Chapter: It has already been remarked, that questions of ultimate ends do not
admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be incapable
of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles; to the first
premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But the
former, being matters of fact, may be the subject of a direct appeal to
the faculties which judge of fact--namely, our senses, and our internal
consciousness. Can an appeal be made to the same faculties on questions
of practical ends? Or by what other faculty is cognizance taken of them?

Questions about ends are, in other words, questions what things are
desirable. The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and
the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only
desirable as means to that end. What ought to be required of this
doctrine--what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should
fulfil--to make good its claim to be believed?

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that
people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that
people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like
manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that
anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end
which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory
and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince
any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general
happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes
it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a
fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all
which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each
person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness,
therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made
out its title as _one_ of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of
the criteria of morality.

But it has not, by this alone, proved itself to be the sole criterion.
To do that, it would seem, by the same rule, necessary to show, not only
that people desire happiness, but that they never desire anything else.
Now it is palpable that they do desire things which, in common language,
are decidedly distinguished from happiness. They desire, for example,
virtue, and the absence of vice, no less really than pleasure and the
absence of pain. The desire of virtue is not as universal, but it is as
authentic a fact, as the desire of happiness. And hence the opponents of
the utilitarian standard deem that they have a right to infer that there
are other ends of human action besides happiness, and that happiness is
not the standard of approbation and disapprobation.

But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or
maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It
maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be
desired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of
utilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is
made virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that actions and
dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than
virtue; yet this being granted, and it having been decided, from
considerations of this description, what _is_ virtuous, they not only
place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to
the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact the
possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without
looking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a right
state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most
conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love virtue in this
manner--as a thing desirable in itself, even although, in the individual
instance, it should not produce those other desirable consequences which
it tends to produce, and on account of which it is held to be virtue.
This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from the
Happiness principle. The ingredients of happiness are very various, and
each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as
swelling an aggregate. The principle of utility does not mean that any
given pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given exemption from
pain, as for example health, are to be looked upon as means to a
collective something termed happiness, and to be desired on that
account. They are desired and desirable in and for themselves; besides
being means, they are a part of the end. Virtue, according to the
utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end,
but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it
disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a
means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.

To illustrate this farther, we may remember that virtue is not the only
thing, originally a means, and which if it were not a means to anything
else, would be and remain indifferent, but which by association with
what it is a means to, comes to be desired for itself, and that too with
the utmost intensity. What, for example, shall we say of the love of
money? There is nothing originally more desirable about money than about
any heap of glittering pebbles. Its worth is solely that of the things
which it will buy; the desires for other things than itself, which it is
a means of gratifying. Yet the love of money is not only one of the
strongest moving forces of human life, but money is, in many cases,
desired in and for itself; the desire to possess it is often stronger
than the desire to use it, and goes on increasing when all the desires
which point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling off.
It may be then said truly, that money is desired not for the sake of an
end, but as part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it has
come to be itself a principal ingredient of the individual's conception
of happiness. The same may be said of the majority of the great objects
of human life--power, for example, or fame; except that to each of these
there is a certain amount of immediate pleasure annexed, which has at
least the semblance of being naturally inherent in them; a thing which
cannot be said of money. Still, however, the strongest natural
attraction, both of power and of fame, is the immense aid they give to
the attainment of our other wishes; 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
consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both reasons united;
as in truth the pleasure and pain seldom exist separately, but almost
always together, the same person feeling pleasure in the degree of
virtue attained, and pain in not having attained more. If one of these
gave him no pleasure, and the other no pain, he would not love or desire
virtue, or would desire it only for the other benefits which it might
produce to himself or to persons whom he cared for.

We have now, then, an answer to the question, of what sort of proof the
principle of utility is susceptible. If the opinion which I have now
stated is psychologically true--if human nature is so constituted as to
desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means of
happiness, we can have no other proof, and we require no other, that
these are the only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end of
human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all
human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the
criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole.

And now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind do desire
nothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to them, or of which the
absence is a pain; we have evidently arrived at a question of fact and
experience, dependent, like all similar questions, upon evidence. It can
only be determined by practised self-consciousness and self-observation,
assisted by observation of others. I believe that these sources of
evidence, impartially consulted, will declare that desiring a thing and
finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are
phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same
phenomenon; in strictness of language, two different modes of naming the
same psychological fact: that to think of an object as desirable (unless
for the sake of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are
one and the same thing; and that to desire anything, except in
proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical
impossibility.

So obvious does this appear to me, that I expect it will hardly be
disputed: and the objection made will be, not that desire can possibly
be directed to anything ultimately except pleasure and exemption from
pain, but that the will is a different thing from desire; that a person
of confirmed virtue, or any other person whose purposes are fixed,
carries out his purposes without any thought of the pleasure he has in
contemplating them, or expects to derive from their fulfilment; and
persists in acting on them, even though these pleasures are much
diminished, by changes in his character or decay of his passive
sensibilities, or are outweighed by the pains which the pursuit of the
purposes may bring upon him. All this I fully admit, and have stated it
elsewhere, as positively and emphatically as any one. Will, the active
phenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of passive
sensibility, and though originally an offshoot from it, may in time take
root and detach itself from the parent stock; so much so, that in the
case of an habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because we
desire it, we often desire it only because we will it. This, however, is
but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise
confined to the case of virtuous actions. Many indifferent things, which
men originally did from a motive of some sort, they continue to do from
habit. Sometimes this is done unconsciously, the consciousness coming
only after the action: at other times with conscious volition, but
volition which has become habitual, and is put into operation by the
force of habit, in opposition perhaps to the deliberate preference, as
often happens with those who have contracted habits of vicious or
hurtful indulgence. Third and last comes the case in which the habitual
act of will in the individual instance is not in contradiction to the
general intention prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; as
in the case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all who pursue
deliberately and consistently any determinate end. The distinction
between will and desire thus understood, is an authentic and highly
important psychological fact; but the fact consists solely in this--that
will, like all other parts of our constitution, is amenable to habit,
and that we may will from habit what we no longer desire for itself, or
desire only because we will it. It is not the less true that will, in
the beginning, is entirely produced by desire; including in that term
the repelling influence of pain as well as the attractive one of
pleasure. Let us take into consideration, no longer the person who has a
confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous will is still
feeble, conquerable by temptation, and not to be fully relied on; by
what means can it be strengthened? How can the will to be virtuous,
where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened?
Only by making the person _desire_ virtue--by making him think of it in
a pleasurable light, or of its absence in a painful one. It is by
associating the doing right with pleasure, or the doing wrong with pain,
or by eliciting and impressing and bringing home to the person's
experience the pleasure naturally involved in the one or the pain in the
other, that it is possible to call forth that will to be virtuous,
which, when confirmed, acts without any thought of either pleasure or
pain. Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its
parent only to come under that of habit. That which is the result of
habit affords no presumption of being intrinsically good; and there
would be no reason for wishing that the purpose of virtue should become
independent of pleasure and pain, were it not that the influence of the
pleasurable and painful associations which prompt to virtue is not
sufficiently to be depended on for unerring constancy of action until it
has acquired the support of habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habit
is the only thing which imparts certainty; and it is because of the
importance to others of being able to rely absolutely on one's feelings
and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's own, that the
will to do right ought to be cultivated into this habitual independence.
In other words, this state of the will is a means to good, not
intrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine that nothing
is a good to human beings but in so far as it is either itself
pleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting pain.

But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility is proved.
Whether it is so or not, must now be left to the consideration of the
thoughtful reader.

 In Chapter IV, Mill treats in greater detail the proof to which he believes utility is susceptible. This proof consists of a combination of moral intuition and analysis of our basic moral conceptions. In particular, he treats the moral concept of virtue through a utilitarian lens in order to justify the utilitarian foundation of morality. Mill begins by reiterating the general remarks on proof he offered at the end of Chapter I. The upshot is that moral theory cannot be tested by scientific standards, but must rather be tested by its equivalent: a reasoned analysis of moral intuition. This is of course dependent upon the moral perceptions endowed by the conscience, which Mill introduced in the previous chapter. The first account Mill gives of moral proof here is that the greatest happiness principle is morally intuitive. He compares this to sensory data, saying that moral facts are evidenced by sensing them inwardly just as evidence of a sound is in hearing it. In this way, Mill maintains, the greatest happiness principle is evidenced by everyone desiring happiness and seeing happiness as a good, meaning that morality as an aggregate of these inclinations would be represented as the greatest happiness principle. Yet Mill recognizes that this is not a sufficient account of proof for utilitarianism by any means. He immediately anticipates an objection this line of reasoning invites: for utilitarianism to hold, people must only desire happiness and see no other virtues or objectives as good. Mill knows this is untrue, and cites as a particular case the fact that people desire virtue and the absence of vice. Mill contends that this can actually bolster the argument in favor of utilitarianism because other apparent moral virtues are explicable within a purely utilitarian framework. The basic mode of his argument is that virtue, initially desired for the ends that it promotes, can become an object of intrinsic happiness in light of those ends. Thus virtue becomes an end to be sought in utilitarian pursuit of the greatest happiness. The move Mill makes here is critical because, if accepted, it encapsulates virtually all moral mandates and general goals under the umbrella of utilitarianism. All moral ends, Mill argues, are so sought because they have become the object of happiness, much in the same way music or a desire for health might. In this framework, all moral considerations are underpinned by the greatest happiness principle. Mill is well aware of the strength of this theory, and, having laid it out, has little else to say on the matter. He has presented the analytical tools for justifying a utilitarian framework of ethics. Having done so, he returns to people's rational faculties for the ultimate proof: if we practice disciplined self-consciousness and reflection on our motives and desires, he contends, there will be little doubt that his utilitarian account is true.

