or in enjoyment, because where they do not simply differ in intensity they are incommensurable. A system of them which should be a criterion of conduct would represent the feelings resulting from good conduct, and be determined therefore by good conduct itself.

15. Pleasure in the proper sense, however, means not a pleasant feeling, but its pleasantness: as such it is only an element in sensation: but the same thing is true of it as is true of the pleasant feeling: it is subject to differences not only of degree but of kind. What the psychological character of pleasure is I need not describe with more detail or exactness than is necessary for ethical purposes. Psychologists agree in distinguishing in every sensation or feeling its quality, which always exists with a certain intensity, and its tone. Thus in a sensation of red, redness is the quality of the sensation. The quality of a simple feeling of sense depends on its origin, whether it belongs to one of the senses or is an organic feeling. Pleasure and pain, on the other hand, are tones of sensations or feelings, and they obviously vary in intensity. Now it is of the utmost importance to observe that pleasure and pain are very inadequate terms to describe tones of feelings. The tones of colours and sounds, for instance, are more naturally represented by the mood of mind they suggest: red has a warm tone, black a sad, grey a sober, the organ a solemn tone.1 Sometimes a feeling is so indefinite in tone as to be no more than a vague comfort' or 'discomfort': while the tone may rise to such a condition that only such words. as' bliss' or 'rapture' seem proper to describe it. Part of the repugnance of the mind to accept pleasure as the end arises from the loose and somewhat unnatural use of the term pleasure to describe tones which have merely a general affinity with the commoner kinds of pleasure, but are very unlike the coarser and more palpable pleasures to which the term pleasure is often confined. 1 See on this subject Wundt, Phys. Psych., i., p. 485 (ed. ii.).

Whether there are any feelings neutral in respect of pleasure and pain is an undecided question, which, however, seems to arise partly from the same confusion. We may be unable to detect pleasure or pain (though in my own experience I believe I can usually do so), but sensations without any tone at all do not seem to exist.

16. Pleasure and pain depend not only on the quality and quantity of the feeling of which they form an element, but on the whole condition of the mind. This is the obvious truth of the doctrine called the relativity of pleasures. But the more intimate connection of pleasure with the mind is best expressed in the hypothesis of Lotze, that it depends on an agreement between the effects of a stimulus with any of the conditions to which the natural exercise of bodily or mental life is attached.1 Pleasure is a sign of such agreement, pain of disturbance. They plainly stand in intimate connection with the mass of ideas which in a later stage of the mind's history give rise to the self. They are therefore sometimes regarded as due to an expansion or contraction, respectively, of this psychical mass when a new idea or feeling is presented or brought in contact with it. But whether the relation involved in pleasure is more properly described as harmony or as expansion, or whether a feeling is pleasant when it continues the movement of the mind in the direction which at the moment the mind has, for whatever reason, taken up, we need not inquire. It is enough to see that pleasure indicates the agreement of a feeling with the mind; and that consequently an activity is pleasant which agrees with the set of a man's character.

2

17. These tones of pleasure and pain differ not only in intensity but in kind according to the kind of sensation they accompany. They are functions not only of

1 Lotze, Medicinische Psychologie, p. 234. new. Cp. Kant, Anthropologie, Bd. VII., ii., Schubert).

The idea is of course not p. 144 (ed. Rosenkranz and

2 Mr. Bradley's article in Mind, xiii., contains a discussion of the nature of pleasure ('On Pleasure, Pain, Desire and Volition ').

For

the intensity but of the quality of the sensation. We need only appeal to experience to be convinced that they have always a special quality or colour, just as the sweetness of an apple differs from that of a pear not merely in degree but in its character. The pleasure of thinking is of a different quality from the pleasure of eating. At the same time there are resemblances between the qualities of pleasures. There are even analogies between different pleasures, in virtue of which it is we can transfer the language of one sensation to another, speaking of warmth of colour and brilliancy of sound.1 proof of the differences of quality in pleasure I can only refer to experience, to such distinctions of pleasure as we experience, for instance, in drinking different wines. How the differences of quality arise, is a matter which does not concern us here. Supposing they could be explained by differences of degree in the cause of the sensation, they still remain differences of kind, just as red light is different in kind from blue light, though the difference may be numerically expressed. Some pleasures and pains indeed seem to depend on a rhythm in the intensity of the sensation, as, e.g., a throbbing pain. But with these complexities in determining pleasure we have not to do. What is essential for the purpose is to note the further difference between the throbbing pain of a fester and of a toothache. Pleasures, therefore, of the same quality differ in intensity only, otherwise they differ in quality as well.

Before further explanation, let us see what result follows from these propositions. The tone, with its quality and intensity, is never found apart in our experience from the sensation, but is only one element in a single whole. But supposing the separation to be made, as it actually is, then a system or combination of pleasures corresponding to the sensations which are produced by the identity of good

1 The remark is due to Prof. Wundt (Phys. Psych., i. p. 487), who does not, however, sanction my inference from the fact to similar qualities of pleasure.

conduct represents the end as combined in terms of pleasure. But every such pleasure being a function of the sensation in which it is an element, the sum of pleasures is made up of pleasures every one of which is qualified as that which is produced by a certain activity. The sum of pleasures, therefore, reintroduces the distinctions and the contents of the moral order, and though an expression of the criterion of conduct, is therefore, like perfection, not an independent criterion. What we have done in thus representing the end as pleasure is in mathematical language to substitute in the formula for good conduct, which is a function of the act, the pleasure-value of each act.

And

18. But the assertion that pleasure as equivalent to pleasantness differs in kind, though supported by the high authority of Lotze, is so opposed to the current views that it must be further explained. The element of quality in pleasure is best described by that name, but it may be verified more easily in experience as what I may call the preferability of a pleasure. The term is open to objection. Used of minds which are lower than our own the term preferability might be unmeaning. secondly, it may suggest that there is an inherent moral value in every pleasure. I use the term for want of a better, because it is upon this element of quality that preferability depends, and not in order to convey the idea that the pleasure ought to be preferred. To suppose that there is an original value in pleasure, in virtue of which pleasures can themselves be distinguished as higher and lower, involves so palpable an error that it may be doubted if any one has ever seriously entertained. the view. Higher and lower is an antithesis which is established by morality itself. The higher pleasure is that which, in a given case, morality approves, as against another which it rejects. If we took the pleasures by themselves apart from the moral judgment upon them, it is impossible to rebut the question, who is to

say that the drunkard has a lower pleasure than the philosopher?

"Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious;

O'er all the ills of life victorious."

On the contrary, the moral or objective preferability of a pleasure is determined by its place in the order of pleasures which is the pleasure-formula of the end. And as the moral value of an act depends on what it is and how it is related to the rest of the moral order, so the moral value of a pleasure depends on what kind of pleasure it is, whether of generosity or debauchery, or the like. Since, however, the good man's mind reflects the moral order, his taste will distinguish pleasures according to the distinctions of value which morality establishes amongst them. And it was, I suppose, this simple truth, and nothing more profound or precise, which both Plato and Mill intended to convey when they based the differences of pleasures in kind upon the decision of the wise man who had experience of them all. It must be added that the criterion remains a truism, unless it is shown to depend on the elementary difference in the qualities of pleasures which are weighed one against another in the system before the pleasures can acquire moral value.

It is thus morality itself which settles which of two pleasures ought to be preferred. The initial contrast between tones of feeling is that of pleasure against pain: within these broad distinctions arise the minor distinctions of kind, so that we can always discover in the pleasure or pain of any feeling the two elements of intensity and preferability. And on this second element the moral estimation of pleasure depends.

19. We have still, however, to meet a question which may be asked by those who hold the ultimate test to be the greatest sum of pleasantness. Granted pleasures differ in kind, why should they not still be estimated in