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, then, be
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