But there is one great doctrine of reasonableness which does reduce it to a question of means and ends, and that is, the doctrine that everything else is a means to pleasure, whether that of the agent or that of all sentient beings. I do not want to discuss Hedonism psychologically just now, I only want to use it as an illustration of one way in which intelligence may be alleged to control action. The ultimate theory would then be that this uniform purpose, pleasure, is a natural or obvious, or, so to speak, a _given_ purpose, and that all definite action is or has been prescribed by the intelligence dealing with matter of fact, as a means to the realisation of this given purpose. Then reasonable action would mean what our reasoning and perceptive powers, dealing with matters of fact, pronounce to make for pleasure, and unreasonable action would be all that does not. Here, though I wish to avoid hackneyed criticism, I must note that there is a certain difficulty in getting across from the idea of one’s own pleasure to that of other people’s pleasure as a natural purpose, and sometimes we find the contention that any person’s pleasure is a _reasonable purpose_ to any person, which, like several indications before, takes us out of the connection between reason and the mere calculation of means to an end. Apart from this, I have, for our object, only to refer back to the suspicion with which we regarded these distinctions between means, ends, and consequences, in the presented idea of an action. The burden of proof lies on those who limit the aspects in and for which activities or results can be or ought to be desired. If we say that the whole complex of our moral life is a means to a partial though necessary incident in it, it seems to me that we are putting the cart before the horse. If you could really say “moral life is the means, and pleasure is the end” then it would follow that, should calculation tell you that moral life was not the most effectual means, you would not prefer it. Now this old argument may be pronounced unfair on the ground that it puts an impossible case; just like the counter-question which is asked by the opposite side, “If morality led only to increased pain, would you prefer it then?” Still, if these two questions together bring out the fact that pleasure is an incident of a whole complex of functions and activities which we cannot suppose to be separated from it, we do get this much result, that there is no firm ground for distinguishing part of the complex as the end from the rest as the means. And it seems clear, also, that we differentiate pleasures _in kind_ according to the activities which they accompany, just as we have constantly found that the so-called means differentiates and qualifies the so-called purpose.