(a) We have definite instincts and impulses which tend to satisfy themselves with their appropriate objects.
(b) At their first exercise, our aim could not have been the pleasure resulting from their satisfaction, for that could not have been foreseen.
(c) Although, after experience, the attainment of pleasure may come to be our aim in the exercise of many activities, and may often, as far as we can see, be a natural and not unwholesome aim; it is by no means evident that, even when we are experienced and reflective, the exercise of our faculties comes to be regarded only as a means to the attainment of pleasure.
(d) The hedonist, in maintaining that pleasure is the only ultimate object of desire, appears, thus, to be committed to the doctrine that the satisfaction of all other desires is subordinated to the satisfaction of the desire for pleasure. For this position he can furnish no adequate proof. Self-evident the doctrine is not.
(e) It is incumbent upon him, as a moralist, to prove, not merely that all other satisfactions are, but also that they ought to be subordinated to the satisfaction of the desire for pleasure. This he appears to assume without proof.
(2) We have seen above [Footnote: See Sec 108.] that the fundamental principle of utilitarian hedonism, as against egoistic, namely, the making the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number the object of the endeavors of each individual, has not been satisfactorily established by leading utilitarians. Bentham assumes the principle; Mill advances a doubtful argument; Sidgwick falls back upon intuitions which all will not admit to be indubitable. To his assertion: "Reason shows me that if my happiness is desirable and a good, the equal happiness of any other person must be equally desirable," [Footnote: The Methods of Ethics, Book III, chapter xiv, Sec 5.] the doubter may reply: Desirable to whom? to him or to me?
(3) Finally, it may be objected that the consistent utilitarian, in making pleasure, abstractly taken, the only ultimate good, and in regarding as the sole criterion of right actions their tendency to produce pleasure, really tears pleasure out of its moral setting altogether.
Thus Bentham's contention [Footnote: Sec 106, above.] that the pleasure a man may derive from the exercise of malice or cruelty is, "taken by itself," good—while it lasts, and before any bad consequences have set in, as good as any other that is not more intense—derives what plausibility it has, from an ambiguity in the word "good." Pleasure, taken by itself, is undoubtedly pleasure, whatever be its source. To affirm this is mere tautology. And, if we chose to make "good" but a synonym for pleasure, we remain in the same tautology when we affirm that every pleasure is a good. But Bentham assumed that good in this sense and moral good are the same thing.
His assumption is not borne out by the moral judgments of mankind. Even a cursory view of those moral judgments as revealed in customs, laws and public opinion makes it evident that, under certain circumstances, pleasure is regarded as, from a moral standpoint, a good, and, under other circumstances, an evil. Torn out of its setting, it is simply pleasure, a psychological phenomenon like any other, with no ethical significance.
Take the case of the pleasure enjoyed by the malignant man. It may be intense, if he be peculiarly susceptible to such pleasure. The pain suffered by his victim may conceivably be less intense. Both may die before the "bad consequences," that is to say, other pains, arrive. There may be no spectators. Is, in such a case, the pleasure one to be called a "good"? Can it be approved? No reflective moralist would maintain that it can. Which means that the moralists, in all ages, have meant by "good" something more than pleasure, taken abstractly, and that Bentham's assumption may be regarded as an aberration.