ception of it. Understood, however, in a sufficiently comprehensive sense, enjoyment or pleasure may be clearly perceived to be the sole object of existence. The whole value of life plainly consists of the enjoyment, present or future, which life affords, or is capable of affording or securing. Now, the excellence of all rules depends on their conduciveness to the object they have in view. The excellence of all rules of life must, therefore, depend on their conduciveness to the sole object which life has in view, viz., enjoyment. But the excellence of rules of life, or of conduct or modes of acting, would seem to be but another name for their morality, and the morality of actions obviously depends on their conformity to moral rules. Whence, if so much be admitted, it necessarily follows that the test of the morality of actions is their conduciveness to enjoyment.

But the enjoyment thus referred to is not that of the agent alone, for if it were, no action whatever could possibly be immoral. Whatever any one does, he does either because to do it gives him or promises him pleasure, or because he believes that the not doing it would subject him to more pain than he will suffer from doing it. Besides, one person's enjoyment may be obtained at the expense of other people's suffering, so that an act in which the actor takes pleasure may destroy or prevent more pleasure altogether than it creates. The enjoyment or happiness, therefore, which Utilitarianism regards, is not individual, but general happiness; not that of one or of a few, but of the many, nor even of the many only. It is often declared to be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but it may with more accuracy be described as the largest aggregate of happiness attainable by any or by all

concerned. Again, an action which, in some particular instance, causes more pleasure than pain to those affected by it, may yet belong to a class of actions which, in the generality of cases, causes more pain than pleasure, and may thus involve a violation of a moral rule, and, consequently, be itself immoral. Wherefore the enjoyment which Utilitarianism adopts as its moral test is not simply the greatest sum of enjoyment for all concerned, but that greatest sum in the greatest number of cases. In its widest signification it is the greatest happiness of society at large and in the long run. From these premises a decisive criterion of right and wrong may be deduced. Every action belonging to a class calculated to promote the permanent happiness of society is right. Every action belonging to a class opposed to the permanent happiness of society is wrong.

In the foregoing exposition I have, I trust, evinced a sincere desire to give Utilitarianism its full due, and I shall at least be admitted to have shown myself entirely free from most of those more vulgar misconceptions of its nature which have given its professors such just offence. Many of its assailants have not scrupled to stigmatise as worthy only of swine a doctrine which represents life as having no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit than pleasure. To these, however, it has, by the great apostle of Utilitarianism,

1 The distinction here drawn is not merely verbal. The greatest happiness of the greatest number may mean either the largest total of happiness in which the largest possible number of those concerned can participate, or a still larger total, which, if some of the possible participants were excluded, would be divisible among the remainder. The largest aggregate of happiness attainable by any or by all concerned, means the largest sum total absolutely, without reference to the number of participants. Writers on Utilitarianism seem to have sometimes the first, sometimes the second of these totals in view, but more frequently the second than the first.

been triumphantly replied that it is really they themselves who insult human nature by using language that assumes human beings to be capable of no higher pleasures than those of which swine are capable; and that, moreover, if the assumption were correct, and if the capacities of men and of swine were identical, whatever rule of life were good enough for the latter would likewise be good enough for the former. But I am not an assailant of this description. Inasmuch as there undeniably are very many and very various kinds of pleasure, I of course allow Utilitarianism credit for common sense enough to acknowledge that those kinds are most worthy of pursuit which, from whatever cause, possess most value-that those which are most precious are those most to be prized. But whoever allows thus much will have no alternative but to concede a great deal more. The most precious of pleasures is that which arises from the practice of virtue, as may be proved conclusively in the only way of which the case admits, viz., by reference to the fact that, whoever is equally acquainted with that and with other pleasures, deliberately prefers it to all the rest, will, if necessary, forego all others for its sake, and values no others obtainable only at its expense. By necessary implication it follows that, as being more. valuable than any other, the pleasure arising from the practice of virtue must be that which Utilitarianism recommends above all others as an object of pursuit. But the pursuit of this particular pleasure and the practice of virtue are synonymous terms. What, therefore, Utilitarianism above all other things recommends and insists upon is the practice of virtue. Now, the practice of virtue commonly involves subordination of one's own interest to that of other people; indeed, virtue would not be virtue in the utilitarian

sense of the word unless it did involve such subordination. Wherefore the pleasure arising from the practice of virtue, the pleasure which occupies the highest place on the utilitarian scale, and that which Utilitarianism exhorts its disciples chiefly to seek after, is nothing else than the pleasure derived from attending to other people's pleasure instead of to our own.

Nor is this all. In order adequately to appreciate the loftiness of utilitarian teaching, and its utter exemption from the sordidness with which it is ignorantly charged, we must devote a few moments to examination of those distinctive peculiarities of different kinds of pleasure which entitle them to different places in our esteem.

All pleasures may be arranged under five heads, and in regularly ascending series, as follows:

1. Sensual pleasures :-To wit, those of eating and drinking, and whatever others are altogether of the flesh, fleshly.

2. Emotional, by which are to be understood agreeable moods of the mind, such as, irrespectively of any agreeable idea brought forward simultaneously by association, are produced by music (for,' as Milton says, 'eloquence the soul, song charms the sense'), by beauty of form or colour, \by genial sunshine, by balmy or invigorating air.

3. Imaginative, or pleasures derived from the contemplation of mental pictures.

4. Intellectual, or those consequent on exercise of the reasoning powers.

5. Moral, or those which are alluded to when virtue is spoken of as being its own reward.1

1 I do not form a separate class of pleasures of the affections, because these seem to me not to be elementary, but to be always compounded of two or more of the other five kinds.

That of these several kinds, each of the last four is preferable to any preceding it on the list will, it is to be hoped, be allowed to pass as an unquestioned truth, for to any one perverse enough to deny it, the only answer that can be made is an appeal to observation in proof that all persons who are equally acquainted with the several kinds do exhibit the preferences indicated. Neither, so far as the two kinds first-named alone are concerned, is it possible to go much more deeply into the reasons why emotional pleasures are to be preferred to sensual, than by pointing to the fact that all competent judges of both are observed to like the former best. If all those who are endowed with equal sensitiveness of ear and of palate prefer music to feasting, and would any day give up a dinner at Francatelli's for the sake of hearing a rejuvenescent Persiani as Zerlina, or Patti as Dinorah, the one thing presumable is, that all such persons derive more enjoyment from perfect melody than from perfect cookery, and little else remains to be said on the subject. The same ultimate fact need not, however, limit our inquiry as to the preferableness of imaginative or intellectual to emotional pleasures, and of moral to any of the other three. This admits of, and demands, a more subtle explanation, from which we may learn, not merely that certain preferences are shown, but also why they are shown. The preferences in question are demonstrably not due to the greater poignancy of the pleasures preferred. It is simply not true that the keenest of imaginative pleasures is keener than the keenest of emotional, and still less that the keenest of intellectual is so. The very reverse is the truth. The supremest delight attainable in fancy's most romantic flight is, I suspect, faint in comparison with the sort of ecstasy into which a child of freshly-strung nerves