as well as relatively—diminish. And it does not appear to me that experience gives us any valid ground for making this general assumption: it rather seems that at certain times in our life intellect and feeling are simultaneously feeble; so that the same mental excitement may intensify both simultaneously.

Still it seems to be a fact that any very powerful feeling, reaching to the full intensity of which our consciousness is normally capable, is commonly diminished by a contemporaneous stroke of cognitive effort: hence it is a general difficulty in the way of exact observation of our emotions that the object cognised seems to shrink and dwindle in proportion as the cognitive regard grows keen and eager. How then are we to reconcile this with the proposition first laid down, that pleasure only exists as we are conscious of it? The answer seems to be that the mere consciousness of a present feeling—apart from any distinct representative elements—cannot diminish the feeling of which it is an indispensable and inseparable condition: but in introspective cognition we go beyond the present feeling, comparing and classifying it with remembered or imagined feelings; and the effort of representing and comparing these other feelings tends to decrease the mere presentative consciousness of the actual pleasure.

I conclude, then, that there is a real danger of diminishing pleasure by the attempt to observe and estimate it. But the danger seems only to arise in the case of very intense pleasures, and only if the attempt is made at the moment of actual enjoyment; and since the most delightful periods of life have frequently recurring intervals of nearly neutral feeling, in which the pleasures immediately past may be compared and estimated without any such detriment, I do not regard the objection founded on this danger as particularly important.

§ 4. More serious, in my opinion, are the objections urged against the possibility of performing, with definite and trustworthy results, the comprehensive and methodical comparison of pleasures and pains which the adoption of the Hedonistic standard involves. I cannot indeed doubt that men habitually compare pleasures and pains in respect of their intensity: that (e.g.) when we pass from one state of consciousness to another, or when in any way we are led to recall a state long past, we often unhesitatingly declare the present state to be more or less pleasant than the past: or that we declare some pleasant experiences to have been ‘worth,’ and others ‘not worth,’ the trouble it took to obtain them, or the pain that followed them. But, granting this, it may still be maintained (1) that this comparison as ordinarily made is both occasional and very rough, and that it can never be extended as systematic Hedonism requires, nor applied, with any accuracy, to all possible states however differing in quality; and (2) that as commonly practised it is liable to illusion, of which we can never measure the precise amount, while we are continually forced to recognise its existence. This illusion was even urged by Plato as a ground for distrusting the apparent affirmation of consciousness in respect of present pleasure. Plato thought that the apparent intensity of the coarser bodily pleasures was illusory; because these states of consciousness, being preceded by pain, were really only states of relief from pain, and so properly neutral, neither pleasant nor painful—examples of what I have called the hedonistic zero—only appearing pleasant from contrast with the preceding pain.

To this, however, it has been answered, that in estimating pleasure there is no conceivable appeal from the immediate decision of consciousness: that here the Phenomenal is the Real—there is no other real that we can distinguish from it. And this seems to me true, in so far as we are concerned only with the present state. But then—apart from the difficulty just noticed of observing a pleasure while it is felt without thereby diminishing it—it is obvious that in any estimate of its intensity we are necessarily comparing it with some other state. And this latter must generally be a representation, not an actual feeling: for though we can sometimes experience two or perhaps more pleasures at once, we are rarely in such cases able to compare them satisfactorily: for either the causes of the two mutually interfere, so that neither reaches its normal degree of intensity; or, more often, the two blend into one state of pleasant consciousness the elements of which we cannot estimate separately. But if it is therefore inevitable that one term at least in our comparison should be an imagined pleasure, we see that there is a possibility of error in any such comparison; for the imagined feeling may not adequately represent the pleasantness of the corresponding actual feeling. And in the egoistic comparison, the validity of which we are now discussing, the objects primarily to be compared are all represented elements of consciousness: for we are desiring to choose between two or more possible courses of conduct, and therefore to forecast future feelings.

Let us then examine more closely the manner in which this comparison is ordinarily performed, that we may see what positive grounds we have for mistrusting it.

In estimating for practical purposes the value of different pleasures open to us, we commonly trust most to our prospective imagination: we project ourselves into the future, and imagine what such and such a pleasure will amount to under hypothetical conditions. This imagination, so far as it involves conscious inference, seems to be chiefly determined by our own experience of past pleasures, which are usually recalled generically, or in large aggregates, though sometimes particular instances of important single pleasures occur to us as definitely remembered: but partly, too, we are influenced by the experience of others sympathetically appropriated: and here again we sometimes definitely refer to particular experiences which have been communicated to us by individuals, and sometimes to the traditional generalisations which are thought to represent the common experience of mankind.

Now it does not seem that such a process as this is likely to be free from error: and, indeed, no one pretends that it is. In fact there is scarcely any point upon which moralisers have dwelt with more emphasis than this, that man’s forecast of pleasure is continually erroneous. Each of us frequently recognises his own mistakes: and each still more often attributes to others errors unseen by themselves, arising either from misinterpretation of their own experience, or from ignorance or neglect of that of others.

How then are these errors to be eliminated? The obvious answer is that we must substitute for the instinctive, largely implicit, inference just described a more scientific process of reasoning: by deducing the probable degree of our future pleasure or pain in any given circumstances from inductive generalisations based on a sufficient number of careful observations of our own and others’ experience. We have then to ask, first, how far can each of us estimate accurately his own past experience of pleasures and pains? secondly, how far can this knowledge of the past enable him to forecast, with any certainty, the greatest happiness within his reach in the future? thirdly, how far can he appropriate, for the purposes of such forecasts, the past experience of others?

As regards the first of these questions, it must be remembered that it is not sufficient to know generally that we derive pleasures and pains from such and such sources; we require to know approximately the positive or negative degree of each feeling; unless we can form some quantitative estimate of them, it is futile to try to attain our greatest possible happiness—at least by an empirical method. We have therefore to compare quantitatively each pleasure as it occurs, or as recalled in imagination, with other imagined pleasures: and the question is, how far such comparisons can be regarded as trustworthy.

Now for my own part, when I reflect on my pleasures and pains, and endeavour to compare them in respect of intensity, it is only to a very limited extent that I can obtain clear and definite results from such comparisons, even taking each separately in its simplest form:—whether the comparison is made at the moment of experiencing one of the pleasures, or between two states of consciousness recalled in imagination. This is true even when I compare feelings of the same kind: and the vagueness and uncertainty increases, in proportion as the feelings differ in kind. Let us begin with sensual gratifications, which are thought to be especially definite and palpable. Suppose I am enjoying a good dinner: if I ask myself whether one kind of dish or wine gives me more pleasure than another, sometimes I can decide, but very often not. So if I reflect upon two modes of bodily exercise that I may have taken: if one has been in a marked degree agreeable or tedious, I take note of it naturally; but it is not natural to me to go further than this in judging of their pleasurableness or painfulness, and the attempt to do so does not seem to lead to any clear affirmation. And similarly of intellectual exercises and states of consciousness predominantly emotional: even when the causes and quality of the feelings compared are similar, it is only when the differences in pleasantness are great, that hedonistic comparison seems to yield any definite result. But when I try to arrange in a scale pleasures differing in kind; to compare (e.g.) labour with rest, excitement with tranquillity, intellectual exercise with emotional effusion, the pleasure of scientific apprehension with that of beneficent action, the delight of social expansion with the delight of Æsthetic reception; my judgment wavers and fluctuates far more, and in the majority of cases I cannot give any confident decision. And if this is the case with what Bentham calls ‘pure’—i.e. painless—pleasures, it is still more true of those even commoner states of consciousness, where a certain amount of pain or discomfort is mixed with pleasure, although the latter preponderates. If it is hard to say which of two different states of contentment was the greater pleasure, it seems still harder to compare a state of placid satisfaction with one of eager but hopeful suspense, or with triumphant conquest of painful obstacles. And perhaps it is still more difficult to compare pure pleasures with pure pains, and to say how much of the one kind of feeling we consider to be exactly balanced by a given amount of the other when they do not occur simultaneously: while an estimate of simultaneous feelings is, as we have seen, generally unsatisfactory from the mutual interference of their respective causes.

§ 5. But again, if these judgments are not clear and definite, still less are they consistent. I do not now mean that one man’s estimate of the value of any kind of pleasures differs from another’s: for we have assumed each sentient individual to be the final judge of the pleasantness and painfulness of his own feelings, and therefore this kind of discrepancy does not affect the validity of the judgments, and creates no difficulty until any one tries to appropriate the experience of others. But I mean that each individual’s judgment of the comparative value of his own pleasures is apt to be different at different times, though it relates to the same past experiences; and that this variation is a legitimate ground for distrusting the validity of any particular comparison.

The causes of this variation seem to be partly due to the nature of the represented feeling, and partly to the general state of the mind at the time of making the representation. To begin with the former: we find that different kinds of past pleasures and pains do not equally admit of being revived in imagination. Thus, generally speaking, our more emotional and more representative pains are more easily revived than the more sensational and presentative: for example, it is at this moment much more easy for me to imagine the discomfort of expectancy which preceded a past sea-sickness than the pain of the actual nausea: although I infer—from the recollection of judgments passed at the time—that the former pain was trifling compared with the latter. To this cause it seems due that past hardships, toils, and anxieties often appear pleasurable when we look back upon them, after some interval; for the excitement, the heightened sense of life that accompanied the painful struggle, would have been pleasurable if taken by itself; and it is this that we recall rather than the pain. In estimating pleasures the other cause of variation is more conspicuous; we are conscious of changes occasional or periodic in our estimate of them, depending upon changes in our mental or bodily condition. E.g. it is a matter of common remark with respect to the gratifications of appetite that we cannot estimate them adequately in the state of satiety, and that we are apt to exaggerate them in the state of desire. (I do not deny that intensity of antecedent desire intensifies the pleasure of fruition; so that this pleasure not only appears, as Plato thought, but actually is greater owing to the strength of the desire that has preceded. Still it is a matter of common experience that pleasures which have been intensely desired are often found to disappoint expectation.)

There seem to be no special states of aversion, determined by bodily causes, and related to certain pains as our appetites to their correspondent pleasures; but most persons are liable to be thrown by the prospect of certain pains into the state of passionate aversion which we call fear, and to be thereby led to estimate such pains as worse than they would be judged to be in a calmer mood.

Further, when feeling any kind of pain or uneasiness we seem liable to underrate pain of a very dissimilar kind: thus in danger we value repose, overlooking its ennui, while the tedium of security makes us imagine the mingled excitement of past danger as almost purely pleasurable. And again when we are absorbed in any particular pleasant activity, the pleasures attending dissimilar activities are apt to be contemned: they appear coarse or thin, as the case may be: and this constitutes a fundamental objection to noting the exact degree of a pleasure at the time of experiencing it. The eager desire, which often seems an indispensable element of the whole state of pleasurable activity, generally involves a similar bias: indeed any strong excitement, in which our thought is concentrated on a single result or group of results—whether it be the excitement of aversion, fear, hope, or suspense—tends to make us inappreciative of alien pleasures and pains alike. And, speaking more generally, we cannot imagine as very intense a pleasure of a kind that at the time of imagining it we are incapable of experiencing: as (e.g.) the pleasures of intellectual or bodily exercise at the close of a wearying day; or any emotional pleasure when our susceptibility to the special emotion is temporarily exhausted. On the other hand, it is not easy to guard against error, as philosophers have often thought, by making our estimate in a cool and passionless state. For there are many pleasures which require precedent desire, and even enthusiasm and highly wrought excitement, in order to be experienced in their full intensity; and it is not likely that we should appreciate these adequately in a state of perfect tranquillity.

§ 6. These considerations make clearer the extent of the assumptions of Empirical Quantitative Hedonism, stated in the preceding chapter: viz. (1) that our pleasures and pains have each a definite degree, and (2) that this degree is empirically cognisable. Firstly, if pleasure only exists as it is felt, the belief that every pleasure and pain has a definite intensive quantity or degree must remain an a priori assumption, incapable of positive empirical verification. For the pleasure can only have the degree as compared with other feelings, of the same or some different kind; but, generally speaking, since this comparison can only be made in imagination, it can only yield the hypothetical result that if certain feelings could be felt together, precisely as they have been felt separately, one would be found more desirable than the other in some definite ratio. If, then, we are asked what ground we have for regarding this imaginary result as a valid representation of reality, we cannot say more than that the belief in its general validity is irresistibly suggested in reflection on experience, and remains at any rate uncontradicted by experience.

But secondly, granting that each of our pleasures and pains has really a definite degree of pleasantness or painfulness, the question still remains whether we have any means of accurately measuring these degrees. Is there any reason to suppose that the mind is ever in such a state as to be a perfectly neutral and colourless medium for imagining all kinds of pleasures? Experience certainly shows us the frequent occurrence of moods in which we have an apparent bias for or against a particular kind of feeling. Is it not probable that there is always some bias of this kind? that we are always more in tune for some pleasures, more sensitive to some pains, than we are to others? It must, I think, be admitted that the exact cognition of the place of each kind of feeling in a scale of desirability, measured positively and negatively from a zero of perfect indifference, is at best an ideal to which we can never tell how closely we approximate. Still in the variations of our judgment and the disappointment of our expectations we have experience of errors of which we can trace the causes and allow for them, at least roughly; correcting in thought the defects of imagination. And since what we require for practical guidance is to estimate not individual past experiences, but the value of a kind of pleasure or pain, as obtained under certain circumstances or conditions; we can to some extent diminish the chance of error in this estimate by making a number of observations and imaginative comparisons, at different times and in different moods. In so far as these agree we may legitimately feel an increased confidence in the result: and in so far as they differ, we can at least reduce our possible error by striking an average of the different estimates. It will be evident, however, that such a method as this cannot be expected to yield more than a rough approximation to the supposed truth.

§ 7. We must conclude then that our estimate of the hedonistic value of any past pleasure or pain, is liable to an amount of error which we cannot calculate exactly; because the represented pleasantness of different feelings fluctuates and varies indefinitely with changes in the actual condition of the representing mind. We have now to observe that, for similar reasons, even supposing we could adequately allow for, and so exclude, this source of error in our comparison of past pleasures, it is liable to intrude again in arguing from the past to the future. For our capacity for particular pleasures may be about to change, or may have actually changed since the experiences that form the data of our calculation. We may have reached the point of satiety in respect of some of our past pleasures, or otherwise lost our susceptibility to them, owing to latent changes in our constitution: or we may have increased our susceptibility to pains inevitably connected with them: or altered conditions of life may have generated in us new desires and aversions, and given relative importance to new sources of happiness. Or any or all of these changes may be expected to occur, before the completion of the course of conduct upon which we are now deciding. The most careful estimate of a girl’s pleasures (supposing a girl gifted with the abnormal habit of reflection that would be necessary) would not much profit a young woman: and the hedonistic calculations of youth require modification as we advance in years.

It may be said, however, that no one, in making such a forecast, can or does rely entirely on his own experience: when endeavouring to estimate the probable effect upon his happiness of new circumstances and influences, untried rules of conduct and fashions of life, he always argues partly from the experience of others. This is, I think, generally true: but by including inferences from other men’s experience we inevitably introduce a new possibility of error; for such inference proceeds on the assumption of a similarity of nature among human beings, which is never exactly true, while we can never exactly know how much it falls short of the truth; though we have sufficient evidence of the striking differences between the feelings produced in different men by similar causes, to convince us that the assumption would in many cases be wholly misleading. On this ground Plato’s reason for claiming that the life of the Philosopher has more pleasure than that of the Sensualist is palpably inadequate. The philosopher, he argues, has tried both kinds of pleasure, sensual as well as intellectual, and prefers the delights of philosophic life; the sensualist ought therefore to trust his decision and follow his example. But who can tell that the philosopher’s constitution is not such as to render the enjoyments of the senses, in his case, comparatively feeble? while on the other hand the sensualist’s mind may not be able to attain more than a thin shadow of the philosopher’s delight. And so, generally speaking, if we are to be guided by another’s experience, we require to be convinced not only that he is generally accurate in observing, analysing, and comparing his sensations, but also that his relative susceptibility to the different kinds of pleasure and pain in question coincides with our own. If he is unpractised in introspective observation, it is possible that he may mistake even the external conditions of his own happiness; and so the communication of his experience may be altogether misleading. But however accurately he has analysed and determined the causes of his feelings, that similar causes would produce similar effects in us must always be uncertain. And the uncertainty is increased indefinitely if our adviser has to recall in memory out of a distant past some of the pleasures or pains to be compared. Thus in the ever-renewed controversy between Age and Youth, wisdom is not after all so clearly on the side of maturer counsels as it seems to be at first sight. When a youth is warned by his senior to abstain from some pleasure, on the ground of prudence, because it is not worth the possible pleasures that must be sacrificed for it and the future pains that it will entail; it is difficult for him to know how far the elder man can recall—even if he could once feel—the full rapture of the delight that he is asking the younger to renounce.

And further, this source of error besets us in a more extended and more subtle manner than has yet been noticed. For our sympathetic apprehension of alien experiences of pleasure and pain has been so continually exercised, in so many ways, during the whole of our life, both by actual observation and oral communication with other human beings, and through books and other modes of symbolic suggestion; that it is impossible to say how far it has unconsciously blended with our own experience, so as to colour and modify it when represented in memory. Thus we may easily overlook the discrepancy between our own experience and that of others, in respect of the importance of certain sources of pleasure and pain, if no sudden and striking disappointment of expectations forces it on our notice. Only with considerable care and attention can sympathetic persons separate their own real likes and dislikes from those of their associates: and we can never tell whether this separation has been completely effected.

But again: the practical inference from the past to the future is further complicated by the fact that we can alter ourselves. For it may be that our past experience has been greatly affected by our being not properly attuned to certain pleasures, as (e.g.) those of art, or study, or muscular exercise, or society, or beneficent action; or not duly hardened against certain sources of pain, such as toil, or anxiety, or abstinence from luxuries: and there may be within our power some process of training or hardening ourselves which may profoundly modify our susceptibilities. And this consideration is especially important,—and at the same time especially difficult to deal with,—when we attempt to appropriate the experience of another. For we may find that he estimates highly pleasures which we not only have never experienced at all, but cannot possibly experience without a considerable alteration of our nature. For example, the pleasures of the religious life, the raptures of prayer and praise and the devotion of the soul to God, are commonly thought to require Conversion or complete change of nature before they can be experienced. And in the same way the sacrifice of sensual inclination to duty is disagreeable to the non-moral man when he at first attempts it, but affords to the truly virtuous man a deep and strong delight. And similarly almost all the more refined intellectual and emotional pleasures require training and culture in order to be enjoyed; and since this training does not always succeed in producing any considerable degree of susceptibility, it may always be a matter of doubt for one from whom it would require the sacrifice of other pleasures, whether such sacrifice is worth making.

The foregoing considerations must, I think, seriously reduce our confidence in what I have called the Empirical-reflective method of Egoistic Hedonism. I do not conclude that we should reject it altogether: I am conscious that, in spite of all the difficulties that I have urged, I continue to make comparisons between pleasures and pains with practical reliance on their results. But I conclude that it would be at least highly desirable, with a view to the systematic direction of conduct, to control and supplement the results of such comparisons by the assistance of some other method: if we can find any on which we see reason to rely.

CHAPTER IV
OBJECTIVE HEDONISM AND COMMON SENSE

§ 1. Before we examine those methods of seeking one’s own happiness which are more remote from the empirical, it will be well to consider how far we may reasonably avoid the difficulties and uncertainties of the method of reflective comparison, by relying on the current opinions and accepted estimates of the value of different objects commonly sought as sources of pleasure.

It certainly seems more natural to men, at least in the main plan and ordering of their lives, to seek and consciously estimate the objective conditions and sources of happiness, rather than happiness itself; and it may plausibly be said that by relying on such estimates of objects we avoid the difficulties that beset the introspective method of comparing feelings: and that the common opinions as to the value of different sources of pleasure express the net result of the combined experience of mankind from generation to generation: in which the divergences due to the limitations of each individual’s experience, and to the differently tinged moods in which different estimates have been taken, have balanced and neutralised each other and so disappeared.

I do not wish to undervalue the guidance of common sense in our pursuit of happiness. I think, however, that when we consider these common opinions as premises for the deductions of systematic egoism, they must be admitted to be open to the following grave objections.

In the first place, Common Sense gives us only, at the best, an estimate true for an average or typical human being: and, as we have already seen, it is probable that any particular individual will be more or less divergent from this type. In any case, therefore, each person will have to correct the estimate of common opinion by the results of his own experience in order to obtain from it trustworthy guidance for his own conduct: and this process of correction, it would seem, must be involved in all the difficulties from which we are trying to escape. But, secondly, the experience of the mass of mankind is confined within limits too narrow for its results to be of much avail in the present inquiry. The majority of human beings spend most of their time in labouring to avert starvation and severe bodily discomfort: and the brief leisure that remains to them, after supplying the bodily needs of food, sleep, etc., is spent in ways determined rather by impulse, routine, and habit, than by a deliberate estimate of probable pleasure. It would seem, then, that the common sense to which we have here to refer can only be that of a minority of comparatively rich and leisured persons.

But again, we cannot tell that the mass of mankind, or any section of the mass, is not generally and normally under the influence of some of the causes of mal-observation previously noticed. We avoid the “idols of the cave” by trusting Common Sense, but what is to guard us against the “idols of the tribe”? Moreover, the common estimate of different sources of happiness seems to involve all the confusion of ideas and points of view, which in defining the empirical method of Hedonism we have taken some pains to eliminate. In the first place it does not distinguish between objects of natural desire and sources of experienced pleasure. Now we have seen (Book i. chap. iv.) that these two are not exactly coincident—indeed we find numerous examples of men who continue not only to feel but to indulge desires, the gratification of which they know by ample experience to be attended with more pain than pleasure. And therefore the current estimate of the desirability of objects of pursuit cannot be taken to express simply men’s experience of pleasure and pain: for men are apt to think desirable what they strongly desire, whether or not they have found it conducive to happiness on the whole: and so the common opinion will tend to represent a compromise between the average force of desires and the average experience of the consequences of gratifying them.

We must allow again for the intermingling of moral with purely hedonistic preferences in the estimate of common sense. For even when men definitely expect greater happiness from the course of conduct which they choose than from any other, it is often because they think it the right, or more excellent, or more noble course; making, more or less unconsciously, the assumption (which we shall presently have to consider) that the morally best action will prove to be also the most conducive to the agent’s happiness. And a similar assumption seems to be made—without adequate warrant—as regards merely Æsthetic preferences.

Again, the introduction of the moral and Æsthetic points of view suggests the following doubt:—Are we to be guided by the preferences which men avow, or by those which their actions would lead us to infer? On the one hand, we cannot doubt that men often, from weakness of character, fail to seek what they sincerely believe will give them most pleasure in the long-run: on the other hand, as a genuine preference for virtuous or refined pleasure is a mark of genuine virtue or refined taste, men who do not really feel such preference are unconsciously or consciously influenced by a desire to gain credit for it, and their express estimate of pleasures is thus modified and coloured.

§ 2. But, even if we had no doubt on general grounds that Common Sense would prove our best guide in the pursuit of happiness, we should still be perplexed by finding its utterances on this topic very deficient in clearness and consistency. I do not merely mean that they are different in different ages and countries—that we might explain as due to variations in the general conditions of human life—: but that serious conflicts and ambiguities are found if we consider only the current common sense of our own age and country. We can make a list of sources of happiness apparently recommended by an overwhelming consensus of current opinion: as health, wealth, friendship and family affections, fame and social position, power, interesting and congenial occupation and amusement,—including the gratification, in some form, of the love of knowledge, and of those refined, partly sensual, partly emotional, susceptibilities which we call Æsthetic.[121] But if we inquire into the relative value of these objects of common pursuit, we seem to get no clear answer from Common Sense—unless, perhaps, it would be generally agreed that health ought to be paramount to all other secondary ends: though even on this point we could not infer general agreement from observation of the actual conduct of mankind. Nay, even as regards the positive estimate of these sources of happiness, we find on closer examination that the supposed consensus is much less clear than it seemed at first. Not only are there numerous and important bodies of dissidents from the current opinions: but the very same majority, the same Common Sense of Mankind that maintains these opinions, is found in a singular and unexpected manner to welcome and approve the paradoxes of these dissidents. Men show a really startling readiness to admit that the estimates of happiness which guide them in their ordinary habits and pursuits are erroneous and illusory; and that from time to time the veil is, as it were, lifted, and the error and illusion made manifest.

For, first, men seem to attach great value to the ample gratification of bodily appetites and needs: the wealthier part of mankind spend a considerable amount of money and forethought upon the means of satisfying these in a luxurious manner: and though they do not often deliberately sacrifice health to this gratification—common sense condemns that as irrational—still one may say that they are habitually courageous in pressing forward to the very verge of this imprudence.

And yet the same people are fond of saying that “hunger is the best sauce,” and that “temperance and labour will make plain food more delightful than the most exquisite products of the culinary art.” And they often argue with perfect sincerity that the rich have really no advantage, or scarcely any advantage, over the comparatively poor, in respect of these pleasures; for habit soon renders the more luxurious provision for the satisfaction of their acquired needs no more pleasant to the rich than the appeasing of his more primitive appetites is to the poor man. And the same argument is often extended to all the material comforts that wealth can purchase. It is often contended that habit at once renders us indifferent to these while they are enjoyed, and yet unable to dispense with them without annoyance: so that the pleasures of the merely animal life are no greater to the rich than to the poor, but only more insecure. And from this there is but a short step to the conclusion, that wealth, in the pursuit of which most men agree in concentrating their efforts, and on the attainment of which all congratulate each other,—wealth, for which so many risk their health, shorten their lives, reduce their enjoyments of domestic life, and sacrifice the more refined pleasures of curiosity and art,—is really a very doubtful gain, in the majority of cases; because the cares and anxieties which it entails balance, for most men, the slight advantage of the luxuries which it purchases.[122]

And similarly, although social rank and status is, in England, an object of passionate pursuit, yet it is continually said, with general approval, that it is of no intrinsic value as a means of happiness; that though the process of ascending from a lower grade to a higher is perhaps generally agreeable, and the process of descending from a higher to a lower certainly painful, yet permanent existence on the loftier level is no more pleasant than on the humbler; that happiness is to be found as easily in a cottage as in a palace (if not, indeed, more easily in the cottage): and so forth.

Still more trite are the commonplaces as to the emptiness and vanity of the satisfaction to be derived from Fame and Reputation. The case of posthumous fame, indeed, is a striking instance of the general proposition before laid down, that the commonly accepted ends of action are determined partly by the average force of desires that are not directed towards pleasure, nor conformed to experiences of pleasure. For posthumous fame seems to rank pretty high among the objects that common opinion regards as good or desirable for the individual: and the pursuit of it is not ordinarily stigmatised as contrary to prudence, even if it leads a man to sacrifice other important sources of happiness to a result of which he never expects to be actually conscious. Yet the slightest reflection shows such a pursuit to be prima facie irrational,[123] from an egoistic point of view; and every moraliser has found this an obvious and popular topic. The actual consciousness of present fame is no doubt very delightful to most persons: still the moraliser does not find it difficult to maintain that even this is attended with such counterbalancing disadvantages as render its hedonistic value very doubtful.

Again, the current estimate of the desirability of Power is tolerably high, and perhaps the more closely and analytically we examine the actual motives of men, the more widespread and predominant its pursuit will appear: for many men seem to seek wealth, knowledge, even reputation, as a means to the attainment of power, rather than for their own sakes or with a view to other pleasures. And yet men assent willingly when they are told that the pursuit of power, as of fame, is prompted by a vain ambition, never satisfied, but only rendered more uneasy by such success as is possible for it: that the anxieties which attend not only the pursuit but the possession of power, and the jealousies and dangers inseparable from the latter, far outweigh its pleasures.

Society of some sort no one can deny to be necessary to human happiness: but still the kind and degree of social intercourse which is actually sought by the more wealthy and leisured portion of the community, with no little expenditure of time, trouble, and means, is often declared to yield a most thin and meagre result of pleasure.

We find, no doubt, great agreement among modern moralisers as to the importance of the exercise of the domestic affections as a means of happiness: and this certainly seems to have a prominent place in the plan of life of the majority of mankind. And yet it may fairly be doubted whether men in general do value domestic life very highly, apart from the gratification of sexual passion. Certainly whenever any part of civilised society is in such a state that men can freely indulge this passion and at the same time avoid the burden of a family, without any serious fear of social disapprobation, celibacy tends to become common: it has even become so common as to excite the grave anxiety of legislators. And though such conduct has always been disapproved by common sense, it seems to be rather condemned as anti-social than as imprudent.

Thus our examination shows great instability and uncertainty in the most decisive judgments of common sense; since, as I have said, bodily comfort and luxury, wealth, fame, power, society are the objects which common opinion seems most clearly and confidently to recommend as sources of pleasure. For though the pleasures derived from Art and the contemplation of the beautiful in Nature, and those of curiosity and the exercise of the intellect generally, are highly praised, it is difficult to formulate a “common opinion” in respect of them, since the high estimates often set upon them seem to express the real experience of only small minorities. And though these have persuaded the mass of mankind, or that portion of it which is possessed of leisure, to let Culture be regarded as an important source of happiness; they can scarcely be said to have produced any generally accepted opinion as to its importance in comparison with the other sources before mentioned, the pleasures of which are more genuinely appreciated by the majority; still less as to the relative value of different elements of this culture.

But even supposing the consensus, in respect of sources of happiness, were far more complete and clear than impartial reflection seems to show, its value would still be considerably impaired by the dissent of important minorities, which we have not yet noticed. For example, many religious persons regard all mundane pleasures as mean and trifling; so full of vanity and emptiness that the eager pursuit of them is only possible through ever-renewed illusion, leading to ever-repeated disappointment. And this view is shared by not a few reflective persons who have no religious bias: as is evident from the numerous adherents that Pessimism has won in recent times. Indeed a somewhat similar judgment, on the value of the ordinary objects of human pursuit, has been passed by many philosophers who have not been pessimists: and when we consider that it is the philosopher’s especial business to reflect with care and precision on the facts of consciousness, we shall hesitate, in any dispute between philosophers and the mass of mankind, to let our conclusion be determined by merely counting heads. On the other hand, as has been already observed, the philosopher’s susceptibilities and capacities of feeling do not fairly represent those of humanity in general: and hence if he ventures to erect the results of his individual experience into a universal standard, he is likely to overrate some pleasures and underrate others. Perhaps the most convincing illustrations of this are furnished by thinkers not of the idealist or transcendental type, but professed Hedonists, such as Epicurus and Hobbes. We cannot accept as fair expressions of the ordinary experience of the human race either Epicurus’s identification of painlessness with the highest degree of pleasure, or Hobbes’s asseveration that the gratifications of curiosity “far exceed in intensity all carnal delights.” Thus we seem to be in this dilemma: the mass of mankind, to whose common opinion we are naturally referred for catholically authoritative beliefs respecting the conditions of happiness, are deficient in the faculty or the habit of observing and recording their experience: and usually, in proportion as a man is, by nature and practice, a better observer, the phenomena that he has to observe are more and more divergent from the ordinary type.

§ 3. On the whole, it must, I think, be admitted that the Hedonistic method cannot be freed from inexactness and uncertainty by appealing to the judgments of common sense respecting the sources of happiness. At the same time I would not exaggerate the difficulty of combining these into a tolerably coherent body of probable doctrine, not useless for practical guidance. For first, it must be observed, that it is only occasionally and to a limited extent that these commonly commended sources of happiness come into competition with one another and are presented as alternatives. For example, the pursuit of wealth often leads also to power (besides the power that lies in wealth) and to reputation: and again, these objects of desire can usually be best attained—as far as it is in our power to attain them at all—by employment which in itself gives the pleasure that normally attends energetic exercise of one’s best faculties: and this congenial employment is not incompatible with adequate exercise of the affections, social and domestic; nor with cultivated amusement (which must always be carefully limited in amount if it is to be really amusing). And no one doubts that to carry either employment or amusement to a degree that injures health involves generally a sacrifice of happiness, no less than over-indulgence in sensual gratifications.

And as for the philosophical or quasi-philosophical paradoxes as to the illusoriness of sensual enjoyments, wealth, power, fame, etc., we may explain the widespread acceptance which these find by admitting a certain general tendency to exaggeration in the common estimates of such objects of desire, which from time to time causes a reaction and an equally excessive temporary depreciation of them. As we saw (chap. iii.) it is natural for men to value too highly the absent pleasures for which they hope and long: power and fame, for example, are certainly attended with anxieties and disgusts which are not foreseen when they are represented in longing imagination: yet it may still be true that they bring to most men a clear balance of happiness on the whole. It seems clear, again, that luxury adds less to the ordinary enjoyment of life than most men struggling with penury suppose: there are special delights attending the hard-earned meal, and the rarely-recurring amusement, which must be weighed against the profuser pleasures that the rich can command: so that we may fairly conclude that increase of happiness is very far from keeping pace with increase of wealth. On the other hand, when we take into account all the pleasures of Culture, Power, Fame, and Beneficence, and still more the security that wealth gives against the pains of privation and the anxieties of penury—for the owner himself and those whom he loves—we can hardly doubt that increase of wealth brings on the average some increase of happiness: at least until a man reaches an income beyond that of the great majority in any actual community. Thus on the whole it would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that, while it is extravagant to affirm that happiness is “equally distributed through all ranks and callings,” it is yet more equally distributed than the aspect of men’s external circumstances would lead us to infer: especially considering the importance of the pleasures that attend the exercise of the affections. Again, common sense is quite prepared to recognise that there are persons of peculiar temperament to whom the ordinary pleasures of life are really quite trifling in comparison with more refined enjoyments: and also that men generally are liable to fall, for certain periods, under the sway of absorbing impulses, which take them out of the range within which the judgments of common sense are even broadly and generally valid. No one (e.g.) expects a lover to care much for anything except the enjoyments of love; nor considers that an enthusiast sacrifices happiness in making everything give way to his hobby.

In fact we may say that common sense scarcely claims to provide more than rather indefinite general rules, which no prudent man should neglect without giving himself a reason for doing so. Such reasons may either be drawn from one’s knowledge of some peculiarities in one’s nature, or from the experience of others whom one has ground for believing to be more like oneself than the average of mankind are. Still, as we saw, there is considerable risk of error in thus appropriating the special experience of other individuals: and, in short, it does not appear that by any process of this kind,—either by appealing to the common opinion of the many, or to that of cultivated persons, or to that of those whom we judge most to resemble ourselves,—we can hope to solve with precision or certainty the problems of egoistic conduct.

The question then remains, whether any general theory can be attained of the causes of pleasure and pain so certain and practically applicable that we may by its aid rise above the ambiguities and inconsistencies of common or sectarian opinion, no less than the shortcomings of the empirical-reflective method, and establish the Hedonistic art of life on a thoroughly scientific basis. To the consideration of this question I shall proceed in the last chapter of this book: but before entering upon it, I wish to examine carefully a common belief as to the means of attaining happiness which—though it hardly claims to rest upon a scientific basis—is yet generally conceived by those who hold it to have a higher degree of certainty than most of the current opinions that we have been examining. This is the belief that a man will attain the greatest happiness open to him by the performance of his Duty as commonly recognised and prescribed—except so far as he may deviate from this standard in obedience to a truer conception of the conduct by which universal good is to be realised or promoted.[124] The special importance of this opinion to a writer on Morals renders it desirable to reserve our discussion of it for a separate chapter.

§ 1. The belief in the connexion of Happiness with Duty is one to which we find a general tendency among civilised men, at least after a certain stage in civilisation has been reached. But it is doubtful whether it would be affirmed, among ourselves, as a generalisation from experience, and not rather as a matter of direct Divine Revelation, or an inevitable inference from the belief that the world is governed by a perfectly Good and Omnipotent Being. To examine thoroughly the validity of the latter belief is one of the most important tasks that human reason can attempt: but involving as it does an exhaustive inquiry into the evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, it could hardly be included within the scope of the present treatise.[125] Here, then, I shall only consider the coincidence of Duty and Happiness in so far as it is maintained by arguments drawn from experience and supposed to be realised in our present earthly life. Perhaps, as so restricted, the coincidence can hardly be said to be “currently believed”: indeed it may be suggested that the opposite belief is implied in the general admission of the necessity of rewards and punishments in a future state, in order to exhibit and realise completely the moral government of the world. But reflection will show that this implication is not necessary; for it is possible to hold that even here virtue is always rewarded and vice punished, so far as to make the virtuous course of action always the most prudent; while yet the rewards and punishments are not sufficient to satisfy our sense of justice. Admitting that the virtuous man is often placed on earth in circumstances so adverse that his life is not as happy as that of many less virtuous; it is still possible to maintain that by virtue he will gain the maximum of happiness that can be gained under these circumstances, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. And this view has certainly been held by moralists of reputation on grounds drawn from actual experience of human life; and seems often to be confidently put forward on similar grounds by popular preachers and moralisers. It appears therefore desirable to subject this opinion to a careful and impartial examination. In conducting this examination, at the present stage of our inquiry, we shall have to use the received notions of Duty without further definition or analysis: but it is commonly assumed by those whose view we are to examine that these conceptions—as they are found in the moral consciousness of ordinary well-meaning persons—are at least approximately valid and trustworthy; and the preceding chapters will have fully shown that the generalisations of Hedonism must be established, if at all, by large considerations and decisive preponderances, and that it would be idle in considering a question of this kind to take account of slight differences, and to pretend to weigh in our mental scales comparatively small portions of happiness.[126]

§ 2. Accepting, then, the common division[127] of duties into self-regarding and social, it may be conceded that as far as the first are concerned the view that we are examining is not likely to provoke any controversy: for by ‘duties towards oneself’ are commonly meant acts that tend directly or indirectly to promote one’s happiness. We may therefore confine our attention to the social department of Duty, and consider whether by observing the moral rules that prescribe certain modes of behaviour towards others we shall always tend to secure the greatest balance of happiness to ourselves.

Here it will be convenient to adopt with some modification the terminology of Bentham; and to regard the pleasures consequent on conformity to moral rules, and the pains consequent on their violation, as the ‘sanctions’ of these rules. These ‘sanctions’ we may classify as External and Internal. The former class will include both ‘Legal Sanctions,’ or penalties inflicted by the authority, direct or indirect, of the sovereign; and ‘Social Sanctions,’ which are either the pleasures that may be expected from the approval and goodwill of our fellow-men generally, and the services that they will be prompted to render both by this goodwill and by their appreciation of the usefulness of good conduct, or the annoyance and losses that are to be feared from their distrust and dislike. The internal sanctions of duty—so far as it diverges from the conduct which self-interest apart from morality would dictate—will lie in the pleasurable emotion attending virtuous action, or in the absence of remorse, or will result more indirectly from some effect on the mental constitution of the agent produced by the maintenance of virtuous dispositions and habits. This classification is important for our present purpose, chiefly because the systems of rules to which these different sanctions are respectively attached may be mutually conflicting. The Positive Morality of any community undergoes development, and is thus subject to changes which affect the consciences of the few before they are accepted by the many; so that the rules at any time sustained by the strongest social sanctions may not only fall short of, but even clash with, the intuitions of those members of the community who have most moral insight. For similar reasons Law and Positive Morality may be at variance, in details. For though a law could not long exist, which it was universally thought wrong to obey; there may easily be laws commanding conduct that is considered immoral by some more or less enlightened fraction of the community, especially by some sect or party that has a public opinion of its own: and any individual may be so much more closely connected with this fraction than with the rest of the community, that the social sanction may in his case practically operate against the legal.

This conflict of sanctions is of great importance in considering whether these sanctions, as at present capable of being foreseen, are sufficient in all cases to determine a rational egoist to the performance of social duty: for the more stress we lay on either the legal or the social sanctions of moral conduct, the greater difficulty we shall have in proving the coincidence of duty and self-interest in the exceptional cases in which we find these sanctions arrayed against what we conceive to be duty.

But even if we put these cases out of sight, it still seems clear that the external sanctions of morality alone are not always sufficient to render immoral conduct also imprudent. We must indeed admit that in an even tolerably well-ordered society—i.e. in an ordinary civilised community in its normal condition—all serious open violation of law is contrary to prudence, unless it is an incident in a successful process of violent revolution: and further, that violent revolutions would very rarely—perhaps never—be made by a combination of persons, all perfectly under the control of enlightened self-love; on account of the general and widespread destruction of security and of other means of happiness which such disturbances inevitably involve. Still, so long as actual human beings are not all rational egoists, such times of disorder will be liable to occur: and we cannot say that under existing circumstances it is a clear universal precept of Rational Self-love that a man should “seek peace and ensue it”; since the disturbance of political order may offer to a cool and skilful person, who has the art of fishing in troubled waters, opportunities of gaining wealth, fame, and power, far beyond what he could hope for in peaceful times. In short, though we may admit that a society composed entirely of rational egoists would, when once organised, tend to remain in a stable and orderly condition, it does not follow that any individual rational egoist will always be on the side of order in any existing community.[128]

But at any rate, in the most orderly societies with which we are acquainted, the administration of law and justice is never in so perfect a state as to render secret crimes always acts of folly, on the score of the legal penalties attached to them. For however much these may outweigh the advantages of crime, cases must inevitably occur in which the risk of discovery is so small, that on a sober calculation the almost certain gain will more than compensate for the slight chance of the penalty. And finally, in no community is the law actually in so perfect a state that there are not certain kinds of flagrantly anti-social conduct which slip through its meshes and escape legal penalties altogether, or incur only such legal penalties as are outweighed by the profit of law-breaking.

§ 3. Let us proceed, then, to consider how far the social sanction in such cases supplies the defects of the legal. No doubt the hope of praise and liking and services from one’s fellow-men, and the fear of forfeiting these and incurring instead aversion, refusal of aid, and social exclusion, are considerations often important enough to determine the rational egoist to law-observance, even in default of adequate legal penalties. Still these sanctions are liable to fail just where the legal penalties are defective; social no less than legal penalties are evaded by secret crimes; and in cases of criminal revolutionary violence, the efficacy of the social sanction is apt to be seriously impaired by the party spirit enlisted on the side of the criminal. For it has to be observed that the force of the social sanction diminishes very rapidly, in proportion to the number of dissidents from the common opinion that awards it. Disapprobation that is at once intense and quite universal would be so severe a penalty as perhaps to outweigh any imaginable advantages; since it seems impossible for a human being to live happily, whatever other goods he may enjoy, without the kindly regards of some of his fellows: and so, in contemplating the conventional portrait of the tyrant, who is represented as necessarily suspicious of those nearest him, even of the members of his own family, we feel prepared to admit that such a life must involve the extreme of unhappiness. But when we turn to contemplate the actual tyrannical usurpers, wicked statesmen, successful leaders of unwarranted rebellion, and, speaking generally, the great criminals whose position raises them out of the reach of legal penalties, it does not appear that the moral odium under which they lie must necessarily count for much in an egoistic calculation of the gain and loss resulting from their conduct. For this disesteem is only expressed by a portion of the community: and its utterance is often drowned in the loud-voiced applause of the multitude whose admiration is largely independent of moral considerations. Nor are there wanting philosophers and historians whose judgment manifests a similar independence.

It seems, then, impossible to affirm that the external sanctions of men’s legal duties will always be sufficient to identify duty with interest. And a corresponding assertion would be still more unwarranted in respect of moral duties not included within the sphere of Law. In saying this, I am fully sensible of the force of what may be called the Principle of Reciprocity, by which certain utilitarians have endeavoured to prove the coincidence of any individual’s interest with his social duties. Virtues (they say) are qualities either useful or directly agreeable to others: thus they either increase the market value of the virtuous man’s services, and cause others to purchase them at a higher rate and to allot to him more dignified and interesting functions; or they dispose men to please him, both out of gratitude and in order to enjoy the pleasures of his society in return: and again—since man is an imitative animal—the exhibition of these qualities is naturally rewarded by a reciprocal manifestation of them on the part of others, through the mere influence of example. I do not doubt that the prospect of these advantages is an adequate motive for cultivating many virtues and avoiding much vice. Thus on such grounds a rational egoist will generally be strict and punctual in the fulfilment of all his engagements, and truthful in his assertions, in order to win the confidence of other men; and he will be zealous and industrious in his work, in order to obtain gradually more important and therefore more honourable and lucrative employment; and he will control such of his passions and appetites as are likely to interfere with his efficiency; and will not exhibit violent anger or use unnecessary harshness even towards servants and subordinates; and towards his equals and superiors in rank he will be generally polite and complaisant and good-humoured, and prompt to show them all such kindness as costs but little in proportion to the pleasure it gives. Still, reflection seems to show that the conduct recommended by this line of reasoning does not really coincide with moral duty. For, first, what one requires for social success is that one should appear, rather than be, useful to others: and hence this motive will not restrain one from doing secret harm to others, or even from acting openly in a way that is really harmful, though not perceived to be so. And again, a man is not useful to others by his virtue only, but sometimes rather by his vice; or more often by a certain admixture of unscrupulousness with his good and useful qualities. And further, morality prescribes the performance of duties equally towards all, and that we should abstain as far as possible from harming any: but on the principle of Reciprocity we should exhibit our useful qualities chiefly towards the rich and powerful, and abstain from injuring those who can retaliate; while we may reasonably omit our duties to the poor and feeble, if we find a material advantage in so doing, unless they are able to excite the sympathy of persons who can harm us. Moreover, some vices (as for example, many kinds of sensuality and extravagant luxury) do not inflict any immediate or obvious injury on any individual, though they tend in the long-run to impair the general happiness: hence few persons find themselves strongly moved to check or punish this kind of mischief.

Doubtless in the last-mentioned cases the mere disrepute inevitably attaching to open immorality is an important consideration. But I do not think that this will be seriously maintained to be sufficient always to turn the scales of prudence against vice—at least by any one who has duly analysed the turbid and fluctuating streams of social opinion upon which the good or ill repute of individuals mainly depends, and considered the conflicting and divergent elements that they contain. Many moralists have noticed the discrepancy in modern Europe between the Law of Honour (or the more important rules maintained by the social sanction of polite persons) and the morality professed in society at large. This is, however, by no means the only instance of a special code, divergent in certain points from the moral rules generally accepted in the community where it exists. Most religious sects and parties, and probably the majority of trades and professions, exhibit this phenomenon in some degree. I do not mean merely that special rules of behaviour are imposed upon members of each profession, corresponding to their special social functions and relations: I mean that a peculiar moral opinion is apt to grow up, conflicting to a certain extent with the opinion of the general public. The most striking part of this divergence consists generally in the approval or excusal of practices disapproved by the current morality: as (e.g.) licence among soldiers, bribery among politicians in certain ages and countries, unveracity of various degrees among priests and advocates, fraud in different forms among tradesmen. In such cases there are generally strong natural inducements to disobey the stricter rule (in fact it would seem to be to the continual pressure of these inducements that the relaxation of the rule has been due): while at the same time the social sanction is weakened to such an extent that it is sometimes hard to say whether it outweighs a similar force on the other side. For a man who, under these circumstances, conforms to the stricter rule, if he does not actually meet with contempt and aversion from those of his calling, is at least liable to be called eccentric and fantastic: and this is still more the case if by such conformity he foregoes advantages not only to himself but to his relatives or friends or party. Very often this professional or sectarian excusal of immorality of which we are speaking is not so clear and explicit as to amount to the establishment of a rule, conflicting with the generally received rule: but is still sufficient to weaken indefinitely the social sanction in favour of the latter. And, apart from these special divergences, we may say generally that in most civilised societies there are two different degrees of positive morality, both maintained in some sort by common consent; a stricter code being publicly taught and avowed, while a laxer set of rules is privately admitted as the only code which can be supported by social sanctions of any great force. By refusing to conform to the stricter code a man is often not liable to incur exclusion from social intercourse, or any material hindrance to professional advancement, or even serious dislike on the part of any of the persons whose society he will most naturally seek; and under such circumstances the mere loss of a certain amount of reputation is not likely to be felt as a very grave evil, except by persons peculiarly sensitive to the pleasures and pains of reputation. And there would seem to be many men whose happiness does not depend on the approbation or disapprobation of the moralist—and of mankind in general in so far as they support the moralist—to such an extent as to make it prudent for them to purchase this praise by any great sacrifice of other goods.

§ 4. We must conclude, then, that if the conduct prescribed to the individual by the avowedly accepted morality of the community of which he is a member, can be shown to coincide with that to which Rational Self-love would prompt, it must be, in many cases, solely or chiefly on the score of the internal sanctions. In considering the force of these sanctions, I shall eliminate those pleasures and pains which lie in the anticipation of rewards and punishments in a future life: for as we are now supposing the calculations of Rational Egoism to be performed without taking into account any feelings that are beyond the range of experience, it will be more consistent to exclude also the pleasurable or painful anticipations of such feelings.

Let us, then, contemplate by itself the satisfaction that attends the performance of duty as such (without taking into consideration any ulterior consequences), and the pain that follows on its violation. After the discussions of the two preceding chapters I shall not of course attempt to weigh exactly these pleasures and pains against others; but I see no empirical grounds for believing that such feelings are always sufficiently intense to turn the balance of prospective happiness in favour of morality. This will hardly be denied if the question is raised in respect of isolated acts of duty. Let us take an extreme case, which is yet quite within the limits of experience. The call of duty has often impelled a soldier or other public servant, or the adherent of a persecuted religion, to face certain and painful death, under circumstances where it might be avoided with little or no loss even of reputation. To prove such conduct always reasonable from an egoistic point of view, we have to assume that, in all cases where such a duty could exist and be recognised, the mere pain[129] that would follow on evasion of duty would be so great as to render the whole remainder of life hedonistically worthless. Surely such an assumption would be paradoxical and extravagant. Nothing that we know of the majority of persons in any society would lead us to conclude that their moral feelings taken alone form so preponderant an element of their happiness. And a similar conclusion seems irresistible even in more ordinary cases, where a man is called on to give up, for virtue’s sake, not life, but a considerable share of the ordinary sources of human happiness. Can we say that all, or even most, men are so constituted that the satisfactions of a good conscience are certain to repay them for such sacrifices, or that the pain and loss involved in them would certainly be outweighed by the remorse that would follow the refusal to make them?[130]

Perhaps, however, so much as this has scarcely ever been expressly maintained. What Plato in his Republic and other writers on the same side have rather tried to prove, is not that at any particular moment duty will be, to every one on whom it may devolve, productive of more happiness than any other course of conduct; but rather that it is every one’s interest on the whole to choose the life of the virtuous man. But even this it is very difficult even to render probable: as will appear, I think, if we examine the lines of reasoning by which it is commonly supported.

To begin with Plato’s argument. He represents the soul of the virtuous man as a well-ordered polity of impulses, in which every passion and appetite is duly obedient to the rightful sovereignty of reason, and operates only within the limits laid down by the latter. He then contrasts the tranquil peace of such a mind with the disorder of one where a succession of baser impulses, or some ruling passion, lords it over reason: and asks which is the happiest, even apart from external rewards and punishments. But we may grant all that Plato claims, and yet be no further advanced towards the solution of the question before us. For here the issue does not lie between Reason and Passion, but rather—in Butler’s language—between Rational Self-love and Conscience. We are supposing the Egoist to have all his impulses under control, and are only asking how this control is to be exercised. Now we have seen that the regulation and organisation of life best calculated to attain the end of self-interest appears prima facie divergent at certain points from that to which men in general are prompted by a sense of duty. In order to maintain Plato’s position it has to be shown that this appearance is false; and that a system of self-government, which under certain circumstances leads us to pain, loss, and death, is still that which self-interest requires. It can scarcely be said that our nature is such that only this anti-egoistic kind of regulation is possible; that the choice lies between this and none at all. It is easy to imagine a rational egoist, strictly controlling each of his passions and impulses—including his social sentiments—within such limits that its indulgence should not involve the sacrifice of some greater gratification: and experience seems to show us many examples of persons who at least approximate as closely to this type as any one else does to the ideal of the orthodox moralist. Hence if the regulation of Conscience be demonstrably the best means to the individual’s happiness, it must be because the order kept by Self-love involves a sacrifice of pleasure on the whole, as compared with the order kept by Conscience. And if this is the case, it would seem that it can only be on account of the special emotional pleasure attending the satisfaction of the moral sentiments, or special pain or loss of happiness consequent on their repression and violation.

Before, however, we proceed further, a fundamental difficulty must be removed which has probably some time since suggested itself to the reader. If a man thinks it reasonable to seek his own interest, it is clear that he cannot himself disapprove of any conduct that comes under this principle or approve of the opposite. And hence it may appear that the pleasures and pains of conscience cannot enter into the calculation whether a certain course of conduct is or is not in accordance with Rational Egoism, because they cannot attach themselves in the egoist’s mind to any modes of action which have not been already decided, on other grounds, to be reasonable or the reverse. And this is to a certain extent true; but we must here recur to the distinction (indicated in Book i. chap. iii. § 1) between the general impulse to do what we believe to be reasonable, and special sentiments of liking or aversion for special kinds of conduct, independent of their reasonableness. In the moral sentiments as they exist in ordinary men, these two kinds of feeling are indistinguishably blended; because it is commonly believed that the rules of conduct to which the common moral sentiments are attached are in some way or other reasonable. We can, however, conceive the two separated: and in fact, as was before said, we have experience of such separation whenever a man is led by a process of thought to adopt a different view of morality from that in which he has been trained; for in such a case there will always remain in his mind some quasi-moral likings and aversions, no longer sustained by his deliberate judgment of right and wrong. And thus there is every reason to believe that most men, however firmly they might adopt the principles of Egoistic Hedonism, would still feel sentiments prompting to the performance of social duty, as commonly recognised in their society, independently of any conclusion that the actions prompted by such sentiments were reasonable and right. For such sentiments would always be powerfully supported by the sympathy of others, and their expressions of praise and blame, liking and aversion: and since it is agreed that the conduct commonly recognised as virtuous is generally coincident with that which enlightened self-love would dictate, a rational egoist’s habits of conduct will be such as naturally to foster these (for him) ‘quasi-moral’ feelings. The question therefore arises—not whether the egoist should cherish and indulge these sentiments up to a certain point, which all would admit—but whether he can consistently encourage them to grow to such a pitch that they will always prevail over the strongest opposing considerations; or, to put it otherwise, whether prudence requires him to give them the rein and let them carry him whither they will. We have already seen ground for believing that Rational Self-love will best attain its end by limiting its conscious operation and allowing free play to disinterested impulses: can we accept the further paradox that it is reasonable for it to abdicate altogether its supremacy over some of these impulses?

On a careful consideration of the matter, it will appear, I think, that this abdication of self-love is not really a possible occurrence in the mind of a sane person, who still regards his own interest as the reasonable ultimate end of his actions. Such a man may, no doubt, resolve that he will devote himself unreservedly to the practice of virtue, without any particular consideration of what appears to him to be his interest: he may perform a series of acts in accordance with this resolution, and these may gradually form in him strong habitual tendencies to acts of a similar kind. But it does not seem that these habits of virtue can ever become so strong as to gain irresistible control over a sane and reasonable will. When the occasion comes on which virtue demands from such a man an extreme sacrifice—the imprudence of which must force itself upon his notice, however little he may be in the habit of weighing his own pleasures and pains—he must always be able to deliberate afresh, and to act (as far as the control of his will extends) without reference to his past actions. It may, however, be said that, though an egoist retaining his belief in rational egoism cannot thus abandon his will to the sway of moral enthusiasm, still, supposing it possible for him to change his conviction and prefer duty to interest,—or supposing we compare him with another man who makes this choice,—we shall find that a gain in happiness on the whole results from this preference. It may be held that the pleasurable emotions attendant upon such virtuous or quasi-virtuous habits as are compatible with adhesion to egoistic principles are so inferior to the raptures that attend the unreserved and passionate surrender of the soul to virtue, that it is really a man’s interest—even with a view to the present life only—to obtain, if he can, the convictions that render this surrender possible; although under certain circumstances it must necessarily lead him to act in a manner which, considered by itself, would be undoubtedly imprudent. This is certainly a tenable proposition, and I am quite disposed to think it true of persons with specially refined moral sensibilities. But—though from the imperfections of the hedonistic calculus the proposition cannot in any case be conclusively disproved—it seems, as I have said, to be opposed to the broad results of experience, so far as the great majority of mankind are concerned. Observation would lead me to suppose that most men are so constituted as to feel far more keenly pleasures (and pains) arising from some other source than the conscience; either from the gratifications of sense, or from the possession of power and fame, or from strong human affections, or from the pursuit of science, art, etc.; so that in many cases perhaps not even early training could have succeeded in giving to the moral feelings the requisite predominance: and certainly where this training has been wanting, it seems highly improbable that a mere change of ethical conviction could develop their moral susceptibilities so far as to make it clearly their earthly interest to resolve on facing all sacrifices for the fulfilment of duty.

To sum up: although the performance of duties towards others and the exercise of social virtue seem to be generally the best means to the attainment of the individual’s happiness, and it is easy to exhibit this coincidence between Virtue and Happiness rhetorically and popularly; still, when we carefully analyse and estimate the consequences of Virtue to the virtuous agent, it appears improbable that this coincidence is complete and universal. We may conceive the coincidence becoming perfect in a Utopia where men were as much in accord on moral as they are now on mathematical questions, where Law was in perfect harmony with Moral Opinion, and all offences were discovered and duly punished: or we may conceive the same result attained by intensifying the moral sentiments of all members of the community, without any external changes (which indeed would then be unnecessary). But just in proportion as existing societies and existing men fall short of this ideal, rules of conduct based on the principles of Egoistic Hedonism seem liable to diverge from those which most men are accustomed to recognise as prescribed by Duty and Virtue.

CHAPTER VI
DEDUCTIVE HEDONISM

§ 1. In the preceding chapter we have seen reason to conclude that, while obedience to recognised rules of duty tends, under ordinary circumstances, to promote the happiness of the agent, there are yet no adequate empirical grounds for regarding the performance of duty as a universal or infallible means to the attainment of this end. Even, however, if it were otherwise, even if it were demonstrably reasonable for the egoist to choose duty at all costs under all circumstances, the systematic endeavour to realise this principle would not—according to common notions of morality—solve or supersede the problem of determining the right method for seeking happiness. For the received moral code allows within limits the pursuit of our own happiness, and even seems to regard it as morally prescribed;[131] and still more emphatically inculcates the promotion of the happiness of other individuals, with whom we are in various ways specially connected: so that, under either head, the questions that we have before considered as to the determination and measurement of the elements of happiness would still require some kind of answer.

It remains to ask how far a scientific investigation of the causes of pleasure and pain can assist us in dealing with this practical problem.

Now it is obvious that for deciding which of two courses of action is preferable on hedonistic grounds, we require not only to measure pains and pleasures of different kinds, but also to ascertain how they may be produced or averted. In most important prudential decisions, complex chains of consequences are foreseen as intervening between the volition we are immediately to initiate and the feelings which constitute the ultimate end of our efforts; and the degree of accuracy with which we forecast each link of these chains obviously depends upon our knowledge, implicit or explicit, of the relations of cause and effect among various natural phenomena. But if we suppose the different elements and immediate sources of happiness to have been duly ascertained and valued, the investigation of the conditions of production of each hardly belongs to a general treatise on the method of ethics; but rather to some one or other of the special arts subordinate to the general art of conduct. Of these subordinate arts some have a more or less scientific basis, while others are in a merely empirical stage; thus if we have decided how far health is to be sought, it belongs to the systematic art of hygiene, based on physiological science, to furnish a detailed plan of seeking it; so far, on the other hand, as we aim at power or wealth or domestic happiness, such instruction as the experience of others can give will be chiefly obtained in an unsystematic form, either from advice relative to our own special circumstances, or from accounts of success and failure in analogous situations. In either case the exposition of such special arts does not appear to come within the scope of the present treatise; nor could it help us in dealing with the difficulties of measuring pleasures and pains which we have considered in the previous chapters.

It may, however, be thought that a knowledge of the causes of pleasure and pain may carry us beyond the determination of the means of gaining particular kinds of pleasure and avoiding particular kinds of pain; and enable us to substitute some deductive method of evaluing the elements of happiness for the empirical-reflective method of which we have seen the defects.[132]

A hedonistic method, indeed, that would dispense altogether with direct estimates of the pleasurable and painful consequences of actions is almost as inconceivable as a method of astronomy that would dispense with observations of the stars. It is, however, conceivable that by induction from cases in which empirical measurement is easy we may obtain generalisations that will give us more trustworthy guidance than such measurement can do in complicated cases; we may be able to ascertain some general psychical or physical concomitant or antecedent of pleasure and pain, more easy to recognise, foresee, measure, and produce or avert in such cases, than pleasure and pain themselves. I am willing to hope that this refuge from the difficulties of Empirical Hedonism may some time or other be open to us: but I cannot perceive that it is at present available. There is at present, so far as I can judge, no satisfactorily established general theory of the causes of pleasure and pain; and such theories as have gained a certain degree of acceptance, as partially true or probable, are manifestly not adapted for the practical application that we here require.

The chief difficulty of finding a universally applicable theory of the causes of pleasures and pains is easily explained. Pleasures and pains may be assumed to have universally—like other psychical facts—certain cerebral nerve-processes, specifically unknown, as their inseparable concomitants: accordingly, we may seek their causes either in antecedent physical or antecedent psychical facts. But in one important class of cases the chief cognisable antecedents are obviously of the former kind, while in another important class they are obviously of the latter kind: the difficulty is to establish any theory equally applicable to both classes, or to bring the results of the two lines of inquiry under a single generalisation without palpably unsupported hypotheses. In the case of pleasures and pains—especially pains—connected with sensation the most important cognisable antecedents are clearly physical. I do not deny that, when the pain is foreseen, the attitude of mind in which it is met may materially influence its magnitude: indeed, in the hypnotic condition of the brain, the feeling of pain may be apparently altogether prevented by an antecedent belief that it will not be felt. Still in the main, under ordinary conditions, the pains of sensation—probably the intensest in the experience of most persons—invade and interrupt our psychical life from without; and it would be idle to look for the chief causes of their intensity or quality among antecedent psychical facts. This is not equally true of the most prominent pleasures of sense: since antecedent desire, if not an absolutely indispensable condition of such pleasures, seems at any rate necessary to their attaining a high degree of intensity. Still the chief causes of these desires themselves are clearly physical states and processes—not merely neural—in the organism of the sentient individual: and this is also true of a more indefinite kind of pleasure, which is an important element of ordinary human happiness,—the “well-feeling” that accompanies and is a sign of physical well-being.

On the other hand, when we investigate the causes of the pleasures and pains that belong to intellectual exercises or the play of personal affections,—or of the pleasures (and to some extent pains) that belong to the contemplation of beauty (or its opposite) in art or nature,—no physiological theory can carry us far, owing to our ignorance of the neural processes that accompany or antecede these feelings.

This is my general conclusion: the grounds for which I propose to illustrate and explain further in the present chapter. It would, however, seem to be quite beyond my limits to attempt anything like an exhaustive discussion of either psychological or physiological theories of the causes of pleasure and pain. I shall confine myself to certain leading generalisations, which seem to have a special interest for students of ethics; either because ethical motives have had a share in causing their acceptance; or because—though inadequately grounded as general theories—they appear to have a partial and limited value for practical guidance.

§ 2. Let us begin by considering a theory, primarily psychological, which has at least the merit of antiquity—as it is admittedly derived from Aristotle,[133]—and is, in some form or other, still current.[134] It is that expressed by Sir W. Hamilton[135] in the following propositions: “Pleasure is the reflex of the spontaneous and unimpeded exertion of a power of whose energy we are conscious: pain, a reflex of the overstrained or repressed exertion of such a power.” The phrases suggest active as ordinarily distinguished from passive states; but Hamilton explains that “energy” and similar terms “are to be understood to denote indifferently all the processes of our higher and lower life of which we are conscious,”—on the ground that consciousness itself implies more than a mere passivity of the subject. I think, however, that the theory is evidently framed primarily to suit the pleasures and pains that belong to the intellectual life as such, and is only applied by a somewhat violent straining to an important class among the pleasures and pains that belong to man’s animal life. For Hamilton explains his terms (a) “spontaneous” and (b) “unimpeded” to imply respectively (a) absence of “forcible repression” or “forcible stimulation” of the power exercised, and (b) absence of checks or hindrances on the part of the object about which it is conversant. But these terms seem to have no clear psychical import in application to organic sensations of the kind ordinarily called passive. E.g. the feelings and vague representations of bodily processes which constitute the consciousness of a toothache are as free from conscious repression or stimulation as those which constitute the consciousness that accompanies a warm bath:—except so far as the mere presence of pain implies constraint, since we experience it unwillingly, and the mere presence of pleasure implies the opposite: but in this sense constraint and its opposite are characteristics of the effects to be explained, and cannot therefore be regarded as their causes.

Indeed, the ethical interest and value of the theory appears to me to lie in its very one-sidedness. It tends to correct a vulgar error in the estimate of pleasure, by directing attention strongly to the importance of a class of pleasures which ordinary pleasure-seeking probably undervalues,—the pleasures that specially belong to a life filled with strenuous activity, whether purely intellectual, or practical and partly physical.[136] In the same way it effectively dispels the popular inadvertence of regarding labour as normally painful because some labour is so, and because the pleasures connected with relief from toil—the pleasures of repose and play—are in the experience of most persons more striking than the pleasures of strenuous activity. At the same time, even if we limit the theory to the pleasures and pains immediately connected with voluntary activity—intellectual or physical—it seems to me devoid not only of definite guidance, but also of adequate theoretical precision. For it seems to imply that the exercise of our powers is always made less pleasant by the presence of impediments; but this is obviously not true either of mainly intellectual or mainly physical activities. Some obstacles undeniably increase pleasure by drawing out force and skill to overcome them, as is clearly shown in the case of games and sports: and even if we understand pain-causing impediments to be only such hindrances as repress and diminish action, I do not find that the theory is supported by experience, except so far as the repression causes the specific discomfort of unsatisfied desire. E.g. I find entertainment rather than discomfort in trying to make out objects in a dim light, or the meaning of a speech in a strange language, provided that failure does not interfere with the attainment of any end to which I attach importance. It is a fundamental defect in Hamilton’s theory, even in its more limited application, that it ignores the teleological character of normal human activity.

This defect is avoided in a modification of the theory that a recent writer has adopted. “The antithesis,” says Mr. Stout,[137] “between pleasure and pain is coincident with the antithesis between free and impeded progress towards an end. Unimpeded progress is pleasant in proportion to the intensity and complexity of mental excitement. An activity which is ... thwarted and retarded ... is painful in proportion to its intensity and complexity and to the degree of the hindrance.” Mr. Stout admits the difficulty of applying this principle of explanation to the pleasures and pains of sense:[138] and—unlike Hamilton—he expressly recognises that “a struggle with difficulties which is not too prolonged or too intense may enhance the pleasure of success out of all proportion to its own painfulness.” But this qualification seems to render the propositions first laid down unimportant from our present practical point of view, whatever may be their theoretical value. I think, too, that the importance of antecedent desire, as a condition of the pleasures and pains attendant on voluntary activities, should be more expressly recognised. When desire is strong, hopeful effort to overcome difficulties in the way of fruition tends to be proportionally pleasurable—apart from actual success—while disappointment or the fear of disappointment similarly tends to be painful: but when desire is not strong, the shock of thwarted activity and unfulfilled expectation may be rather agreeable than otherwise. Thus, suppose I take a walk for pleasure, intending to reach a neighbouring village, and find an unexpected flood crossing my road; if I have no strong motive for arriving at the village, the surprise and consequent change in the plan of my walk will probably be on the whole a pleasurable incident.

The importance of eager desire as a condition of pleasure is noteworthy from an ethical point of view: as it gives the psychological basis for the familiar precept to repress—with a view to private happiness—desires for ends that are either unattainable or incompatible with the course of life which prudence marks out; and for the somewhat less trite maxim of encouraging and developing desires that prompt in the same direction as rational choice.

Suppose now we drop the dubious term “unimpeded”—retaining Hamilton’s idea of “overstrained or repressed exertion” as the condition of pain—and at the same time passing to a physical point of view, mean by “activity” the activity of an organ. We thus reach what is substantially Mr. Spencer’s doctrine, that pains are the psychical concomitants of excessive or deficient actions of organs, while pleasures are the concomitants of medium activities.[139] In considering this theory it will be convenient to take pains and pleasures separately: as it is obviously based primarily on experiences of pain rather than of pleasure,—especially of the pains of sense to which Hamilton’s theory seemed palpably inapplicable. Instances are abundant in which pain is obviously caused by excessive stimulation of nerves. Thus when we gradually increase the intensity of sensible heat, pressure, muscular effort, we encounter pain at a certain point of the increase; “deafening” sounds are highly disagreeable; and to confront a tropical sun with unprotected eyeballs would soon become torture. Some pains, again, as Spencer points out, arise from the excessive actions of organs whose normal actions yield no feelings: as when the digestive apparatus is overtaxed. Still in none of these cases does it seem clear that pain supervenes through a mere intensification in degree of the action of the organ in question; and not rather through some change in the kind of action—some inchoate disintegration or disorganisation. And this latter cause—rather than mere quantity of stimulation—is strongly suggested by a consideration of the pains due to wounds and diseases, and even of the transient digestive discomforts which arise from an improper kind rather than an improper quantity of food. And a similar explanation seems to me most probable in the case of pains which, according to Mr. Spencer, arise from “deficient” action. He speaks of these as “discomforts or cravings”; but, as I have before pointed out,[140] bodily appetites and other desires may be strongly-felt impulses to action without being appreciably painful: and, in my experience, when they become decidedly painful, some disturbance tending to derangement may be presumed either in the organ primarily concerned or in the organism as a whole. Thus hunger, in my experience, may be extremely keen without being appreciably painful: and when I find it painful, experience leads me to expect a temporarily reduced power of assimilation, indicating some disorganisation in the digestive apparatus.[141]

In any case, empirical evidence supports “excessive action” of an organ as a cause of pain far more clearly than “deficient action.” Indeed a consideration of this evidence has led some psychologists to adopt the generalisation[142] that there is no quality of sensation absolutely pleasant or unpleasant, but that every kind of sensation as it grows in intensity begins at a certain point to be pleasurable, and continues such up to a certain further point at which it passes rapidly through indifference into pain. My own experience, however, fails to support this generalisation. I agree with Gurney[143] that “of many tastes and odours the faintest possible suggestion is disagreeable”; while other feelings resulting from stimulation of sense-organs appear to remain highly pleasurable at the highest degree of stimulation which the actual conditions of physical life appear to allow.

However this may be, whether we conceive the nervous action of which pain is an immediate consequent or concomitant as merely excessive in quantity, or in some way discordant or disorganised in quality, it is obvious that neither explanation can furnish us with any important practical guidance: since we have no general means of ascertaining, independently of our experience of pain itself, what nervous actions are excessive or disorganised: and the cases where we have such means do not present any practical problems which the theory enables us to solve. No one doubts that wounds and diseases are to be avoided under all ordinary circumstances: and in the exceptional circumstances in which we may be moved to choose them as the least of several evils, the exactest knowledge of their precise operation in causing pain is not likely to assist our choice.

It may be said, however,—turning from pain to pleasure,—that the generalisation which we have been considering at any rate gives us a psychophysical basis for the ancient maxim of “avoiding excess” in the pursuit of pleasure. But we have to observe that the practical need of this maxim is largely due to the qualifications which the psychophysical generalisation requires to make it true. Thus it is especially needed in the important cases in which over-stimulation is followed by pain not at once but after an interval of varying length. E.g. alcoholic drinking, to many, remains pleasurable at the time up to the point of excess at which the brain can no longer perform its functions: it is “next morning” that the pain comes, or perhaps—in the case of “well-seasoned” topers—not till after many years of habitual excess. It should be noted also that it is not always the organ of which the exercise gives pleasure that also, through over-exercise, causes the pain of excess. Thus when we are tempted to eat too much, the seductive pleasure is mainly due to the nerves of taste which are not overtaxed; the pains come from the organs of digestion, whose faint, vague pleasures alone would hardly tempt the voluptuary to excess. In the case of dangerous mental excitements the penalty on excess is usually still more indirect.

On the whole, granting that pleasure like virtue resides somewhere in the mean, it must be admitted that this proposition gives no practical directions for attaining it. For first, granting that both excessive and deficient activities of organs cause pain, the question still remains—as Spencer himself says—What determines in any case the lower and the higher limits within which action is pleasurable? Spencer’s answer to this question I will consider presently. But there is a question no less obvious to which he does not expressly advert, viz. why among the normal activities of our physical organs, that have counterparts in consciousness, some only are pleasurable in any appreciable degree, while many if not most are nearly or quite indifferent. It seems undeniable (e.g.) that while tastes and smells are mostly either agreeable or disagreeable, most sensations of touch and many of sight and sound are not appreciably[144] either; and that, in the daily routine of healthy life, eating and drinking are ordinarily pleasant, while dressing and undressing, walking and muscular movements generally are practically indifferent.

It does not seem that an adequate explanation can be found in the operation of habit.[145] It is no doubt true that actions through frequent uniform repetition tend to become automatic and lose their conscious counterparts, and hedonic indifference certainly seems in some cases to be a stage through which such actions pass on the way to unconsciousness. Thus even a business walk in a strange town is normally pleasant through the novelty of the sights: but a similar walk in the town where one lives is ordinarily indifferent, or nearly so; while if one’s attention is strongly absorbed by the business, it may be performed to a great extent unconsciously. On the other hand, the operations of habit often have the opposite effect of making activities pleasant which were at first indifferent or even disagreeable: as in the case of acquired tastes, physical or intellectual. Indeed such experiences have long been—I think, quite legitimately—used by moralists as an encouragement to irksome duties, on the ground that their irksomeness will be transient, through the operation of habit, while the gain of their performance will be permanent. Mr. Spencer, indeed, regards such experiences as so important that he ventures to base on them the prediction that “pleasure will eventually accompany every mode of action demanded by social conditions.” This, however, seems unduly optimistic, in view not only of the first-mentioned tendency of habit to hedonic indifference, but also of a third tendency to render actions, at first indifferent or even pleasant, gradually more irksome. Thus our intellect gradually wearies of monotonous activities, and the ennui may sometimes become intense: so again the relish of a kind of diet at first agreeable may turn through monotony into disgust.

Some quite different explanation must therefore be sought for the varying degrees in which pleasure accompanies normal activities. Can we find this in a suggestion of Mr. Spencer’s, developed by Mr. Grant Allen,[146] that the pleasurableness of normal organic activities depends on their intermittence, and that “the amount of pleasure is probably ... in the inverse ratio of the natural frequency of excitation” of the nerve-fibres involved? This theory certainly finds some support in the fact that the sensual pleasures generally recognised as greatest are those attending the activities of organs which are normally left unexercised for considerable intervals. Still, there are many facts that it does not explain—e.g. the great differences in the pleasures obtainable at any given time by different stimulations of the same sense; the phenomenon expressed in the proverbial phrase “L’appÉtit vient en mangeant”; and the fact that the exercise of the visual organs after apparently dreamless sleep does not give appreciably keener pleasure than it does at ordinary times. It would seem that we must seek for some special cause of the pleasurable effect of intermittence in certain cases. And this cannot be merely the greater intensity of the nervous action that takes place when long-unexercised and well-nourished nerve-centres are stimulated: for why, if that were the explanation, should the normal consciousness of full nervous activity, gradually attained—as when we are in full swing of energetic unwearied work of a routine kind—be often nearly or quite indifferent?

Among the various competing hypotheses offered at this point of our inquiry—no one of which, I believe, has attained anything like general acceptance as covering the whole ground—I select for discussion one that has special ethical interest.

According to this hypothesis,[147] the organic process accompanied by pleasure is to be conceived as a “restoration of equilibrium” after “disturbance”: so that the absence of appreciable pleasure in the case of certain normal activities is explained by the absence of antecedent disturbance. This view is obviously applicable to certain classes of pleasures which, though by no means rare are incidental in a normal life:—the pleasure of relief after physical pain, or after the strain of great anxiety, and the pleasure of repose after unusual exertions, intellectual or muscular. But when we attempt to apply it to sensational pleasures generally, the indefiniteness of the notion of “equilibrium,” as applied to the processes of a living organism, becomes manifest. For our physical life consists of a series of changes, for the most part periodically recurrent with slight modification after short intervals: and it is difficult to see why we should attach the idea of “disturbance” or “restoration of equilibrium” to any one among these normal processes rather than any other:—e.g. it is difficult to see why the condition of having expended energy should be regarded as a departure from equilibrium any more than the condition of having just taken in nutriment. In fact, to render the hypothesis we are considering at all applicable to normal pleasures of sense, we have to pass from the physiological to the psychological point of view, and take note of the psychical state of desire, as a consciously unrestful condition, of which the essence is a felt impulse to pass out of this state towards the attainment of the desired object. Our hypothesis, then, may take this unrestful consciousness as a sign of what, from a physiological point of view, is “disturbance of equilibrium,” and similarly, the satisfaction of desire may be taken to be, physiologically, a restoration of equilibrium. On this assumption, the theory becomes undeniably applicable to those gratifications of sensual appetite which form the most prominent element of the pleasures of sense, as popularly conceived.

Now we have already noted that by a wide-spread confusion of thought, desire has often been regarded as a species of pain. Accordingly, the theory that we are considering was originally prompted by the ethical motive of depreciating the vulgarly overvalued pleasures of satisfied bodily appetite, by laying stress on their inseparable connexion with antecedent pain. The depreciation, however, fails so far as the appetite which is a necessary antecedent condition of the pleasure is—though an unrestful state—not appreciably painful.[148]

In any case, admitting the physical counterpart of conscious desire to be a ‘disturbance of equilibrium,’ or an effect and sign of such disturbance, the theory seems open to obvious objections, if it is extended to cover the whole range of the pleasures of sense. For conscious desire is certainly not a necessary condition of experiencing the simple pleasures of the special senses: normally no sense of want has preceded the experience of pleasant sights, sounds, odours, flavours, or of the more important pleasures, more complex in their psychical conditions, which we call Æsthetic. No doubt in special cases antecedent privation may produce a conscious want of these latter pleasures which may increase their intensity when they are at length attained: or even without any felt privation, the prospect of enjoying such pleasures may produce a keen desire for the enjoyment, which may be regarded as a “disturbance of equilibrium” no less plausibly than a bodily appetite. But it would be quite unwarrantable therefore to suppose a similar disturbance, though unfelt, in the ordinary cases where pleasures of this kind are experienced without any antecedent consciousness of desire or want.

I have perhaps said enough to support my general conclusion that psychophysical speculation as to the causes of pleasure and pain does not at present afford a basis for a deductive method of practical Hedonism. But, before passing from this topic, I may remark that the difficulties in the way of any such theory seem especially great in the case of the complex pleasures which we distinguish as “Æsthetic.” All would agree that Æsthetic gratification, when at all high, depends on a subtle harmony of different elements in a complex state of consciousness; and that the pleasure resulting from such harmonious combination is indefinitely greater than the sum of the simpler pleasures which the uncombined elements would yield. But even those who estimate most highly the success that has so far been attained in discovering the conditions of this harmony, in the case of any particular art, would admit that mere conformity to the conditions thus ascertained cannot secure the production of Æsthetic pleasure in any considerable degree. However subtly we state in general terms the objective relations of elements in a delightful work of art, on which its delight seems to depend, we must always feel that it would be possible to produce out of similar elements a work corresponding to our general description which would give no delight at all; the touch that gives delight depends upon an instinct for which no deductive reasoning can supply a substitute. This is true, even without taking into account the wide divergences that we actually find in the Æsthetic sensibilities of individuals: still less, therefore, is it needful to argue that, from the point of view of an individual seeking his own greatest happiness, none but a mainly inductive and empirical method of estimating Æsthetic pleasures can be made available.

§ 3. I now pass to consider a theory which may be distinguished from those discussed in the preceding section as being biological rather than psychophysical: since it directs attention not to the actual present characteristics of the organic states or changes of which pleasures and pains are the concomitants or immediate consequents, but to their relations to the life of the organism as a whole. I mean the theory that “pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of acts conducive to its welfare.” Mr. Spencer, from whom the above propositions are quoted,[149] subsequently explains “injurious” and “conducive to welfare” to mean respectively “tending to decrease or loss of life,” and “tending to continuance or increase of life”: but in his deduction by which the above conclusion is summarily established, “injurious” and “beneficial” are used as equivalent simply to “destructive” and “preservative” of organic life: and it will be more convenient to take the terms first in this simpler signification.

Mr. Spencer’s argument is as follows:—

“If we substitute for the word Pleasure the equivalent phrase—a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there; and if we substitute for the word Pain the equivalent phrase—a feeling which we seek to get out of consciousness and to keep out; we see at once that, if the states of consciousness which a creature endeavours to maintain are the correlatives of injurious actions, and if the states of consciousness which it endeavours to expel are the correlatives of beneficial actions, it must quickly disappear through persistence in the injurious and avoidance of the beneficial. In other words, those races of beings only can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings went along with activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable and habitually-avoided feelings went along with activities directly or indirectly destructive of life; and there must ever have been, other things equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best, tending ever to bring about perfect adjustment.”