as the subjective feeling of pleasure or happiness and the objective
reality of a state which receives our moral approval.

Like Protarchus in the Philebus, we can give no answer to the question,
'What is that common quality which in all states of human life we call
happiness? which includes the lower and the higher kind of happiness, and
is the aim of the noblest, as well as of the meanest of mankind?' If we
say 'Not pleasure, not virtue, not wisdom, nor yet any quality which we can
abstract from these'--what then? After seeming to hover for a time on the
verge of a great truth, we have gained only a truism.

Let us ask the question in another form. What is that which constitutes
happiness, over and above the several ingredients of health, wealth,
pleasure, virtue, knowledge, which are included under it? Perhaps we
answer, 'The subjective feeling of them.' But this is very far from being
coextensive with right. Or we may reply that happiness is the whole of
which the above-mentioned are the parts. Still the question recurs, 'In
what does the whole differ from all the parts?' And if we are unable to
distinguish them, happiness will be the mere aggregate of the goods of
life.

Again, while admitting that in all right action there is an element of
happiness, we cannot help seeing that the utilitarian theory supplies a
much easier explanation of some virtues than of others. Of many patriotic
or benevolent actions we can give a straightforward account by their
tendency to promote happiness. For the explanation of justice, on the
other hand, we have to go a long way round. No man is indignant with a
thief because he has not promoted the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, but because he has done him a wrong. There is an immeasurable
interval between a crime against property or life, and the omission of an