But here our units of
We must assume that

is not always equal in preferableness to a unit of pleasure of some other kind. pleasurableness are different. all pleasures can be reduced to one unit. An hour of conscientious satisfaction may be worth many hours of the pleasures of eating; but if we are to estimate one against the other we must suppose them ultimately commensurable that the former is worth five, ten, or fifty times the latter; and when we have fixed on our equivalent we must not allow any considerations of the supreme dignity of the former (for they have already been taken into account in fixing the equivalent) to prevent our preferring fifty-one hours of eating to only one of conscientious satisfaction. Unless we are willing to weigh pleasures against each other, the whole hedonistic method falls to the ground.'

Yet we seem obliged to allow with Mill that "neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure." If this means anything, it means that no system of moral arithmetic is possible. Mill, however, seems to think that though they are in their nature incapable of comparison, yet that we can arrive at valid judgments by appealing to "experience," the fetish of the school to which he belonged. But even experience cannot tell us whether two hours or three bushels is the greater.

There are theoretical difficulties, it may be said, depending on somewhat abstruse psychological conside

1

Bentham, "Principles of Morals and Legislation,” chap. ii., § 4. Sidgwick, "Methods," book ii., chap. ii., § 2.

rations, with regard to which experts themselves are at variance. Even if we admit this objection to be valid there remain obvious practical difficulties, some of which are discussed in the next section.

§ 3. Uncertainty of our hedonic judgments. The next assumption of the hedonistic school is (iv.) That our judgments of the intensity of pleasures

can be relied on.

Unfortunately our judgments frequently vary. The same dish tasted when we are hungry and when we are satiated, when ill and when well, will be differently appraised: which judgment is true? Both, it may be said; the pleasure is different though the dish is the same. This, however, only comes to the statement that pleasant feeling is as pleasant as at the moment of feeling it is felt to be; which emphasizes the essentially subjective character of pleasure, and suggests that, properly speaking, we can make no assertions at all claiming to be true or false about it. My judgments vary, then, from time to time; and when I reflect on things that pleased me as a boy or a baby, I realize the enormous amount of change which my criterion of pleasure, or my sensibility, has undergone. Yet I cannot say my boyish judgments were wrong. I cannot hold that I was fundamentally deceived in believing that the pleasure of eating toffee was superior to the pleasure of reading Virgil. I am not sure that my present judgments are really superior in accuracy

to those I formerly passed; or that those I shall pass in ten years time will be the same as those I pass today. Changes of temperament, and sensibility, and purely physiological changes make it impossible for the hedonist to look before and after.

The

And if we attempt to rectify our judgments by comparison with those of others, we find still greater difficulties. Their opinions, whether expressed individually and personally, or in the collective form of social rules and adages, are notoriously at variance with each other. There is comparatively little disagreement on the broad question that this or that object is pleasuregiving; the difficulty comes in when we want to get precise ideas as to relative pleasurableness. philosopher, the man of the world, the lover of pleasure, the soldier, the artist and the merchant, the man and the woman, can never agree. Nor can we settle the question in the cavalier manner of Mill, who says that if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion from the philosopher, "it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides." Readers of Mill's

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Autobiography" will be disposed to doubt whether he himself, with his extraordinary precocity and his eminently ethical temper, would be a fair judge of the pleasures of an active and somewhat irregular life, such as that of a soldier or sailor.

§ 4. Failure of Arithmetical Hedonism.

Dr. Sidgwick admits that scientific hedonism does. not rest on an empirical basis; but it would seem that he has neglected to indicate clearly on what other basis it can rest. Some writers, e.g., Mr. Spencer, assume that although perhaps pleasures do not admit of exact measurements, they admit of sufficiently definite estimates to guide conduct. Even if they cannot be arranged in a scale of desirability, some rough approximation can be formed; since we are certainly able to say with tolerable certainty that some pleasures are greater than others, that half a loaf is better than no bread, and that two loaves are better than one. But this will carry us a very little way. To put the matter on this footing is practically to give up hedonism as a system. The tendency to pleasure is no longer our criterion of what is right, and pleasure is no longer our direct aim.

We may indeed trust merely to the deliverances of common sense, the aggregate average judgment of civilized mankind. Such judgment as the organized hedonic experience of society is more likely to be right than my own, or that of the few people I can consult. But if we always trust to this standard, while we are hedonist in accepting pleasure as the supreme good, we are not hedonistic in method; and an identification is little more than a pious opinion of no practical importance. If we venture sometimes to decide differently from common sense we shall do so on quite

insufficient grounds, since our own narrow experience, even if supplemented by that of our friends, can never, as we have seen, furnish us with sufficient ground of decision.

§ 5. Egoism and Altruism.

An egoistic view of Ethics recognizes as ultimate only duty to oneself, viz., to seek one's own good. If good be taken to mean pleasure and absence of pain, the theory will be what Mr. Sidgwick calls egoistic hedonism. If good is not interpreted to mean mere pleasure and absence of pain, the theory, although egoistic, is not hedonistic.

On the other hand, altruism, strictly speaking, should mean vivre pour autrui-it is the doctrine of selfsacrifice. A is to care only for the happiness of B, C, D, etc. Utilitarianism puts my happiness on the same level as that of others; absolute altruism refuses to acknowledge it at all.

Excessive egoism and absolute altruism are alike self-destructive. My happiness depends on the goodwill of those about me. No man is so independent as

to be without the need of others; from the moment of birth to the moment of death we are dependent on those about us, or on society at large, for everything that makes life worth having. Besides, few men are so self-centred as to be without the need of seeing others happy, or at any rate free from pain.

This goodwill and this absence of sympathetic pain can only be acquired by living to some extent for