and it is the strong association thus generated between them and all our objects of desire, which gives to the direct desire of them the intensity it often assumes, so as in some characters to surpass in strength all other desires.  In these cases the means have become a part of the end, and a more important part of it than any of the things which they are means to.  What was once desired as an instrument for the attainment of happiness, has come to be desired for its own sake.  In being desired for its own sake it is, however, desired as part of happiness.  The person is made, or thinks he would be made, happy by its mere possession; and is made unhappy by failure to obtain it.  The desire of it is not a different thing from the desire of happiness, any more than the love of music, or the desire of health.  They are included in happiness.  They are some of the elements of which the desire of happiness is made up.  Happiness is not an abstract idea, but a concrete whole; and these are some of its parts.  And the utilitarian standard sanctions and approves their being so.  Life would be a poor thing, very ill provided with sources of happiness, if there were not this provision of nature, by which things originally indifferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associated with, the satisfaction of our primitive desires, become in themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the space of human existence that they are capable of covering, and even in intensity.  Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is a good of this description.  There was no original desire of it, or motive to it, save its conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to protection from pain.  But through the association thus formed, it may be felt a good in itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as any other good; and with this difference between it and the love of money, of power, or of fame, that all of these may, and often do, render the individual noxious to the other members of the society to which he belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so much a blessing to them as the cultivation of the disinterested, love of virtue.  And consequently, the utilitarian standard, while it tolerates and approves those other acquired desires, up to the point beyond which they would be more injurious to the general happiness than promotive of it, enjoins and requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest strength possible, as being above all things important to the general happiness.

It results from the preceding considerations, that there is in reality nothing desired except happiness.  Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it has become so.  Those who desire virtue for its own sake, desire it either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the