DEVELOPMENT OF PLEASURE AND PAIN 65 



Excess is the indulgence of a tendency to an extent which 

 makes it prejudicial to the organism ; and every tendency, 

 however good in itself, is certain to run to excess unless it is 

 restrained by external coercion, by wisdom, or by the sense 

 of duty. But the immediate result of excess is often, 

 indeed usually, not painful, but pleasurable in a very high 

 degree. To urge the final breakdown as the warning would 

 be illogical. The painful results are not the warning, but the 

 thing against which we are, or ought to be, warned. Instead, 

 however, of pain, we get pleasure ; an attraction where we 

 should expect a deterrent. It would follow as a necessary 

 consequence, if pain were really given us as a warning, 

 that we need only attend to the immediate results of our 

 actions ; and habits of foresight, being redundant, would 

 never have been evolved. The inhibitions of conscience 

 present exactly opposite characteristics. If pain is the 

 feeling which attends the repression or obstruction of 

 an activity, they must always and necessarily be painful, 

 and, as a matter of experience, we find that they very com 

 monly are. Nevertheless, they may be said to be always 

 conducive to the welfare, if not of the individual for that, 

 in a strictly biological sense, it may perhaps be difficult 

 to prove at any rate of the social organism of which the 

 individual forms a part. For the preservation of that, 

 the moral inhibitions, the feeling on the part of each in 

 dividual, I cannot do what I would, are indispensable ; 

 but no one will say that such feelings are ordinarily pleasant. 

 I am indeed persuaded that a serious and impartial con 

 sideration of the facts must convince any man that, if not 

 only individual but social advantages be taken into account, 

 no fixed connexion can be established between pleasure 

 and utility. He may sometimes be tempted to think that 

 useful actions are more often painful than pleasurable, 

 but he is likely in the end to give up the problem of the 

 quantitative relation between the two as insoluble. 



There remains a third source, to which we may apply 

 for some clear criterion by which we may distinguish pain 

 from pleasure, and both from indifference ; that is, the 



BENETT E 



