Thus Green says (Op. cit., p. 244): "In truth a man's reference to his own true happiness is a reference to the objects which chiefly interest him, and has its controlling power on that account. More strictly, it is a reference to an ideal state of well-being, a state in which he shall be satisfied; _but the objects of the man's chief interests supply the filling of that ideal state_." See the argument as put by Alexander (Moral Order and Progress, pp. 199-200). Alexander has also brought out (Ibid., pp. 207-210) that even if we are going to use a quantitative standard, the idea of a sum is not a very happy one. It is not so much a sum of pleasures we want, as a certain proportionate distribution and combination of pleasures. "To regard the greatest sum of pleasures as the test of conduct, supposing that we could express it in units of pleasure, would be like declaring that when you had an atomic weight of 98 you had sulphuric acid. The numerical test would be useless unless we knew what elements were to be combined, and in what proportion. Similarly till we know what kinds of activities (and therefore what kinds of pleasures) go with one another to form the end, the greatest sum of pleasures will give us only the equivalent of the end, but will not tell us what the composition of the end is, still less how to get at it; or, to put the matter more simply, when we know what the characters of persons are, and how they are combined in morality, we then estimate the corresponding sum of pleasures." (p. 209.)
II. A certain quality of pleasure the end. Some moralists, notably John Stuart Mill, introduce considerations regarding the quality of pleasure into the conception of the end. "It is quite compatible," says Mill, "with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others." (p. 310.) Is it compatible? Is kind of pleasure the same thing as pleasure? does not strict hedonism demand that all kinds of pleasure equally present as to intensity in consciousness shall be of the same value? To say otherwise is to give up pleasure as such as the standard and to hold that we have means for discriminating the respective values of pleasures which simply, _as feelings_, are the same. It is to hold, that is to say, that there is some standard of value external to the pleasures as such, by means of which their moral quality may be judged. In this case, this independent standard is the real moral criterion which we are employing. Hedonism is surrendered.