[30] Cf. J. Grote, 'Utilitarian Philosophy,' p. 20, note: "One kind of pleasure may be, systematically, to be preferred to another, but it must be because the pleasures classified under it generally exceed those under the other in intensity, or some other of the elements of value."
[31] Professor Bain distinguishes with greater clearness than his predecessors, first, legal duty, or that the contravention of which is punished by the ministers of the state; secondly, moral duty, enforced by the unofficial punishment of social disapprobation; and thirdly, the conduct which society leaves to individual choice, without censuring either its commission or omission. Moral duty is further distinguished by him from the meritorious, or conduct which society encourages by approval, without censuring its omission.
[32] Mr Gurney's attempt (Mind, vii. 349 ff.) to rationalise the utilitarian "ought" depends upon the assumption that the individual feels a desire (not only for his own, but) for other people's pleasure (p. 352). From the point of view of the psychological hedonist, however, this desire is only secondary and derivative, depending upon the fact that it increases the pleasure of the subject. "Your pleasure," the psychological hedonist would say, "is desired by me quâ my pleasure." If, on the other hand, it is admitted that the individual has other ends than his own pleasure, there seems no ground in psychological fact for limiting these ends to something aimed at because pleasurable to others. From this point of view the first step in the establishment of an ethical theory would be an attempt to find a principle of unity in the various ends actually aimed at by individuals, and recognised by them as "good." This is made by Professor Sidgwick, who, while allowing that "it is possible to hold that the objective relations of conscious minds which we call cognition of Truth, contemplation of Beauty, Freedom of action, &c., are good, independently of the pleasures that we derive from them," maintains that "we can only justify to ourselves the importance that we attach to any of these objects by considering its conduciveness, in one way or another, to the happiness of conscious (or sentient) beings" (Methods of Ethics, iii. xiv. 3, 3d ed., p. 398). But Mr Sidgwick's Utilitarianism depends on a Rational view of human nature which is beyond the scope of the present discussion. See below, [p. 74.]
[33] Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. iii. § 1; Works, i. 14.
[34] As Paley put it, with characteristic plainness of statement, "We can be obliged to nothing, but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by."—Moral and Political Philosophy, book ii. chap. ii.
[35] Cf. Bain, Emotions, p. 264: "I consider that the proper meaning or import of these terms [Morality, Duty, Obligation, or Right] refers to the class of actions enforced by the sanction of punishment."
[36] Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. xix. (xvii.), § 9 ff; Works, i. 144 ff.
[37] Ibid., § 20, p. 148.
[38] Fragment on Government, chap. v.; Works, i. 293. Cf. Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. iii. § 5, p. 14, where the Moral Sanction is said to proceed from "such chance persons in the community as the person in question may happen in the course of his life to have concerns with."
[39] Bentham, Fragment on Government, loc. cit.