CHAPTER VI

DEDUCTIVE HEDONISM

§ 1. In the preceding chapter we have seen reason to conclude that, while obedience to recognised rules of duty tends, under ordinary circumstances, to promote the happiness of the agent, there are yet no adequate empirical grounds for regarding the performance of duty as a universal or infallible means to the attainment of this end. Even, however, if it were otherwise, even if it were demonstrably reasonable for the egoist to choose duty at all costs under all circumstances, the systematic endeavour to realise this principle would not--according to common notions of morality--solve or supersede the problem of determining the right method for seeking happiness. For the received moral code allows within limits the pursuit of our own happiness, and even seems to regard it as morally prescribed;[131] and still more emphatically inculcates the promotion of the happiness of other individuals, with whom we are in various ways specially connected: so that, under either head, the questions that we have before considered as to the determination and measurement of the elements of happiness would still require some kind of answer.

It remains to ask how far a scientific investigation of the causes of pleasure and pain can assist us in dealing with this practical problem.

Now it is obvious that for deciding which of two courses of action is preferable on hedonistic grounds, we require not only to measure pains and pleasures of different kinds, but also to ascertain how they may be produced or averted. In most important prudential decisions, complex chains of consequences are foreseen as intervening between the volition we are immediately to initiate and the feelings which constitute the ultimate end of our efforts; and the degree of accuracy with which we forecast each link of these chains obviously depends upon our knowledge, implicit or explicit, of the relations of cause and effect among various natural phenomena. But if we suppose the different elements and immediate sources of happiness to have been duly ascertained and valued, the investigation of the conditions of production of each hardly belongs to a general treatise on the method of ethics; but rather to some one or other of the special arts subordinate to the general art of conduct. Of these subordinate arts some have a more or less scientific basis, while others are in a merely empirical stage; thus if we have decided how far health is to be sought, it belongs to the systematic art of hygiene, based on physiological science, to furnish a detailed plan of seeking it; so far, on the other hand, as we aim at power or wealth or domestic happiness, such instruction as the experience of others can give will be chiefly obtained in an unsystematic form, either from advice relative to our own special circumstances, or from accounts of success and failure in analogous situations. In either case the exposition of such special arts does not appear to come within the scope of the present treatise; nor could it help us in dealing with the difficulties of measuring pleasures and pains which we have considered in the previous chapters.

It may, however, be thought that a knowledge of the causes of pleasure and pain may carry us beyond the determination of the means of gaining particular kinds of pleasure and avoiding particular kinds of pain; and enable us to substitute some deductive method of evaluing the elements of happiness for the empirical-reflective method of which we have seen the defects.[132]

A hedonistic method, indeed, that would dispense altogether with direct estimates of the pleasurable and painful consequences of actions is almost as inconceivable as a method of astronomy that would dispense with observations of the stars. It is, however, conceivable that by induction from cases in which empirical measurement is easy we may obtain generalisations that will give us more trustworthy guidance than such measurement can do in complicated cases; we may be able to ascertain some general psychical or physical concomitant or antecedent of pleasure and pain, more easy to recognise, foresee, measure, and produce or avert in such cases, than pleasure and pain themselves. I am willing to hope that this refuge from the difficulties of Empirical Hedonism may some time or other be open to us: but I cannot perceive that it is at present available. There is at present, so far as I can judge, no satisfactorily established general theory of the causes of pleasure and pain; and such theories as have gained a certain degree of acceptance, as partially true or probable, are manifestly not adapted for the practical application that we here require.

The chief difficulty of finding a universally applicable theory of the causes of pleasures and pains is easily explained. Pleasures and pains may be assumed to have universally--like other psychical facts--certain cerebral nerve-processes, specifically unknown, as their inseparable concomitants: accordingly, we may seek their causes either in antecedent physical or antecedent psychical facts. But in one important class of cases the chief cognisable antecedents are obviously of the former kind, while in another important class they are obviously of the latter kind: the difficulty is to establish any theory equally applicable to both classes, or to bring the results of the two lines of inquiry under a single generalisation without palpably unsupported hypotheses. In the case of pleasures and pains--especially pains--connected with sensation the most important cognisable antecedents are clearly physical. I do not deny that, when the pain is foreseen, the attitude of mind in which it is met may materially influence its magnitude: indeed, in the hypnotic condition of the brain, the feeling of pain may be apparently altogether prevented by an antecedent belief that it will not be felt. Still in the main, under ordinary conditions, the pains of sensation--probably the intensest in the experience of most persons--invade and interrupt our psychical life from without; and it would be idle to look for the chief causes of their intensity or quality among antecedent psychical facts. This is not equally true of the most prominent pleasures of sense: since antecedent desire, if not an absolutely indispensable condition of such pleasures, seems at any rate necessary to their attaining a high degree of intensity. Still the chief causes of these desires themselves are clearly physical states and processes--not merely neural--in the organism of the sentient individual: and this is also true of a more indefinite kind of pleasure, which is an important element of ordinary human happiness,--the “well-feeling” that accompanies and is a sign of physical well-being.

On the other hand, when we investigate the causes of the pleasures and pains that belong to intellectual exercises or the play of personal affections,--or of the pleasures (and to some extent pains) that belong to the contemplation of beauty (or its opposite) in art or nature,--no physiological theory can carry us far, owing to our ignorance of the neural processes that accompany or antecede these feelings.

This is my general conclusion: the grounds for which I propose to illustrate and explain further in the present chapter. It would, however, seem to be quite beyond my limits to attempt anything like an exhaustive discussion of either psychological or physiological theories of the causes of pleasure and pain. I shall confine myself to certain leading generalisations, which seem to have a special interest for students of ethics; either because ethical motives have had a share in causing their acceptance; or because--though inadequately grounded as general theories--they appear to have a partial and limited value for practical guidance.

§ 2. Let us begin by considering a theory, primarily psychological, which has at least the merit of antiquity--as it is admittedly derived from Aristotle,[133]--and is, in some form or other, still current.[134] It is that expressed by Sir W. Hamilton[135] in the following propositions: “Pleasure is the reflex of the spontaneous and unimpeded exertion of a power of whose energy we are conscious: pain, a reflex of the overstrained or repressed exertion of such a power.” The phrases suggest _active_ as ordinarily distinguished from _passive_ states; but Hamilton explains that “energy” and similar terms “are to be understood to denote indifferently all the processes of our higher and lower life of which we are conscious,”--on the ground that consciousness itself implies more than a mere passivity of the subject. I think, however, that the theory is evidently framed primarily to suit the pleasures and pains that belong to the intellectual life as such, and is only applied by a somewhat violent straining to an important class among the pleasures and pains that belong to man’s animal life. For Hamilton explains his terms (_a_) “spontaneous” and (_b_) “unimpeded” to imply respectively (_a_) absence of “forcible repression” or “forcible stimulation” of the power exercised, and (_b_) absence of checks or hindrances on the part of the object about which it is conversant. But these terms seem to have no clear psychical import in application to organic sensations of the kind ordinarily called passive. _E.g._ the feelings and vague representations of bodily processes which constitute the consciousness of a toothache are as free from conscious repression or stimulation as those which constitute the consciousness that accompanies a warm bath:--except so far as the mere presence of pain implies constraint, since we experience it unwillingly, and the mere presence of pleasure implies the opposite: but in this sense constraint and its opposite are characteristics of the effects to be explained, and cannot therefore be regarded as their causes.

Indeed, the ethical interest and value of the theory appears to me to lie in its very one-sidedness. It tends to correct a vulgar error in the estimate of pleasure, by directing attention strongly to the importance of a class of pleasures which ordinary pleasure-seeking probably undervalues,--the pleasures that specially belong to a life filled with strenuous activity, whether purely intellectual, or practical and partly physical.[136] In the same way it effectively dispels the popular inadvertence of regarding labour as normally painful because some labour is so, and because the pleasures connected with relief from toil--the pleasures of repose and play--are in the experience of most persons more striking than the pleasures of strenuous activity. At the same time, even if we limit the theory to the pleasures and pains immediately connected with voluntary activity--intellectual or physical--it seems to me devoid not only of definite guidance, but also of adequate theoretical precision. For it seems to imply that the exercise of our powers is always made less pleasant by the presence of impediments; but this is obviously not true either of mainly intellectual or mainly physical activities. Some obstacles undeniably increase pleasure by drawing out force and skill to overcome them, as is clearly shown in the case of games and sports: and even if we understand pain-causing impediments to be only such hindrances as repress and diminish action, I do not find that the theory is supported by experience, except so far as the repression causes the specific discomfort of unsatisfied desire. _E.g._ I find entertainment rather than discomfort in trying to make out objects in a dim light, or the meaning of a speech in a strange language, provided that failure does not interfere with the attainment of any end to which I attach importance. It is a fundamental defect in Hamilton’s theory, even in its more limited application, that it ignores the teleological character of normal human activity.

This defect is avoided in a modification of the theory that a recent writer has adopted. “The antithesis,” says Mr. Stout,[137] “between pleasure and pain is coincident with the antithesis between free and impeded progress towards an end. Unimpeded progress is pleasant in proportion to the intensity and complexity of mental excitement. An activity which is ... thwarted and retarded ... is painful in proportion to its intensity and complexity and to the degree of the hindrance.” Mr. Stout admits the difficulty of applying this principle of explanation to the pleasures and pains of sense:[138] and--unlike Hamilton--he expressly recognises that “a struggle with difficulties which is not too prolonged or too intense may enhance the pleasure of success out of all proportion to its own painfulness.” But this qualification seems to render the propositions first laid down unimportant from our present practical point of view, whatever may be their theoretical value. I think, too, that the importance of antecedent desire, as a condition of the pleasures and pains attendant on voluntary activities, should be more expressly recognised. When desire is strong, hopeful effort to overcome difficulties in the way of fruition tends to be proportionally pleasurable--apart from actual success--while disappointment or the fear of disappointment similarly tends to be painful: but when desire is not strong, the shock of thwarted activity and unfulfilled expectation may be rather agreeable than otherwise. Thus, suppose I take a walk for pleasure, intending to reach a neighbouring village, and find an unexpected flood crossing my road; if I have no strong motive for arriving at the village, the surprise and consequent change in the plan of my walk will probably be on the whole a pleasurable incident.

The importance of eager desire as a condition of pleasure is noteworthy from an ethical point of view: as it gives the psychological basis for the familiar precept to repress--with a view to private happiness--desires for ends that are either unattainable or incompatible with the course of life which prudence marks out; and for the somewhat less trite maxim of encouraging and developing desires that prompt in the same direction as rational choice.

Suppose now we drop the dubious term “unimpeded”--retaining Hamilton’s idea of “overstrained or repressed exertion” as the condition of pain--and at the same time passing to a physical point of view, mean by “activity” the activity of an _organ_. We thus reach what is substantially Mr. Spencer’s doctrine, that pains are the psychical concomitants of excessive or deficient actions of organs, while pleasures are the concomitants of medium activities.[139] In considering this theory it will be convenient to take pains and pleasures separately: as it is obviously based primarily on experiences of pain rather than of pleasure,--especially of the pains of sense to which Hamilton’s theory seemed palpably inapplicable. Instances are abundant in which pain is obviously caused by excessive stimulation of nerves. Thus when we gradually increase the intensity of sensible heat, pressure, muscular effort, we encounter pain at a certain point of the increase; “deafening” sounds are highly disagreeable; and to confront a tropical sun with unprotected eyeballs would soon become torture. Some pains, again, as Spencer points out, arise from the excessive actions of organs whose normal actions yield no feelings: as when the digestive apparatus is overtaxed. Still in none of these cases does it seem clear that pain supervenes through a mere intensification _in degree_ of the action of the organ in question; and not rather through some change in the kind of action--some inchoate disintegration or disorganisation. And this latter cause--rather than mere quantity of stimulation--is strongly suggested by a consideration of the pains due to wounds and diseases, and even of the transient digestive discomforts which arise from an improper kind rather than an improper quantity of food. And a similar explanation seems to me most probable in the case of pains which, according to Mr. Spencer, arise from “deficient” action. He speaks of these as “discomforts or cravings”; but, as I have before pointed out,[140] bodily appetites and other desires may be strongly-felt impulses to action without being appreciably painful: and, in my experience, when they become decidedly painful, some disturbance tending to derangement may be presumed either in the organ primarily concerned or in the organism as a whole. Thus hunger, in my experience, may be extremely keen without being appreciably painful: and when I find it painful, experience leads me to expect a temporarily reduced power of assimilation, indicating some disorganisation in the digestive apparatus.[141]

In any case, empirical evidence supports “excessive action” of an organ as a cause of pain far more clearly than “deficient action.” Indeed a consideration of this evidence has led some psychologists to adopt the generalisation[142] that there is no quality of sensation absolutely pleasant or unpleasant, but that every kind of sensation as it grows in intensity begins at a certain point to be pleasurable, and continues such up to a certain further point at which it passes rapidly through indifference into pain. My own experience, however, fails to support this generalisation. I agree with Gurney[143] that “of many tastes and odours the faintest possible suggestion is disagreeable”; while other feelings resulting from stimulation of sense-organs appear to remain highly pleasurable at the highest degree of stimulation which the actual conditions of physical life appear to allow.

However this may be, whether we conceive the nervous action of which pain is an immediate consequent or concomitant as merely excessive in quantity, or in some way discordant or disorganised in quality, it is obvious that neither explanation can furnish us with any important practical guidance: since we have no general means of ascertaining, independently of our experience of pain itself, what nervous actions are excessive or disorganised: and the cases where we have such means do not present any practical problems which the theory enables us to solve. No one doubts that wounds and diseases are to be avoided under all ordinary circumstances: and in the exceptional circumstances in which we may be moved to choose them as the least of several evils, the exactest knowledge of their precise operation in causing pain is not likely to assist our choice.

It may be said, however,--turning from pain to pleasure,--that the generalisation which we have been considering at any rate gives us a psychophysical basis for the ancient maxim of “avoiding excess” in the pursuit of pleasure. But we have to observe that the practical need of this maxim is largely due to the qualifications which the psychophysical generalisation requires to make it true. Thus it is especially needed in the important cases in which over-stimulation is followed by pain not at once but after an interval of varying length. _E.g._ alcoholic drinking, to many, remains pleasurable at the time up to the point of excess at which the brain can no longer perform its functions: it is “next morning” that the pain comes, or perhaps--in the case of “well-seasoned” topers--not till after many years of habitual excess. It should be noted also that it is not always the organ of which the exercise gives pleasure that also, through over-exercise, causes the pain of excess. Thus when we are tempted to eat too much, the seductive pleasure is mainly due to the nerves of taste which are not overtaxed; the pains come from the organs of digestion, whose faint, vague pleasures alone would hardly tempt the voluptuary to excess. In the case of dangerous mental excitements the penalty on excess is usually still more indirect.

On the whole, granting that pleasure like virtue resides somewhere in the mean, it must be admitted that this proposition gives no practical directions for attaining it. For first, granting that both excessive and deficient activities of organs cause pain, the question still remains--as Spencer himself says--What determines in any case the lower and the higher limits within which action is pleasurable? Spencer’s answer to this question I will consider presently. But there is a question no less obvious to which he does not expressly advert, viz. why among the normal activities of our physical organs, that have counterparts in consciousness, some only are pleasurable in any appreciable degree, while many if not most are nearly or quite indifferent. It seems undeniable (_e.g._) that while tastes and smells are mostly either agreeable or disagreeable, most sensations of touch and many of sight and sound are not appreciably[144] either; and that, in the daily routine of healthy life, eating and drinking are ordinarily pleasant, while dressing and undressing, walking and muscular movements generally are practically indifferent.

It does not seem that an adequate explanation can be found in the operation of habit.[145] It is no doubt true that actions through frequent uniform repetition tend to become automatic and lose their conscious counterparts, and hedonic indifference certainly seems in some cases to be a stage through which such actions pass on the way to unconsciousness. Thus even a business walk in a strange town is normally pleasant through the novelty of the sights: but a similar walk in the town where one lives is ordinarily indifferent, or nearly so; while if one’s attention is strongly absorbed by the business, it may be performed to a great extent unconsciously. On the other hand, the operations of habit often have the opposite effect of making activities pleasant which were at first indifferent or even disagreeable: as in the case of acquired tastes, physical or intellectual. Indeed such experiences have long been--I think, quite legitimately--used by moralists as an encouragement to irksome duties, on the ground that their irksomeness will be transient, through the operation of habit, while the gain of their performance will be permanent. Mr. Spencer, indeed, regards such experiences as so important that he ventures to base on them the prediction that “pleasure will eventually accompany every mode of action demanded by social conditions.” This, however, seems unduly optimistic, in view not only of the first-mentioned tendency of habit to hedonic indifference, but also of a third tendency to render actions, at first indifferent or even pleasant, gradually more irksome. Thus our intellect gradually wearies of monotonous activities, and the _ennui_ may sometimes become intense: so again the relish of a kind of diet at first agreeable may turn through monotony into disgust.

Some quite different explanation must therefore be sought for the varying degrees in which pleasure accompanies normal activities. Can we find this in a suggestion of Mr. Spencer’s, developed by Mr. Grant Allen,[146] that the pleasurableness of normal organic activities depends on their _intermittence_, and that “the amount of pleasure is probably ... in the inverse ratio of the natural frequency of excitation” of the nerve-fibres involved? This theory certainly finds some support in the fact that the sensual pleasures generally recognised as greatest are those attending the activities of organs which are normally left unexercised for considerable intervals. Still, there are many facts that it does not explain--_e.g._ the great differences in the pleasures obtainable at any given time by different stimulations of the same sense; the phenomenon expressed in the proverbial phrase “L’appétit vient en mangeant”; and the fact that the exercise of the visual organs after apparently dreamless sleep does not give appreciably keener pleasure than it does at ordinary times. It would seem that we must seek for some special cause of the pleasurable effect of intermittence in certain cases. And this cannot be merely the greater intensity of the nervous action that takes place when long-unexercised and well-nourished nerve-centres are stimulated: for why, if that were the explanation, should the normal consciousness of full nervous activity, gradually attained--as when we are in full swing of energetic unwearied work of a routine kind--be often nearly or quite indifferent?

Among the various competing hypotheses offered at this point of our inquiry--no one of which, I believe, has attained anything like general acceptance as covering the whole ground--I select for discussion one that has special ethical interest.

According to this hypothesis,[147] the organic process accompanied by pleasure is to be conceived as a “restoration of equilibrium” after “disturbance”: so that the absence of appreciable pleasure in the case of certain normal activities is explained by the absence of antecedent disturbance. This view is obviously applicable to certain classes of pleasures which, though by no means rare are incidental in a normal life:--the pleasure of relief after physical pain, or after the strain of great anxiety, and the pleasure of repose after unusual exertions, intellectual or muscular. But when we attempt to apply it to sensational pleasures generally, the indefiniteness of the notion of “equilibrium,” as applied to the processes of a living organism, becomes manifest. For our physical life consists of a series of changes, for the most part periodically recurrent with slight modification after short intervals: and it is difficult to see why we should attach the idea of “disturbance” or “restoration of equilibrium” to any one among these normal processes rather than any other:--_e.g._ it is difficult to see why the condition of having expended energy should be regarded as a departure from equilibrium any more than the condition of having just taken in nutriment. In fact, to render the hypothesis we are considering at all applicable to normal pleasures of sense, we have to pass from the physiological to the psychological point of view, and take note of the psychical state of _desire_, as a consciously _unrestful_ condition, of which the essence is a felt impulse to pass out of this state towards the attainment of the desired object. Our hypothesis, then, may take this unrestful consciousness as a sign of what, from a physiological point of view, is “disturbance of equilibrium,” and similarly, the satisfaction of desire may be taken to be, physiologically, a restoration of equilibrium. On this assumption, the theory becomes undeniably applicable to those gratifications of sensual appetite which form the most prominent element of the pleasures of sense, as popularly conceived.

Now we have already noted that by a wide-spread confusion of thought, desire has often been regarded as a species of pain. Accordingly, the theory that we are considering was originally prompted by the ethical motive of depreciating the vulgarly overvalued pleasures of satisfied bodily appetite, by laying stress on their inseparable connexion with antecedent pain. The depreciation, however, fails so far as the appetite which is a necessary antecedent condition of the pleasure is--though an unrestful state--not appreciably painful.[148]

In any case, admitting the physical counterpart of conscious desire to be a ‘disturbance of equilibrium,’ or an effect and sign of such disturbance, the theory seems open to obvious objections, if it is extended to cover the whole range of the pleasures of sense. For conscious desire is certainly not a necessary condition of experiencing the simple pleasures of the special senses: normally no sense of want has preceded the experience of pleasant sights, sounds, odours, flavours, or of the more important pleasures, more complex in their psychical conditions, which we call æsthetic. No doubt in special cases antecedent privation may produce a conscious want of these latter pleasures which may increase their intensity when they are at length attained: or even without any felt privation, the prospect of enjoying such pleasures may produce a keen desire for the enjoyment, which may be regarded as a “disturbance of equilibrium” no less plausibly than a bodily appetite. But it would be quite unwarrantable therefore to suppose a similar disturbance, though unfelt, in the ordinary cases where pleasures of this kind are experienced without any antecedent consciousness of desire or want.

I have perhaps said enough to support my general conclusion that psychophysical speculation as to the causes of pleasure and pain does not at present afford a basis for a deductive method of practical Hedonism. But, before passing from this topic, I may remark that the difficulties in the way of any such theory seem especially great in the case of the complex pleasures which we distinguish as “æsthetic.” All would agree that æsthetic gratification, when at all high, depends on a subtle harmony of different elements in a complex state of consciousness; and that the pleasure resulting from such harmonious combination is indefinitely greater than the sum of the simpler pleasures which the uncombined elements would yield. But even those who estimate most highly the success that has so far been attained in discovering the conditions of this harmony, in the case of any particular art, would admit that mere conformity to the conditions thus ascertained cannot secure the production of æsthetic pleasure in any considerable degree. However subtly we state in general terms the objective relations of elements in a delightful work of art, on which its delight seems to depend, we must always feel that it would be possible to produce out of similar elements a work corresponding to our general description which would give no delight at all; the touch that gives delight depends upon an instinct for which no deductive reasoning can supply a substitute. This is true, even without taking into account the wide divergences that we actually find in the æsthetic sensibilities of individuals: still less, therefore, is it needful to argue that, from the point of view of an individual seeking his own greatest happiness, none but a mainly inductive and empirical method of estimating æsthetic pleasures can be made available.

§ 3. I now pass to consider a theory which may be distinguished from those discussed in the preceding section as being biological rather than psychophysical: since it directs attention not to the actual present characteristics of the organic states or changes of which pleasures and pains are the concomitants or immediate consequents, but to their relations to the life of the organism as a whole. I mean the theory that “pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of acts conducive to its welfare.” Mr. Spencer, from whom the above propositions are quoted,[149] subsequently explains “injurious” and “conducive to welfare” to mean respectively “tending to decrease or loss of life,” and “tending to continuance or increase of life”: but in his deduction by which the above conclusion is summarily established, “injurious” and “beneficial” are used as equivalent simply to “destructive” and “preservative” of organic life: and it will be more convenient to take the terms first in this simpler signification.

Mr. Spencer’s argument is as follows:--

“If we substitute for the word Pleasure the equivalent phrase--a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there; and if we substitute for the word Pain the equivalent phrase--a feeling which we seek to get out of consciousness and to keep out; we see at once that, if the states of consciousness which a creature endeavours to maintain are the correlatives of injurious actions, and if the states of consciousness which it endeavours to expel are the correlatives of beneficial actions, it must quickly disappear through persistence in the injurious and avoidance of the beneficial. In other words, those races of beings only can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings went along with activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable and habitually-avoided feelings went along with activities directly or indirectly destructive of life; and there must ever have been, other things equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best, tending ever to bring about perfect adjustment.”

Now I am not concerned to deny the value of this summary deduction for certain purposes. But it can easily be shown to be inadequate to afford a basis for a deductive method of seeking maximum happiness for the individual, by substituting Preservation for Pleasure as the end directly aimed at. In the first place, Mr. Spencer only affirms the conclusion to be true, as he rather vaguely says, “on the average”: and it is obvious that though the tendency to find injurious acts pleasant or preservative acts painful must be a disadvantage to any species of animal in the struggle for existence, it may--if existing only to a limited extent--be outweighed by other advantages, so that the organism in which it exists may survive in spite of it. This, I say, is obvious _a priori_: and common experience, as Mr. Spencer admits, shows “in many conspicuous ways” that this has been actually the case with civilised man during the whole period of history that we know: owing to the changes caused by the course of civilisation, “there has arisen and must long continue a deep and involved derangement of the natural connexions between pleasures and beneficial actions and between pains and detrimental actions.” This seems to be in itself a sufficient objection to founding a deductive method of Hedonism on Mr. Spencer’s general conclusion. It is, indeed, notorious that civilised men take pleasure in various forms of unhealthy conduct and find conformity to the rules of health irksome; and it is also important to note that they may be, and actually are, susceptible of keen pleasure from acts and processes that have no material tendency to preserve life. Nor is there any difficulty in explaining this on the “evolution hypothesis”; since we cannot argue _a priori_ from this hypothesis that the development of the nervous system in human beings may not bring with it intense susceptibilities to pleasure from non-preservative processes, if only the preservation of the individuals in whom such susceptibilities are developed is otherwise adequately provided for. Now this latter supposition is obviously realised in the case of persons of leisure in civilised society; whose needs of food, clothing, shelter, etc., are abundantly supplied through the complex social habit which we call the institution of private property: and I know no empirical ground for supposing that a cultivated man tends, in consequence of the keen and varied pleasure which he seeks and enjoys, to live longer than a man who goes through a comparatively dull round of monotonous routine activity, interspersed by slightly pleasurable intervals of repose and play.

§ 4. If, however, the individual is not likely to obtain a maximum of Pleasure by aiming merely at Preservation, it remains to consider whether “quantity of life” will serve any better. Now it is of course true that so far as nervous action is attended by consciousness pleasurable in quality, the more there is of it, the happier we shall be. But even if we assume that the more intense and full life is “on the average” the happier, it by no means follows that we shall gain _maximum_ pleasure by aiming merely at intensity of consciousness: for we experience intense pains even more indubitably than intense pleasures, and in those “full tides of soul,” in which we seem to be most alive, painful consciousness may be mixed in almost any proportion. And further we often experience excitement nearly or quite neutral in quality (_i.e._ not distinctly pleasurable or painful), which reaches a great pitch of intensity, as in the case of laborious struggles with difficulties, and perplexing conflicts of which the issue is doubtful.

It may, however, be replied that “quantity of life” must be taken to imply not merely intensity of consciousness, but multiplicity and variety--a harmonious and many-sided development of human nature. And experience certainly seems to support the view that men lose happiness by allowing some of their faculties or capacities to be withered and dwarfed for want of exercise, and thus not leaving themselves sufficient variety of feelings or activities: especially as regards the bodily organs, it will be agreed that the due exercise of most, if not all, is indispensable to the health of the organism; and further, that the health maintained by this balance of functions is a more important source of the individual’s happiness than the unhealthy over-exercise of any one organ can be. Still, it would appear that the harmony of functions necessary to health is a very elastic one, and admits of a very wide margin of variation, as far as the organs under voluntary control are concerned. A man (_e.g._) who exercises his brain alone will probably be ill in consequence: but he may exercise his brain much and his legs little, or _vice versa_, without any morbid results. And, in the same way, we cannot lay down the proposition, that a varied and many-sided life is the happiest, with as much precision as would be necessary if it were to be accepted as a basis for deductive Hedonism. For it seems to be also largely true, on the other side, that the more we come to exercise any faculty with sustained and prolonged concentration, the more pleasure we derive from such exercise, up to the point at which it becomes wearisome, or turns into a semi-mechanical routine which renders consciousness dull and languid. It is, no doubt, important for our happiness that we should keep within this limit: but we cannot fix it precisely in any particular case without special experience: especially as there seems always to be a certain amount of weariness and tedium which must be resisted and overcome, if we would bring our faculties into full play, and obtain the full enjoyment of our labour. And similarly in respect of passive emotional consciousness: if too much sameness of feeling results in languor, too much variety inevitably involves shallowness. The point where concentration ought to stop, and where dissipation begins, varies from man to man, and must, it would seem, be decided by the specific experience of individuals.

There is, however, another and simpler way in which the maxim of ‘giving free development to one’s nature’ may be understood: _i.e._ in the sense of yielding to spontaneous impulses, instead of endeavouring to govern these by elaborate forecasts of consequences: a scientific justification for this course being found in the theory that spontaneous or instinctive impulses really represent the effects of previous experiences of pleasure and pain on the organism in which they appear, or its ancestors. On this ground, it has been maintained that in complicated problems of conduct, experience will “enable the constitution to estimate the respective amounts of pleasure and pain consequent upon each alternative,” where it is “impossible for the intellect” to do this: and “will further cause the organism instinctively to shun that course which produces on the whole most suffering.”[150] That there is an important element of truth in this contention I would not deny. But any broad conclusion that non-rational inclination is a better guide than reason to the individual’s happiness would be quite unwarranted by anything that we know or can plausibly conjecture respecting biological evolution. For--overlooking the effect of natural selection to foster impulses tending to the preservation of the race rather than the pleasure of the individual, and granting that every sentient organism tends to adapt itself to its environment, in such a manner as to acquire instincts of some value in guiding it to pleasure and away from pain--it by no means follows that in the human organism one particular kind of adaptation, that which proceeds by unconscious modification of instinct, is to be preferred to that other kind of adaptation which is brought about by conscious comparison and inference. It rather seems clear, that this proposition can only be justified by a comparison of the consequences of yielding to instinctive impulses with the consequences of controlling them by calculations of resulting pleasure and pain. But it will hardly be maintained that in the majority of clear instances where non-rational impulse conflicts with rational forecast, a subsequent calculation of consequences appears to justify the former; the assertion would be in too flagrant conflict with the common sense and common experience of mankind. Hence, however true it may be that in certain cases instinct is on the whole a safer guide than prudential calculation, it would still seem that we can only ascertain these cases by careful reflection on experience: we cannot determine the limits to which prudential calculation may prudently be carried, except by this very calculation itself.

We seem, then, forced to conclude that there is no scientific short-cut to the ascertainment of the right means to the individual’s happiness: every attempt to find a ‘high priori road’ to this goal brings us back inevitably to the empirical method. For instead of a clear principle universally valid, we only get at best a vague and general rule, based on considerations which it is important not to overlook, but the relative value of which we can only estimate by careful observation and comparison of individual experience. Whatever uncertainty besets these processes must necessarily extend to all our reasonings about happiness. I have no wish to exaggerate these uncertainties, feeling that we must all continue to seek happiness for ourselves and for others, in whatever obscurity we may have to grope after it: but there is nothing gained by underrating them, and it is idle to argue as if they did not exist.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] “It should seem that a due concern about our own interest or happiness, and a reasonable endeavour to secure and promote it, ... is virtue, and the contrary behaviour faulty and blamable.” Butler (in the Dissertation _Of the Nature of Virtue_ appended to the _Analogy_).

[132] This view is suggested by Mr. Herbert Spencer’s statement--in a letter to J. S. Mill, published in Mr. Bain’s _Mental and Moral Science_; and partially reprinted in Mr. Spencer’s _Data of Ethics_, chap. iv. § 21--that “it is the business of moral science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of actions necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness,” and that when it has done this, “its deductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimate of happiness or misery.” I ought, however, to say that Mr. Spencer has made it clear in his latest treatise that the only cogent deductions of this kind which he conceives to be possible relate to the behaviour not of men here and now, but of ideal men living in an ideal society, and living under conditions so unlike those of actual humanity that all their actions produce “pleasure unalloyed with pain anywhere” (_Data of Ethics_, § 101). The laws of conduct in this Utopia constitute, in Mr. Spencer’s view, the subject-matter of “Absolute Ethics”; which he distinguishes from the “Relative Ethics” that concerns itself with the conduct of the imperfect men who live under the present imperfect social conditions, and of which the method is, as he admits, to a great extent “necessarily empirical” (_Data of Ethics_, § 108). How far such a system as Mr. Spencer calls Absolute Ethics can be rationally constructed, and how far its construction would be practically useful, I shall consider in a later part of this treatise (Book iv. chap. iv.), when I come to deal with the method of Universalistic Hedonism: at present I am only concerned with the question how far any deductive Ethics is capable of furnishing practical guidance to an individual seeking his own greatest happiness here and now.

[133] Aristotle’s theory is, briefly, that every normal sense-perception or rational activity has its correspondent pleasure, and that the most perfect is the most pleasant: the most perfect in the case of any faculty being the exercise of the faculty in good condition on the best object. The pleasure follows the activity immediately, giving it a kind of finish, “like the bloom of youth.” Pleasures vary in kind, as the activities that constitute life vary: the best pleasures are those of the philosophic life.

[134] See Bouillier, _Du plaisir et de la douleur_, chap. iii.; L. Dumont, _Théorie scientifique de la sensibilité_, chap. iii.; as well as Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii.--to which I refer later.

[135] _Lectures on Metaphysics_, vol. ii. Lect. xlii.

[136] In Aristotle’s exposition of this theory--which with him is only a theory of pleasure--the ethical motive of exhibiting the philosophic life as preferable to that of the sensualist, in respect of the pleasures it affords, is quite unmistakable.

[137] _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii. 2.

[138] The physiological theory which Mr. Stout puts forward, as at once correspondent and supplementary to his psychological generalisation, will be noticed later.

[139] _Psychology_, chap. ix. § 128.

[140] Book i. chap. iv.

[141] It may be added that in the case of emotional pains and pleasures, the notion of _quantitative_ difference between the cerebral nerve-processes, antecedent respectively to the one and the other, seems altogether unwarrantable: the pains of shame, disappointed ambition, wounded love, do not appear to be distinguishable from the pleasures of fame, success, reciprocated affection, by any difference of intensity in the impressions or ideas accompanied by the pleasures and pains respectively.

[142] See Wundt, _Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie_, chap. x.

[143] _Power of Sound_, chap. i. § 2.

[144] I say “appreciably” because the controverted psychological question whether there are any _strictly_ neutral or indifferent modifications of consciousness seems to me unimportant from a practical point of view. See Sully, _Human Mind_, chap. xiii. § 2.

[145] See Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, _l.c._

[146] _Physiological Æsthetics_, chap. ii.

[147] See Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii. § 4.

[148] See Book i. chap. iv. _Note_.

[149] _Principles of Psychology_, § 125, and _Data of Ethics_, § 33.

[150] The quotations are from Mr. Spencer’s _Social Statics_, chap. iv.: but I should explain that in the passage quoted Mr. Spencer is not writing from the point of view of Egoistic Hedonism.