In the former endeavour, he went against Bentham by attempting to draw a distinction in kind amongst pleasures--a distinction not reducible to quantitative measurement. A higher degree of quality in the pleasure sought was to outweigh any difference in its amount or quantity. With this modification, utilitarianism is made to require a subordination of the lower or sensuous nature to the higher or intellectual nature. Pleasure, indeed, is still the end; but the "higher" pleasure takes precedence over the "lower," irrespective of the amount of pleasant feeling that results. Pleasure is still the standard, but not the ultimate standard; for a further appeal has to be made to the criterion that distinguishes one pleasure from another, not as merely greater or less, but as higher or lower. As is well known, Mill did not look either to the action or to the feeling itself for this criterion. To have done so would have implied an acknowledgment that pleasure was no longer regarded as the ultimate standard. He found the criterion of superiority simply in the opinion people of experience have about the relative desirability of various sorts of pleasure. But such a criterion only pushes the final question of the standard one step farther back. Those people of experience to whom Mill refers--who have tried both kinds of pleasure, and prefer one of them[50]--can they give no reason for, no account of, their preference? If so, to trust them is to appeal to blind authority, and to relinquish anything like a science of ethics. But, if Mill's authorities can reflect on their feelings, as well as feel, they can only tell us one or other of two things. Either the so-called "higher" pleasure is actually, as pleasure, so preferable to that called "lower," that the smallest amount of the one would be more pleasurable than the largest amount of the other; or else the higher is called higher, and is to be preferred to the lower--even although the latter may be greater as pleasure--because of a quality belonging to it over and above its character as pleasant feeling. The former verdict would be in the first place paradoxical, and, in the second place, would give up Mill's case, by reducing quality to a quantitative standard. Besides, it would be no valid ground of preference for men in general; since the pleasure of various actions and states differs according to the susceptibility of the subject. According to the latter verdict, the characteristic upon which the distinction of quality depends, and not pleasure itself, becomes the ethical standard. [Sidenote: (_b_) ambiguities in his proof of utilitarianism.]