It should be distinctly understood that the question with which we are at present concerned is a purely psychological one. It is a mere question of fact, and can only be answered by each man for himself after careful observation of what goes on in his own mind, aided by observation of what goes on in other people's minds, in so far as that is revealed by word and act. All that any writer can do towards helping another person to perform this process is (a) to state the question clearly and to warn him against the ambiguities of language which are the main source of error upon such subjects; (b) to remind him of some of the facts which the hedonistic theory has got to explain, and to ask him whether that explanation is adequate; and (c) to state clearly and fully the elements of truth which that theory holds in solution, and to show that a recognition of such elements of truth does not carry with it the inferences which the Hedonist draws from them. I have already attempted to perform the first of these tasks, and have made some suggestions towards the second. But before proceeding to the third, I should like to call attention to some of the more extreme cases of disinterested desire which the theory before us has got to explain away, though I have already tried to show that its failure is quite as apparent in the case of very ordinary impulses to action which are of no special significance from an ethical point of view.(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 4 ¶ 1)

The palmary instance of this failure may perhaps be found in cases where a man labours to accomplish a result which he knows cannot be achieved till he is dead and no longer able to enjoy it. Such instances occur not only in the case of heroic self-sacrifice for a political or religious faith, or the less heroic but no less altruistic efforts of parents to provide for their children, but in the case of many desires which in the ordinary, ethical sense of the word would commonly be described as selfish enough. How is the hedonistic Psychologist to explain the vulgarest desire on the part of some recently ennobled brewer to found a family, or the desire of posthumous fame--say for instance, the kind of literary vanity or ambition which has had so large a share in inspiring the life-work even of men like Hume and Gibbon? It will be urged that the man who is influenced by such motives acts as he does because the thought of being talked about after his death gives him pleasure now. Exactly so; the thought of it gives him pleasure! But that is just what the hedonistic Psychology declares to be an impossibility. According to this system nothing that is present merely in thought can give pleasure except the thought of a future pleasant state of the man's own consciousness^[24]; and therefore the thought of it can, according to the theory, give me no pleasure now. Once again we have the old hysteron-proteron--the cart before the horse. The hedonistic Psychology explains the desire by the pleasure, whereas in fact the pleasure owes its existence entirely to the desire.(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 4 ¶ 2)

The difficulty reaches its climax in the case of an atheistic martyr, who, with no belief in a future life, dies in furtherance of an object which cannot be realized till he will (according to his own view) no longer be able to enjoy it. Or if we choose (however illogically^[25]) to explain his conduct by the desire of enjoying the moments of triumph which may elapse between his resolution to die and the execution of his sentence, we may put a case where this interval is non-existent. Supposing a condemned man, disbelieving in a future life, to be told that by holding up his finger just before the guillotine fell he would save the life of a dearly loved child or confer some inestimable benefit on the whole human race. On the hedonistic theory even such a minimum degree of benevolence would be a psychological impossibility. For one who knew that the act would be synchronous with the termination of his own consciousness, there would be no future consciousness the imagined pleasantness of which could possibly supply a motive for the present act. If it be contended that the moment of consciousness in which the act is performed is itself pleasant, the whole point is conceded. For it is admitted that volitions are rendered pleasant to us in contemplation, and so are called into actual being, on account of future effects other than a pleasant state of one's own consciousness. The only way of escape would be to contend that the act of lifting up a finger would have seemed pleasant to the man apart from the effects which it was to have after his death. But in normal circumstances the holding up of a finger would give no pleasure at all.(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 4 ¶ 3)

One last skulking-place of psychological Hedonism may be briefly noticed, though this represents a form of the error which rarely imposes upon any but very young students of Ethics. At a certain stage of reflection egoistic Hedonism is often made to present itself in an extremely amiable and even edifying light by including among the pains and pleasures which determine the morality of an action the pains and pleasures of Conscience. Nothing can be more beautiful, it is suggested, than to do my duty simply because I like it. There can be no more efficient sanction and guarantee of Morality than the happiness which experience shows invariably to follow in its train. I will not here examine whether the pains and pleasures of Conscience are as a matter of fact so intense as Moralists have sometimes found it convenient to assume. It is probable that, as regards minor kinds of wrong-doing, in persons of average conscientiousness, the pains of Conscience have been greatly exaggerated. If moral obligation were to be based solely upon this ground, the cynical advice to make one's moral standards as low as possible in order that one may occasionally enjoy the luxury of living up to it would have something to be said for it. But, be this as it may, be the pleasure of right-doing and the pains of wrong-doing great or small, these pleasures and pains are only explicable on the assumption of the existence now or in the past, in the man himself or in others, of desires for something besides pleasure. When the pleasure arises from the person's own purely introspective satisfaction in his own morality or victory over temptation or the like, we have simply another case of the pleasure attending the satisfaction of all desire. The attempt to explain this away is another instance of the old hysteron-proteron. In other cases there may, indeed, be no desire--at least in any conscious and explicit form--for the performance of duty or the happiness of others for its own sake in the individual himself, and yet the doing of the right act may be a source of pleasure or more probably the doing of the wrong one a source of pain. The pleasure in the act, or the pain in its omission, may be due to a habit formed under the influence of other motives. Or pleasure may have come to be associated with the act, and pain with its omission, through the influence of a public opinion which is itself based upon an approval or disapproval not arising from any hedonistic calculus, and which influences the individual quite apart from any anticipated consequences of the public feeling. To attempt to justify (on hedonistic principles) the performance of certain acts commonly called moral by their pleasantness, and then to explain their pleasantness by assuming that they are moral and so sources of conscientious pleasure or means of avoiding conscientious pain, is to argue in a circle. The pleasantness of the act is explained by its morality, and its morality is explained by its pleasantness. It is admitted that the act is often such as could not produce the attainable maximum of pleasure apart from its being regarded as moral; but, according to the hedonistic Psychology, it could never have come to be regarded as moral except through an experience which showed that apart from the opinion of its morality it was already the way to obtain the greatest maximum of pleasure. The consciousness which can take pleasure in an action because it is right is not a consciousness that cares about nothing but pleasure. If it has not risen to the level of a disinterested love of duty, or of tribe or family or individual person, it must at least be capable of being affected by a desire of social approbation, or other social impulses and interests, which are just as difficult to account for on the hypothesis of egoistic Hedonism as the love of duty for its own sake, and which generally imply more definitely disinterested desires on the part of the community by which the opinion that the act is right has been created. Even if the community is supposed to approve or disapprove merely from self-interest, the community's disapprobation would bring no loss of pleasure to a consciousness that cared not for disapprobation^[26]. Moralists like Mandeville, and in a more refined way Hume, have a tendency to reduce the motive of moral conduct to a kind of vanity. But vanity is as good an instance as could be found of disinterested desire, when it rises above the level of that gregarious instinct which is shared by the lower animals, and which after all is equally proof against the hedonistic analysis.(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 4 ¶ 4)