Note 32 — Chapter III · THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM.

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.