‘The only proof capable of being given that a thing is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it; and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being the fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made out its title as _one_ of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality.’ There, that is enough. That is my first point. Mill has made as naïve and artless a use of the naturalistic fallacy as anybody could desire. ‘Good,’ he tells us, means ‘desirable,’ and you can only find out what is desirable by seeking to find out what is actually desired. This is, of course, only one step towards the proof of Hedonism; for it may be, as Mill goes on to say, that other things beside pleasure are desired. Whether or not pleasure is the only thing desired is, as Mill himself admits (p. 58), a psychological question, to which we shall presently proceed. The important step for Ethics is this one just taken, the step which pretends to prove that ‘good’ means ‘desired.’ Well, the fallacy in this step is so obvious, that it is quite wonderful how Mill failed to see it. The fact is that ‘desirable’ does not mean ‘able to be desired’ as ‘visible’ means ‘able to be seen.’ The desirable means simply what _ought_ to be desired or _deserves_ to be desired; just as the detestable means not what can be but what ought to be detested and the damnable what deserves to be damned. Mill has, then, smuggled in, under cover of the word ‘desirable,’ the very notion about which he ought to be quite clear. ‘Desirable’ does indeed mean ‘what it is good to desire’; but when this is understood, it is no longer plausible to say that our only test of _that_, is what is actually desired. Is it merely a tautology when the Prayer Book talks of _good_ desires? Are not _bad_ desires also possible? Nay, we find Mill himself talking of a ‘better and nobler object of desire’ (p. 10), as if, after all, what is desired were not _ipso facto_ good, and good in proportion to the amount it is desired. Moreover, if the desired is _ipso facto_ the good; then the good is _ipso facto_ the motive of our actions, and there can be no question of finding motives for doing it, as Mill is at such pains to do.