it will be
sufficient if I confine myself to the word 'pleasure.' One statement,
then, of the test of the morality or rightness of an action is that it
should result in a larger amount of pleasure than pain to all those whom
it affects. But it is at once objected that there is the greatest
variety of pleasures and pains, intellectual, moral, aesthetic,
sympathetic, sensual, and so on; and it is asked how are we to determine
their respective values, and to strike the balance between the
conflicting kinds? How much sensual pleasure would compensate for the
pangs of an evil conscience, or what amount of intellectual enjoyment
would allay the cravings of hunger or thirst? The only escape from this
difficulty is frankly to acknowledge that there are some pleasures and
pains which are incommensurable with one other, and that, therefore,
where they are concerned, we must forego the attempt at comparison, and
so act as to compass the immeasurably greater pleasure or avoid the
immeasurably greater pain. Especially is this the case with the
pleasures and pains attendant on the exercise of the moral feelings. A
man who is tormented with the recollection of having committed a great
crime will, as the phrase goes, 'take pleasure in nothing;' while,
similarly, a man who is enjoying the retrospect of having done his duty,
in some important crisis, will care little for obloquy or even for the
infliction of physical suffering. Making this admission, then, as well
as recognising the fact that our pleasures differ in quality as well as
in volume, so that the pleasures of the higher part of our nature, the
religious, the intellectual, the moral, the aesthetic, the sympathetic
nature, affect us with a different kind of enjoyment from the sensual
pleasures, or those which are derived from them, we may rightly regard
the tendency to produce a balance of pleasure over pain as the test of
the goodness of an action, and the effort and intention to perform acts
having this tendency as the test of the morality of the agent. But when
we enunciate the production of pleasure as our aim, or the balance of
pleasure-producing over pain-producing results as the test of right
action, we are not always understood to have admitted these
explanations, and, consequently, there is always a danger of our being
supposed to degrade morality by identifying it with the gratification,
in ourselves and others, of the coarser and more material impulses of
our nature. T