Note 360 — Chapter IV · THE METHOD OF UTILITARIANISM

It is obvious that if ‘desirability,’ in the above definition, were interpreted hedonistically, the term “health” would merely give us a new name for the general problem of utilitarian morality; not a new suggestion for its solution. I ought to say that the notions of “social welfare” or “wellbeing” are elsewhere used by Mr. Stephen, in the place of those here quoted, but I do not think that he means by them any more than what I understand him to mean by “health” or “efficiency”—i.e. that state of the social organism which tends to its preservation under the conditions of its existence.