superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher so estimates them; and
he alone has had experience of both kinds. (Compare a similar argument
urged by one of the latest defenders of Utilitarianism, Mill's
Utilitarianism). In the Philebus, Plato, although he regards the enemies
of pleasure with complacency, still further modifies the transcendentalism
of the Phaedo. For he is compelled to confess, rather reluctantly,
perhaps, that some pleasures, i.e. those which have no antecedent pains,
claim a place in the scale of goods.

There have been many reasons why not only Plato but mankind in general have
been unwilling to acknowledge that 'pleasure is the chief good.' Either
they have heard a voice calling to them out of another world; or the life
and example of some great teacher has cast their thoughts of right and
wrong in another mould; or the word 'pleasure' has been associated in their
mind with merely animal enjoyment. They could not believe that what they
were always striving to overcome, and the power or principle in them which
overcame, were of the same nature. The pleasure of doing good to others
and of bodily self-indulgence, the pleasures of intellect and the pleasures
of sense, are so different:--Why then should they be called by a common
name? Or, if the equivocal or metaphorical use of the word is justified by
custom (like the use of other words which at first referred only to the
body, and then by a figure have been transferred to the mind), still, why
should we make an ambiguous word the corner-stone of moral philosophy? To
the higher thinker the Utilitarian or hedonist mode of speaking has been at
variance with religion and with any higher conception both of politics and
of morals. It has not satisfied their imagination; it has offended their
taste. To elevate pleasure, 'the most fleeting of all things,' into a
general idea seems to such men a contradiction. They do not desire to
bring down their theory to the level of their practice. The simplicity of
the 'greatest happiness' principle has been acceptable to philosophers, but