or (c) its

The same view is adopted by Bentham;1 and both James Mill and John Stuart Mill identify desire with pleasure, or an "idea" of pleasure, in terms which are sufficiently sweeping, if not very carefully weighed; 2 while the will is said to follow desire, or only to pass out of its power when coming under the sway of habit. Still another meaning may, however, be given to the "law" of psychological hedonism, according to which the doubtful reference to the manifold pleasures and pains, contemplated as resulting from an action, is got rid of, and (c) the agent is asserted always to

1"On the occasion of every act he exercises, every human being is led to pursue that line of conduct which, according to his view of the case taken by him at the moment, will be in the highest degree contributory to his own greatest happiness."Constitutional Code, book i. § 2; Works, ix. 5. The continued existence of the species is, Bentham thinks, a conclusive proof of this proposition.

2 Thus, according to James Mill," the terms 'idea of pleasure' and 'desire' are but two names; the thing named, the state of consciousness is one and the same. The word Desire is commonly used to mark the idea of a pleasurable sensation when the future is associated with it.”—Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, J. S. Mill's edit., ii. 192; cf. Fragment on Mackintosh (1835), p. 389 f. To the same effect J. S. Mill says: "Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon; in strictness of language, two different modes of naming the same psychological fact." -Utilitarianism, 7th ed., p. 58.

3 "Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit."-Utilitarianism,

character

choose that action or forbearance which is actually present most pleasant, or least painful, to him at the time- istics. taking account, of course, of imaginative pleasures and pains, as well as of those which are immediately connected with the senses. It is in this interpretation of its law that psychological hedonism seems to be most capable of defence, and in this sense it has been more than once stated and defended.1

inferences

The ethics of the form of Naturalism which is 2. Ethical now under examination must be inferred from the "law" that human action follows the greatest

1 Thus Jonathan Edwards says: "When I say that the Will is as the greatest apparent good, or (as I have explained it) that volition has always for its object the thing which appears most agreeable, it must be carefully observed, to avoid confusion and needless objection, that I speak of the direct and immediate object of the act of volition, and not some object to which the act of will has only an indirect and remote respect."-On the Freedom of the Will, part i. § 2; Works, i. 133. The matter is put still more clearly by the late Alfred Barratt: "Action does not always follow knowledge. Of course not: but the doctrine [Hedonism] does not require that it should; for it says, not that we follow what is our greatest possible pleasure, or what we know or 6 think' to be so, but what at the moment of action is most desired."-Mind, vol. ii. 173; cf. Physical Ethics, p. 52 ff. So Mr Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 47: "It is more accurate to say that my conduct is determined by the pleasantest judgment, than to say that it is determined by my judgment of what is pleasantest." The negative side of the same view was expressed by Locke in his doctrine that action is moved by the most pressing uneasiness (Essay, II. xxi. 29, 31), and distinguished by him from the former view (b), that the "greater visible good" is the motive (II. xxi. 35, 44).

from this theory,

(a) in its first meaning,

(b) in its

pleasure, in one or other of the above meanings which that law admits of. The law is the datum or premiss from which we are to advance to an ethical conclusion. The "right" is to be evolved from the pleasurable; and the pleasurable, consequently, cannot be made to depend upon the right. It is certainly true of the conduct of most men, "that our prospect of pleasure resulting from any course of conduct may largely depend on our conception of it as right or otherwise." But this presupposes that there is a right independent of one's own pleasure, and therefore does not apply to an ethics based on the simple theory of human nature put forward by psychological hedonism.

1

It is scarcely necessary to discuss the first alternative (a), as no psychologist would seriously maintain it. A society composed of men constituted in the way it supposes men to be constituted, would be a collection of rational egoists, omniscient in all that concerned the results of action, and each adopting unerringly at every moment the course of conduct which would increase his own pleasure the most. The conduct of any member of such a society could only be modified when-and would always be modified when-the modified conduct actually brought pleasurable results to the agent: never so as to make him prefer the public good to his own. The second alternative (b) admits of

1 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 3d ed., p. 40.

meaning:

such modification taking place only when it seems second to the individual that this modified action will produce a greater balance of pleasure or smaller balance of pain than any other course of action. Under this theory an individual might indeed prefer the public good or another man's good to his own, but only through his being deceived as to the actual results of his course of action. Ethics as determining an end for conduct is put out of court; though the statesman or the educator may modify the actions of others by providing appropriate motives. If the "two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure," "determine what we shall do," it is hardly necessary for them also "to point out what we ought to do." The end is already given in the nature of action, though an enlightened understanding will teach men how the greatest

1

1 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. i., Works, i. 1. With this statement may be compared the assertion of Helvétius: "Il semble que, dans l'univers moral comme dans l'univers physique, Dieu n'est mis qu'un seul principe dans tous ce qui a été. . Il semble qu'il ait dit pareillement à l'homme: Je te mets sous la garde du plaisir et de la douleur: l'un et l'autre veilleront à tes pensées, à tes actions; engendreront tes passions, exciteront tes aversions, tes amitiés, tes tendresses, tes fureurs; allumeront tes désirs, tes craintes, tes espérances, te dévoileront des vérités; te plongeront dans des erreurs ; et après t'avoir fait enfanter mille systèmes absurdes et différens de morale et de législation, te decouvriront un jour les principes simples, au développement desquels est attaché l'ordre et le bonheur du monde moral."-De l'esprit, III. ix, Euvres (ed. of 1818), i. 293.

private ethics and

We can

balance of pleasure may be obtained.

legislation, only get at a rule prescribing an end by changing our point of view from the individual to the state. It is best for the state that each individual should aim at the common happiness; but, when we talk of this as a moral duty for the individual, all we can mean is that the state will punish a breach of it. In the words of Helvétius,1 "pain and pleasure are the bonds by which we can always unite personal interest to the interest of the nation.

The sciences of morals and legislation can be only deductions from this simple principle." According to Bentham's psychology, a man is necessitated by his mental and physical nature to pursue at every moment, not the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but what seems to him his own greatest happiness. And what the legislator has to do is, by judiciously imposed rewards and punishments, especially the latter, to make it for the greatest happiness of each to pursue the greatest happiness of all.2 As distinguished from this "art of legislation," "private ethics" consists only of prudential rules prescribing the best means to an end predetermined by nature as the only possible end of human action: it "teaches how each man may

1 De l'homme, concl. gén., Œuvres, ii. 608.

2 Cf. Système de la nature, i. 120: "La politique devrait être l'art de régler les passions des hommes et de les diriger vers le bien de la société."