4. that any quantitative comparison of pleasures and pains is vague and uncertain, even in the case of our own past experiences:
140-144
5. that it also tends to be different at different times: especially through variations in the present state of the person performing the comparison:
144-146
6. that, in fact, the supposed definite commensurability of pleasures is an unverifiable assumption:
146-147
7. that there is a similar liability to error in appropriating the experience of others; and in inferring future pleasures from past.
147-150
CHAPTER IV
OBJECTIVE HEDONISM AND COMMON SENSE
1. It may seem that the judgments of Common Sense respecting the Sources of Happiness offer a refuge from the uncertainties of Empirical Hedonism: but there are several fundamental defects in this refuge;
2. But no such complete coincidence seems to result from a consideration either of the Legal Sanctions of Duty:
163-166
3. or of the Social Sanctions:
166-170
4. or of the Internal Sanctions: even if we consider not merely isolated acts of duty, but a virtuous life as a whole.
170-175
CHAPTER VI
DEDUCTIVE HEDONISM
1. Hedonistic Method must ultimately rest on facts of empirical observation: but it might become largely deductive, through scientific knowledge of the causes of pleasure and pain:
2. but we have no practically available general theory of these causes, either psychophysical,
180-190
3. or biological.
190-192
4. Nor can the principle of ‘increasing life,’ or that of ‘aiming at self-development,’ or that of ‘giving free play to impulse,’ be so defined as to afford us any practical guidance to the end of Egoism, without falling back on the empirical comparison of pleasures and pains.
192-195
BOOK III
INTUITIONISM
CHAPTER I
INTUITIONISM
1. The fundamental assumption of Intuitionism is that we have the power of seeing clearly what actions are in themselves right and reasonable.
2. Though many actions are commonly judged to be made better or worse through the presence of certain motives, our common judgments of right and wrong relate, strictly speaking, to intentions. One motive, indeed, the desire to do what is right as such, has been thought an essential condition to right conduct: but the Intuitional method should be treated as not involving this assumption.
201-207
3. It is certainly an essential condition that we should not believe the act to be wrong; and this implies that we should not believe it to be wrong for any similar person in similar circumstances: but this implication, though it may supply a valuable practical rule, cannot furnish a complete criterion of right conduct.
207-210
4. The existence of apparent cognitions of right conduct, intuitively obtained, as distinct from their validity, will scarcely be questioned; and to establish their validity it is not needful to prove their ‘originality.’
210-214
5. Both particular and universal intuitions are found in our common moral thought: but it is for the latter that ultimate validity is ordinarily claimed by intuitional moralists. We must try, by reflecting on Common Sense, how far we can state these Moral Axioms with clearness and precision.
214-216
CHAPTER II
VIRTUE AND DUTY
1. Duties are Right acts, for the adequate performance of which a moral motive is at least occasionally necessary. Virtuous conduct includes the performance of duties as well as praiseworthy acts that are thought to go beyond strict duty, and that may even be beyond the power of some to perform.
2. Virtues as commonly recognised, are manifested primarily in volitions to produce particular right effects—which must at least be thought by the agent to be not wrong—: but for the completeness of some virtues the presence of certain emotions seems necessary.
221-228
3. It may be said that Moral Excellence, like Beauty, eludes definition: but if Ethical Science is to be constituted, we must obtain definite Moral Axioms.
228-230
CHAPTER III
THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES
1. The common conception of Wisdom assumes a harmony of the ends of different ethical methods: all of which—and not one rather than another—the wise man is commonly thought to aim at and attain as far as circumstances admit.
