Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/240

 reasonable, and perhaps true, view could not possibly lead to the wholly unreasonable one that intrinsic value is always in proportion to quantity of pleasure: it might seem obvious that to say that nothing can be valuable without pleasure is a very different thing from saying that intrinsic value is always in proportion to pleasure. And it is, I think, in fact true that the two views are really as different as they seem, and that the latter does not at all follow from the former. But, if we look a little closer, we may, I think, see a reason why the latter should very naturally have been thought to follow from the former.

The reason is as follows. If we say that no whole can ever be intrinsically good, unless it contains some pleasure, we are, of course, saying that if from any whole, which is intrinsically good, we were to subtract all the pleasure it contains, the remainder, whatever it might be, would have no intrinsic goodness at all, but must always be either intrinsically bad, or else intrinsically indifferent: and this (if we remember our definition of intrinsic value) is the same