To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements require to be included. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human being's conceptions of happiness. If this supposition were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the other.
When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure- no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit- they designate as utterly mean and grovelling as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened and modern holders of the doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its German, French, and English assailants. Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded- namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure and to what extent this is left an open question. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. …The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
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