Since the function of reason is thus restricted, and its competency to supply an end for, or principle of, action is denied, we must seek this end either in the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany both sensory and motor presentations,--perceptions, that is to say, and actions,--or in the more complex, or apparently more complex, emotions of the mind. And the latter may either be themselves reducible to feelings of pleasure or pain accompanying presentations directly pleasurable or painful, and thence transferred by association to other presentations, or they may be regarded as somehow motives to action which may be or ought to be followed on their own account. The Individualistic Theory, therefore, is not necessarily hedonistic. It admits of a twofold view of the "natural" man: one which looks upon him as in essence a pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding animal; another which regards him as having a variety of impulses, some of which are not directed to his own pleasure or avoidance of pain. [Sidenote: 1. Its theory of action] [Sidenote: ambiguous,] [Sidenote: referring to] The former view--psychological hedonism, as it is called--claims to be an exhaustive analysis of the motives of human conduct, perfectly general indeed, but yet valid for every case of action. It denies the possibility of a man acting from any other principle than desire of pleasure or aversion from pain. The theory is, that it is a psychological law that action is motived by pleasure and pain, and that nothing else has motive-power over it. If, then, one pleasure (or avoidance of pain) is chosen in preference to another, it must be either by chance,--an alternative which has no ethical significance--no significance, that is, for the guidance of voluntary conduct,--or because the one course promises, or seems to promise, the attainment of a greater balance of pleasure than the other, or is actually at the time more pleasant than that other. Thus the view that pleasure is the _only_ motive of human action is really identical, for ethical purposes, with the theory loosely expressed in the law that action follows the _greatest_ pleasure.[15] I say "loosely expressed"; for the law as thus stated really admits of three quite different interpretations, not always distinguished with the precision which such subjects require. [Sidenote: (_a_) actual consequences of action,] [Sidenote: or (_b_) its expected consequences,] [Sidenote: or (_c_) its present characteristics.]