Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/50

 if we take into account all their further effects, tend to produce more pleasure on the whole than lower ones. There is a good deal to be said for the view that this does actually happen, as the Universe is actually constituted; and that hence an action which causes a higher pleasure to be enjoyed instead of a lower one, will in general cause more pleasure in its total effects, though it may cause less in its immediate effects. And this is why those who hold that higher pleasures are in general to be preferred to lower ones, may nevertheless admit that mere quantity of pleasure is always, in fact, a correct sign or criterion of the rightness of an action.

But those who hold that actions are only right, because of the quantity of pleasure they produce, must hold also that, if higher pleasures did not, in their total effects, produce more pleasure than lower ones, then there would be no reason whatever for preferring them, provided they were not themselves more pleasant. If the sole effect of one action were to be the enjoyment of a certain amount of the most bestial or idiotic pleasure, and