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 in 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.

                            Chapter 5

            On the Connection between Justice and Utility.

  IN ALL ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to the
reception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the criterion
of right and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of justice. The
powerful sentiment, and apparently clear perception, which that word
recalls with a rapidity and certainty resembling an instinct, have
seemed to the majority of thinkers to point to an inherent quality
in things; to show that the just must have an existence in Nature as
something absolute, generically distinct from every variety of the
Expedient, and, in idea, opposed to it, though (as is commonly
acknowledged) never, in the long run, disjoined from it in fact.