So far as the first objection is concerned, it seems to me that the fault belongs to the psychological theory of human action, the ethical consequences of which are under investigation. It is this theory which asserts that, however interwoven the threads of impulse, aversion, and habit may be, their most complex relations can be reduced to the formula, "greatest pleasure, or least pain, prevails." It is not necessary, indeed, that every action should be the conscious pursuit of a pleasurable object already before the mind in idea. But the theory, if consistently carried out, implies that the action which follows in the line of a previously formed habit, does so because the discomfort or pain of breaking through the habit would be sufficient to counter-balance any satisfaction that might result. The objection, therefore, of excessive simplicity or "abstractness," is one which cannot have greater force than when urged against the theory of psychological hedonism. [Sidenote: (_b_) difference in kind of pleasurable objects;] [Sidenote: but this involves a reference to something else than pleasure,] [Sidenote: which psychological hedonism does not admit of.] Further--and this is the second objection--the above analysis may be considered by some not to have taken sufficient account of the difference in the objects in which a human being can take pleasure, and of the fact that the moral quality of men differs, not according as they act for pleasure or not, but according to the kind of actions and sufferances in which they find pleasure. There can be no doubt of the importance of this distinction for questions of practical morals. The man in whom "selfishness takes the shape of benevolence," as it did in Bentham, is infinitely better than the man in whom it retains the form of selfishness. But the consideration is important just because it goes on the implied assumption that the hedonistic is not the chief aspect of conduct, and that there is a difference between courses of action more fundamental than the pleasurable or painful feeling attendant on them. If the principles on which the objection is founded were consistently adhered to and followed out, they would make not pleasure, but something else--that, namely, by which pleasures differ from one another in kind--the ethical standard. But if, in ultimate analysis, it is the pleasure felt or expected that moves to action, it would seem that there is no way in which the conclusion of the preceding argument can be avoided. If pleasure is the motive, it must be _quâ_ pleasure--that is to say, either the greatest apparent pleasure, or the greatest present pleasure, is the motive. If difference of quality be admitted, we are introducing a determining factor other than pleasure. Certain kinds of pleasure may be better than others for the race or for the state. But these differences must be reducible to terms of individual pleasure admitting of purely quantitative comparisons, before they