VALUATIONS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN 113 



are both good and bad, and its universality itself dis 

 qualifies pleasure as a criterion of goodness and badness ; 

 but the admiration felt for any line of conduct (and this 

 is the true criterion) stands in an inverse and not in a direct 

 ratio to the predominance of pleasure in the complex of 

 antecedent motives. 



Another assumption which Mr. Mill admits to be required 

 by his hypothesis is that happiness is attainable. In order 

 to prove this, it must be shown that it actually has been 

 attained in the past. The pursuit of happiness is no new 

 thing ; it is not suggested that human nature has changed 

 in this respect ; if, then, there has been in the past a gradual 

 alteration in the balance of pleasurable and painful ex 

 periences, to the advantage of the first, or disadvantage of 

 the other, we should have some justification for the belief 

 that human effort had been successful already, and may be 

 successful in the future. If no such change, or what 

 a Utilitarian would call improvement , is observable in 

 the past, the presumption as to the future is on the other 

 side. Mr. Mill does not attempt to deal with this question. 

 He asserts, indeed, with perhaps unnecessary acerbity, 

 that no man deserves a hearing who doubts that, if human 

 affairs continue to improve, the great positive evils of the 

 present will be reduced within narrow limits ; thus assuming 

 incidentally the improvement which it was his business 

 to demonstrate. As there is a very large and respectable 

 mass of opinion opposed to it, this assumption ought not 

 to have been made, and it is of no philosophical value 

 whatever. An inquiry into this point has been made in 

 the present essay, and reasons have been given for the 

 opinion that no such process can be observed in the past, 

 and that what men call improvement is independent of any 

 change in the relative proportions of pain and pleasure. 



What Mr. Mill overlooks in the general course of human 

 affairs he asserts very strongly of the individual. The 

 1 being of higher faculties is distinguished not only by 

 a higher capacity for happiness, but also by a higher 

 capacity for pain. If his pleasures are more numerous, 



