127 



Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions 

 are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, 

 wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By 

 happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by 

 unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure." 1 



But in accepting pleasure as the criterion of moral action, 

 Mill emphasises the different values of different kinds of 

 pleasures, and the great superiority of intellectual pleasures 

 over the sensuous. As to what is involved in this qualita- 

 tive distinction between pleasures, will be considered later. 

 As to its existence, Mill contends that "human beings have 

 faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and, when 

 once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as hap- 

 piness which does not include their gratification". 2 "It 

 must be admitted," he proceeds, "that utilitarian writers in 

 general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily 

 pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostli- 

 ness, etc., of the former that is t in their circumstantial ad- 

 vantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all 

 these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but 

 they might have taken the other, and, as it might be called, 

 higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compat- 

 ible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some 

 kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than 

 others. * * * Of two pleasures, if there be one to which 

 all, or almost all who have experience of both give a decided 

 preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to 

 prefer it, this is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the 

 two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, 

 placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though 

 knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, 

 and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure 

 of which their nature is capable, we are justified in ascribing 

 to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality so far out- 

 weighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small 

 account. " "We may give what explanation we please of this 

 unwillingness," Mill concludes, "but its most appropriate 

 appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess 

 in one form or another." 3 



But a difficulty arises as to how the ethically higher is to 

 be distinguished from the ethically lower. Mill's answer is an 

 appeal to those best qualified to judge "the test of quality, 



1 J. S. Mill, "Utilitarianism" 4th edition, p. 9. 

 O.C. p. 11. 

 O.C. pp. 11-13. 



