even requires theism as its rational complement.

This is what we must now endeavour to show. We cannot illustrate our
contention better than from the popular simplification of Ethics
introduced by Bentham. Taking pleasure as a simple and ultimate notion
he affirms that our conduct is always determined by a balance of
pleasure on one side or the other. The problem of practical ethics is to
construct a calculus of pleasures, a sort of ready-reckoner whereby men
may be able to invest in the most profitable course of action. "When we
have a hedonistic calculus with its senior wranglers," says Mr. Bain,
"we shall begin to know whether society admits of being properly
reconstructed." [5] It is assumed that pleasures differ only in quantity,
i.e., in intensity, extent, and duration, just as warmth does, which may
be of high or low temperature; diffused over a greater or less extent of
body; and that, for a shorter or a longer time. On this assumption
pleasure is every bit as mathematically measurable as is warmth, the
whole difficulty being due to its subjective and therefore inaccessible
nature. Simple in statement, this theory proves in application
infinitely complex, and indeed on closer inspection breaks up into a
mere verbal fallacy--as Dr. Martineau, amongst others, has shown in his
_Types of Ethical Theory_. For "pleasure," though one simple word, has
an endless variety of meanings, not indeed wholly disconnected, but
bound together only by a certain kind of analogy. The eye, the ear, the
palate, the mind, the heart, have each their proper pleasure; which is
nothing else than the resultant of their perfect operation in response
to the stimulus of some all-satisfying object--a fact which may be
expressed differently by different philosophies, but with substantial
identity of meaning. But not till we find some common measure for sound
and colour and flavour and thought and affection, will it be possible to
compare in any hedonistic scales the pleasures they produce. Yet colour
is to the eye what music is to the ear; and therefore the one word
pleasure is used not unreasonably of both.

Quite similar seems to us the fallacy to which Evolution owes its
seeming simplicity and its popularity. The word "existence" or "life"
(which is the existence of organic beings, about which we are chiefly
concerned), is taken as having one homogeneous meaning, like "heat" or
"warmth;" the only difference being quantitative--a difference o