determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two
pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are
familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and
pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide
whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a
particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced?
When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the pleasures
derived from the higher faculties to be preferable _in kind_, apart from
the question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature,
disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitled
on this subject to the same regard.

I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly
just conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive
rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable condition
to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not
the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness
altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character
is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it
makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a
gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by
the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each
individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own,
so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the
benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last,
renders refutation superfluous.

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the
ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other
things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of