I attributed the obstinate belief in these untruths partly to a confusion between the cause of desire and the object of desire. It may, I said, be true that desire can never occur unless it be preceded by some actual pleasure; but even if this is true, it obviously gives no ground for saying that the object of desire is always some future pleasure. By the object of desire is meant that, of which the idea causes desire in us; it is some pleasure, which we anticipate, some pleasure which we have not got, which is the object of desire, whenever we do desire pleasure. And any actual pleasure, which may be excited by the idea of this anticipated pleasure, is obviously not the same pleasure as that anticipated pleasure, of which only the idea is actual. This actual pleasure is not what we want; what we want is always something which we have not got; and to say that pleasure always causes us to want is quite a different thing from saying that what we want is always pleasure.
Finally, we saw, Mill admits all this. He insists that we do actually desire other things than pleasure, and yet he says we do really desire nothing else. He tries to explain away this contradiction, by confusing together two notions, which he has before carefully distinguished—the notions of means and of end. He now says that a means to an end is the same thing as a part of that end. To this last fallacy special attention should be given, as our ultimate decision with regard to Hedonism will largely turn upon it.
45. It is this ultimate decision with regard to Hedonism at which we must now try to arrive. So far I have been only occupied with refuting Mill’s naturalistic arguments for Hedonism; but the doctrine that pleasure alone is desirable may still be true, although Mill’s fallacies cannot prove it so. This is the question which we have now to face. This proposition, ‘pleasure alone is good or desirable,’ belongs undoubtedly to that class of propositions, to which Mill at first rightly pretended it belonged, the class of first principles, which are notamenable to direct proof. But in this case, as he also rightly says, ‘considerations may be presented capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine’ (p. 7). It is such considerations that Professor
