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argument is weakened by introducing the irrelevant notion of the transiency of pleasure. It is not their transiency which prevents a sum of pleasures from being desired: we might still imagine a series of pleasures and desire their pleasantness, which we should enjoy in parts. Pleasures are no more and no less transitory than any other mental event of which we may recall the idea, but not the reality, and all our ends equally are attained only in successive parts. The reason why a series of pleasures cannot form a single pleasure is not that they are transient, but that they are pleasures together with a higher idea, that of existing in a series and pursuing a continuous plan.

But though if all desire is for nothing but pleasure the sum of pleasures cannot be the ultimate object of conduct, the argument does not prove that the sum of pleasures could not be the criterion of conduct. It could only do so in the eyes of those who maintain that a sum of pleasures is impossible because the summation cannot be effected. Now I am not concerned to hold a brief for particular Utilitarian writers, or to defend their inconsistencies, but am dealing with Utilitarianism as a type of ethical thinking: and with regard to the idea of a greatest sum of pleasures there are two remarks to make. There is nothing in the idea of a sum of pleasures, though some may have so understood it, which requires that the pleasures should all be combined into one total result. It must be admitted that 'sum' is an unfortunate word; but a series of pleasures is properly nothing more than an aggregate or combination of pleasures, partly successive, partly co-existent. The reason why such an aggregate tends to be called a sum, and even treated as such, is found in what I have indicated as the fundamental assumption of hedonism, that pleasure is always the same

that the hedonistic end is inconsistent with the doctrine that desire is always for pleasure. (The argument does not, as I point out, apply to Mr. Sidgwick's own view.)

thing varying only in quantity, so that an aggregate of pleasures might, if we had an appropriate means of measuring pleasure, be read off in terms of some metrical unit, and actually added together. In the next place, the objection against the greatest possible happiness on the ground that the sum of pleasures can be increased indefinitely appears to rest on a misconception. The greatest possible happiness does not or need not mean a happiness than which no greater is possible (which would be an absurdity), but the happiness which is greatest under the given conditions. The conditions supply a limit, for if we attempted to increase the pleasure of one person or of one of his faculties beyond a certain point, that of other persons, or of his other faculties, would be found to decline. A maximum of happiness is a mathematical idea implying a limiting position on either side of which the sum of happiness falls away.1

II. The force of the arguments can only properly be appreciated by remembering that they are part of a general polemic against the principle of individualism in psychology. In the professed psychology of most hedonistic writers mental states are treated as nothing but events in a mind which is a mere succession of events. Their arguments depend for their plausibility on these mental states being more than mere events, upon their having contents or characters; but when we turn to their theories of mind we find nothing but isolated and independent occurrences. Now in opposing this psychological individualism the anti-hedonistic theories are enforcing a true principle. On this supposition we could not explain any connection at all between mental states, still less could we account for the combination of pleasures into a sum: mental states can cohere only in virtue of their characters. I may explain by an illustration: a

1 Thus if we represent the acts of a society by the abscissæ, and the corresponding pleasures by the ordinates of a curve, the moral position will be a maximum point on the curve lying between all deflections on either side.

number of bodies placed on the ground belong to a group of bodies only in virtue of each having a certain spatial character called position. Considered as isolated, they neither form a group of themselves, nor could the mind combine them into a group. Put down five units on the paper. So far as we regard only the writing down of each unit, they do not form five units: they do so only in virtue of their numerical character, which allows them to be added. Mental events, as events, correspond to the separate acts of writing the units: all mental products arise, on the other hand, from a combination among events in virtue of their contents. Hence if we are to prove that pleasures cannot form a sum or aggregate, it must be by showing that on this psychological theory there is nothing to show how pleasures can be combined at all. While if we are to prove that pleasures do not form a mere sum, it must be by showing that their differences are more than merely quantitative.

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12. So far as our polemic rests on the principle that mere events cannot combine, it is valid. But instead of proving that pleasures do not form a sum because they are not merely all pleasures, but different kinds of pleasures, it denies that they can form a sum because they are simply feelings; it insists that to imagine a sum of feelings depends on the presence of a permanent self which lives through the series. Now if this only means that a succession of feelings or sensations could never yield the conception of a sum apprehended as a sum, it is quite true, but irrelevant. For such an idea, it is true, we require much more than sensation: we require memory, comparison, perception, the idea of a self. But this is only saying morality requires much more than mere sensation. And it is open to two defects. It depreciates

1 Compare, for verification of this, Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 236-"Desire for a sum or series of pleasures is only possible so far as upon sundry desires, each excited by imagination of a particular pleasure, there supervenes in a man a desire not excited by any such imagination-a desire for self-satisfaction."

sensations by tacitly assuming them to be mere events, and therefore holds that they cannot account for any further product; and in doing so it is fighting its adversaries with. their own weapons, treating mental events as mere events. And secondly, it introduces the idea of a permanent self as something superior to mere sensations, whereas perhaps this self itself is elaborated from sensational elements. On the other hand, if the proposition means that a mind which only had sensations could not have a sum of sensations, this I must deny. It would not, it is true, feel them as a sum, but it would feel them in the only way in which a sum could be an experience of a merely feeling consciousness. There are three points of view we must distinguish: there is the point of view of the spectator to whom the feelings would form a sum, just as he could sum the movements of a body into one whole. There is the point of view of the developed mind which can apprehend its feelings under the form of a sum. And there is the feeling consciousness, which is more than the object as viewed by the spectator, and less than the subject which is aware of its states as a sum. It does not feel its feelings as continuous, but it feels them continuously, not as a succession, but successively or in succession. If we refer to our organic sensations, which are the nearest approach in our human experience to pure sensation (such a feeling as we have when we say we do not feel anyhow particularly), we can verify the possibility of feeling continuously, though of course we are not aware of the continuity as such, which would imply being aware of differences as such.

13. The polemic, therefore, while it is right in opposing individualism, seems to me to assign wrong reasons for rejecting the hedonistic conceptions. The real reason is not that pleasures cannot be combined, for in fact they can, but that if understood on the presumption of individualism, they could not possibly be combined. We have really to show that the pleasures of the hedonists have

no existence in fact. Until this is done I am persuaded the two parties cannot understand each other. For Utilitarian writers, though they speak of pleasures in the language of psychology, treat them as the familiar facts. we know they treat them as they really exist. Moreover, they even credit them with all the characteristics which they present in our experience when they have been operated on by processes much higher than mere sensation. It cannot be doubted that we do combine our pleasures and compare combinations of them with one another. Hence if we are to understand the reasoning, we must drop the psychological theory and think of the concrete facts the writers describe. If we are to test the theoretic result to which this mixture of fidelity to facts with erroneous psychology leads, it is not enough simply to show that pleasures on this theory could not yield the desired result, but we must examine whether their theoretical assumptions are themselves correct. I believe that the idea of the greatest sum of pleasures as the ultimate test of conduct depends on neglecting a cardinal fact that pleasures differ in kind, and cannot therefore be compared merely in respect of intensity.

14. (b.) The pleasure-formula of the end.-Taking first the claim of pleasure to be the criterion of morality, I shall show that the end may always be represented as pleasure, but that so understood it is not an independent test, because of additional quality other than mere intensity of pleasantness required to determine the pleasures themselves.

One aspect of the matter may be dismissed in few words. 'A pleasure' and 'pleasures' in the plural are often used as equivalent to the pleasant sensations. Such pleasures obviously differ in kind, and a sum or combination of them is nothing but a combination of pleasurable feelings, feelings of gratified hunger, ambition, or the like. These feelings cannot be actually added either in thought