he ought to subordinate it to the pleasures of the "greatest number"? [Sidenote: 3. Transition from psychological to ethical hedonism. Right action will imply] [Sidenote: (_a_) correct estimate of consequences of action,] [Sidenote: (_b_) and corresponding strength of feeling.] It is a matter of fact, however, that the psychologists who maintain that action follows the greatest pleasure--meaning by that, greatest apparent or greatest present pleasure--have in their ethics made the transition to an enlightened Egoism, or even to Utilitarianism. The nature of the transition thus requires to be more clearly pointed out. If the former interpretation of the law of psychological hedonism could be accepted, and a man's motive for action were always what seemed to him likely to bring him the greatest pleasure on the whole, ethics--what Bentham calls private ethics--could be reduced (as Bentham finally reduces it) to certain maxims of prudence. To be fully acquainted with the sources of pleasure and pain, and to estimate them correctly, would imply possession of the highest (egoistic) morality. If men could be made to think rightly as to what their greatest pleasure consisted in, then right action on their part--that is to say, the pursuit of their greatest pleasure--would (according to Bentham's psychology) follow as a matter of course. Right conduct, however, is not so purely an affair of the intellect as this would make it. Indeed, Bentham's psychological assumption requires only to be plainly stated for its inconsistency with the facts of human action to become apparent. The "video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor" expresses too common an experience to be so easily explained away. The impulses by which action is governed are not always in accordance with what the intellect decides to be best on a survey of the whole life and its varied chances. In judging the consequences of action, a future good is compared with a present, regardless of the mere difference of time by which they are separated. But the springs which move the will are often at variance with the decisions of the understanding; and many men are unable to resist the strength of the impulse to act for the pleasure of the moment, though they foresee that a greater future satisfaction would follow from present self-denial.