I shall now attempt, even at the risk of some repetition, to state what appear to me the elements of truth contained in the theory of psychological Hedonism, and to guard against some of the exaggerations on the other side which have sometimes helped to secure acceptance for that position.(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 5 ¶ 1)

(1) The gratification of every desire necessarily gives pleasure in actual fact, and is consequently conceived of as pleasant in idea before the desire is accomplished. That is the truth which lies at the bottom of all the exaggerations and misrepresentations of the hedonistic Psychology. The psychological Hedonist explains the martyr's death by a taste for the pleasure of martyrdom. Undoubtedly a martyr must derive pleasure from the thought of dying for a holy cause, and even in the midst of the flames the thought that he is doing something for that cause must, presumably, so long as it actually remains in his consciousness, give him some pleasure. But you cannot account for his action by that pleasure (waiving for the moment our objection to the hysteron-proteron), unless you contend that the pleasure involved in the gratification of the desire is greater in amount than the pains involved, and forseen to be involved, in the process of achieving that gratification. The thought of the purpose accomplished or the cause assisted may no doubt, even in the moment of martyrdom, when abstracted from everything else in the man's consciousness, be pleasant; but that is a very different thing from saying that the purpose of being burned alive, taken as a whole, is a pleasant one, and that the man suffers martyrdom because, upon a calm and impartial review, he thinks that the pleasure will predominate over the pain. His conduct implies that the thought of serving his cause must have had some peculiar attraction for him over and above the pleasantness which it shared with the rejected attractions of a happy and tranquil existence. Had it ever occurred to him to make the calculation, a man totally indifferent to the source or moral character of his pleasures would surely have found that the pleasures of living were greater than those of martyrdom^[27]. Aristotle saw this with peculiar clearness. The brave man, he tells us, finds lpeasure in the exercise of ocurage; yet the pleasure is so small in amount, when compared with the attendant pains, that the popular mind hardly notices that there is any pleasure at all in the dying warrior's last moments. On the whole, such a death seems painful, like the experience of the athelete fighting in the arena, though there too the contemplation of the prize and the glory to be achieved are no doubt sources of pleasure^[28].(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 5 ¶ 2)

(2) It may be further admitted that this pictured pleasantness of the gratification of a desire, though it will not explain the desire, does greatly add to its strength. The pleasure of getting knowledge cannot be explained without assuming a disinterested love of knowledge. But when, impelled by this desire or assisted by the co-operation of other motives, we do actually acquire some knowledge and find the process more and more delightful, the desire unquestionably becomes stronger; just as, when the anticipated pleasure turns out to be less than was expected, it may be progressively diminished. It would be difficult to say in the former case to what extent the mere love of the experienced pleasure of learning may take the place, as a motive, of all genuine desire for knowledge itself; but certainly it may do so to some extent. The scholar may degenerate into the mere bookworm. And so, on the other hand, the young boy usually begins life with some curiosity to know, but may find his love of knowledge vanish with growing experience of the painfulness of the road to it, or of the greater pleasantness of athletics and the athletic fame which his schoolfellows, and very probably his schoolmasters, have taught him, by precept and example, to regard as the chief business of life. Here again we have a truth, ignored if not denied by modern Anti-hedonists, which was quite clearly recognized by Aristotle. It is not true, he tells us, as the Platonists maintained, that pleasure impedes the activities. An alien pleasure--the pleasure connected with some other and inconsistent activity--will no doubt do that: the pleasure of eating, for instance, interferes with intellectual activity, and therefore it is when the acting is bad that the eating of sweetmeats goes on most briskly in the auditorium; when the spectators get interested in the play, they stop eating. But their own proper pleasure stimulates our activities and makes them better and more sustained^[29]. Therefore, as he points out elsewhere, we do best what we do with pleasure.(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 5 ¶ 3)

(3) Still more must this principle be remembered when the doctrine of disinterested desires comes to be applied, as it was applied for the first time by Butler, to bad and indifferent as well as to good desires. Between the desire of an object and the desire of the pleasure arising from that object it is not possible to draw an absolutely sharp line of demarcation; the one is ever passing into and colouring the other. From the pure desire of an object for which we should be prepared to sacrifice everything, while feeling all the time that with the personal pleasure derived from it we could dispense well enough, the mind may pass by imperceptible transitions to such a desire for the pleasure as will keep alive an interest in the object entirely for its own satisfaction--a state of mind well illustrated by the familiar process of riding a hobby. Although, as we have seen, the worst passions of human nature (equally with the best) are properly speaking disinterested, it may be admitted that their disinterestedness is seldom as pure as that of the highest desires. For the greatest height of disinterestedness implies that the desire persists in spite of clear and calm conviction that it is not, in the hedonistic sense of the word, to one's interest, and this will seldom be the case with the worst desires. The mere victim of passion will usually (not perhaps always) persuade himself that its gratification is hedonistically worth the cost. Moreover, although the man who indulges to his own loss in what we commonly call a bad passion does not act merely with a view to his own pleasure, he does act simply for the gratification of his own impulses. The outside object--the death of an enemy or the like--is no doubt desired as an end, but it is merely his own private and personal desire for it that makes it an end to him; and no doubt that desire--though not the result of a comparison between possible pleasures--is often explicable by association with other desires and impulses of a more obviously self-regarding, or a more obviously animal, character--the remembrance of an injury, instinctive jealousy, or the like. On the other hand, the self-sacrifices of the good man for the welfare of a stranger or the triumph of a cause may be produced by purely objective or rational considerations. The object appeals to or interests him as a rational and reflecting intelligence, not simply as an individual being with private passions and impulses which demand their own gratification. The bad man may be betrayed by passion into forgetfulness of his true interest on the whole; but he never wholly forgets himself and his impulses, still less does he lose himself in universal or ideal interests. There is, therefore, an important psychological as well as an ethical difference between the disinterested impulses of the bad man and the purely self-forgetful Benevolence of the best; and between these two extremes there are of course very many degrees of disinterestedness^[30]. If by a disinterested desire we mean the desire of an object not merely as an end which we desire, but as an end in itself which on purely objective grounds we conceive as good, then we must pronounce that such a disinterested desire is possible only in the case of good desires. Bad desires and inclinations may be disinterested in the merely negative sense that they are not desires for pleasure as such. Desires for the good of another person or persons are more disinterested in a stricter sense and a higher degree: while the highest degree of disinterestedness is only reached when a moral or universal element enters into the desired object, when the individual desires the object not merely as a particular individual who chances to have such and such an impulse, but as a reasonable being who aims at what his Reason tells him to be not merely his good, but part of the good.(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 5 ¶ 4)

(4) It has been implied in what has been said already that pleasure, though not the only object of desire, is nevertheless one possible object of desire, and that desire of pleasure, though incompetant by itself to explain the most ordinary springs of action, is widely operative in human life. If this is not often explicitly denied, there are many Moralists who in their zeal against pleasure seem disposed to ignore or gloss it over. Butler, for instance, appears to ignore entirely the existence of any general desire for pleasure as distinct from (a) particular propensions, or affections, or disinterested desires for objects, and (b) the desire for one's interest on the whole. Whether or not he is right in holding that hunger is a disinterested desire for food, hunger is clearly distinguishable from the desire for gastronomic pleasure. When a City Alderman after satisfying his hunger goes on grossly to over-feed himself, he is surely impelled by a love of pleasure which is as distinct from the passion of hunger as it is from a rational affection towards his own interest on the whole. Indeed, the calculating desire for one's interest on the whole, if interest be understood in the hedonistic sense, is only explicable as the result, in the developed and reflective consciousness, of the desire for present and immediate pleasure. The idea of pleasure on the whole is got by abstraction from a number of particular pleasures each of which the man desires, but which experience shows him cannot be enjoyed all at once.(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 5 ¶ 5)

(5) If modern Anti-hedonists have not explicitly explained away all desire for pleasure, some of them have categorically and in terms denied the possibility of desiring a greatest quantum of pleasure or a sum of pleasures. The possibility of desiring a sum of pleasures was denied by the late Prof. T. H. Green, but it is difficult to see on what grounds except the obvious but irrelevant fact that pleasures cannot be enjoyed as a sum^[31]. Such arguments are surely based upon a mere verbal quibble. You might as well deny that I can desire music because I cannot take in a whole symphony simultaneously, while each separate note, taken by itself, would not be music at all. When I say that I desire a sum of pleasures, I mean of course that I desire to get as much pleasure as possible. Such an aim seems to me perfectly intelligible and rational as far as it goes. How far such a formulation of the ethical criterion falls short of the real demands of the moral consciousness, we shall have to consider hereafter. It is enough here to say that it is not in my view possible to oppose a hedonistic Ethic on the ground that its end is an impossible or unattainable one, or the hedonistic Psychology on the ground that the motive which it represents as the sole motive of human conduct is an impossible or non-existent motive. The question is, however, of so much importance that I reserve a more full discussion of it for a separate chapter^[32].(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 5 ¶ 6)

(6) And here perhaps it may be well to meet an objection which turns upon what is often called the paradox of Hedonism. If you aim at pleasure you will not get it, it is said. To get pleasure forget it. Within certain limits, I quite admit the truth of the experience alleged. It is no doubt a serious argument against the adoption of the hedonistic calculus as our sole guide in personal conduct. But to a certain extent it is possible to allow for this fact of experience even in the hedonistic calculus itself. I do not find that I fail to enjoy a holiday because I have carefully considered which of various tours, equally expensive or inexpensive and equally recuperative^[33], I should enjoy most. I should no doubt begin to lose pleasure, if I were always calculating whether the enjoyment had realized my expectations. But, subject to this consideration, I do not believe that in small matters--supposing the pursuit of pleasure to be strictly limited by considerations of duty, so that no latent uneasiness of conscience cleaves to our enjoyment--the alleged paradox holds good at all. It is not a matter of experience that pleasure is diminished by being provided and contrived for beforehand^[34]. I do not find that the dinner which I have ordered myself always gives me less pleasure than the dinner which has been ordered by somebody else. In certain circumstances the previous contrivance may even become a positive enhancement of the delight; as when Charles Lamb complained that in his days of comparative affluence he could not get the pleasure out of his theatre-goings and occasional holiday-makings which he did when they had to be anxiously planned and contrived for weeks beforehand^[35].(Bk. 1 Ch. 2 § 5 ¶ 7)