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that life brings more happiness than misery ; then it becomes 
undeniable that, taking into account immediate and remote 
effects on all persons, the good is universally the pleasurable/’ 
8. Now, here we reach that strange fallacy in reasoning 
which has been referred to as underlying the whole argument. 
It is evident that if this statement be intended as a definition 
of moral goodness, it is vague and incomplete in the extreme. 
It is certainly not every kind of pleasure that is morally good. 
That only is morally good which involves particular kinds of 
pleasure, or a particular subordination of pleasures. Although 
there is some carelessness, from which Mr. Spencer might 
again have been preserved by Aristotle, in using the words 
pleasure and happiness as if they were synonymous, it was 
scarcely necessary, perhaps, to expend so much argument in 
order to prove that moral goodness leads to blessedness, and 
that we cannot conceive righteousness ultimately disjoined 
from happiness. The good belongs to the class of pleasurable 
things. But what are we to think of a reasonerwho concludes 
from this, as if it were self-evident, that pleasurenbleness is 
the one universal test of goodness, and constitutes, in fact, 
either its definition or its distinguishing property ? It is an 
offence against one of the most elementary rules of logic. 
Man is an animal, to quote an old logical example ; but 
no one, probably, ever yet concluded from this that we 
call an individual a man on account of his possessing an 
animal nature. Yet this is similar to Mr. Spencer’s argu- 
ment ; and he proceeds to reiterate it in the most confident 
and positive form. He asserts that “the moralist who thinks 
this conduct intrinsically good, and that intrinsically bad, if 
pushed home, has no choice but to fall back on their pleasure- 
giving and pain-giving effects. To prove this it needs but to 
observe how impossible it would be to think of them as we do 
if their effects were reversed. Suppose that gashes and bruises 
caused agreeable sensations and brought in their train in- 
creased power of doing work and receiving enjoyment, should 
we regard assault in the same manner as at present ? . . . . 
Or, again, suppose that picking a man’s pocket excited in him 
joyful emotions by brightening his prospects, would theft be 
counted among crimes as in existing law-books and moral 
codes ? In these extreme cases, no one can deny that what 
some call the badness of actions is ascribed to them solely for the 
reason that they entail pain, immediate or remote, and would 
not be so ascribed did they entail pleasure ” (p. 31). In Mr. 
Spencer’s phrase, it should rather be said that “no one can 
deny ” that there is absolutely no consecution in this argu- 
ment. Without reference to the validity of the conclusion, 
