of an uneasy conscience; he went in spite of foreseen pain and the allurement of possible pleasure.  When a man endures privations for the sake of posthumous fame, it is not that he expects to enjoy that fame when it comes, or expects others to enjoy it; he is simply so made that he cannot resist the sway of that ambition which will bring him no good.  The pursuit of pleasure is a sophisticated impulse which appears in marked degree only in a few self-conscious and idle individuals.  William James gave the deathblow to this pleasure-seeking psychology.  “Important as is the influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our only stimuli.  With the manifestations of instinct and emotional expression, for example, they have absolutely nothing to do.  Who smiles for the pleasure of smiling, or frowns for the pleasure of the frown?  Who blushes to escape the discomfort of not blushing?  Or who in anger, grief, or fear is actuated to the movements which he makes by the pleasures which they yield?  In all these cases the movements are discharged fatally by the vis a tergo which the stimulus exerts upon a nervous system framed to respond in just that way.  The impulsive quality of mental states is an attribute behind which we cannot go.” [Footnote:  W. James, Psychology, vol.  II, p. 550.] It is not true, then, that love of pleasure and fear of pain are the universal motives.  It is not true that we inevitably act along the line of least hedonic resistance, that pain necessarily veers us off and pleasure irresistibly attracts.  By force of will, by “suggestion” or training, we can go directly counter to the pull of pleasure.  It is true that we should not have the instincts and habits and impulses that we do were they not in general useful for our existence or happiness.  But the evolutionary process has been clumsy; we are not properly adjusted; we become the victims of ideas fixes; ideas and activities obsess us quite without relation to their hedonic value.  So pleasure and pain are not usually the impelling force or conscious motive behind conduct.  What they are is-the touchstone, the criterion, the justification.

We do not act in ways that bring the greatest happiness, but we ought to.  We do not consciously seek happiness, and we ought not to.  We ought to continue to care for things and for ideals; but the things and ideals we care and work for ought to be such that through them man’s welfare is advanced.

Are pleasures and pains incommensurable?

An objection commonly raised is that pleasures and pains of various sorts are incommensurable; that therefore no calculation of relative advantage is possible; and that the eudaemonistie criterion for action is thereby made impracticable and useless.