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. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' His wishes, the pitifulest whipster's, are to be fulfilled for him; his days, the pitifulest whipster's, are to flow on in an ever-gentle current of enjoyment, impossible even for the gods. The prophets preach to us, Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things, and find them. The people clamor, Why have we not found pleasant things? ...God's Laws are become a Greatest Happiness Principle. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul.

I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. Both the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians and Kant's principle 'Promote other people's happiness ..' seem to me (at least in their formulations) wrong on this point which, however, is not completely decidable by rational argument. (For the irrational aspect of ethical beliefs, see note 11 to the present chapter, and for the rational aspect, sections II and especially III of chapter 24). In my opinion (cp. note 6 (2) to chapter 5) human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway. (A further criticism of the Utilitarian formula 'Maximize pleasure' is that it assumes, in principle, a continuous pleasure-pain scale which allows us to treat degrees of pain as negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the moral point of view, pain cannot be outweighed by pleasure, and especially not one man's pain by another man's pleasure. Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering—such as hunger in times of an unavoidable shortage of food—should be distributed as equally as possible.)

Happily for poor traduced and degraded human nature, the principle for which we now content will speedily divest it of all the ridiculous and absurd mystery with which it has been hitherto enveloped by the ignorance of preceding times: and all the ‘’complicated’’ and ‘’counteracting’’ motives for good conduct, which have been multiplied almost to infinity, will be reduced to ‘’one single principle of action’’, which, by its evident operation and sufficiency, shall render this intricate system ‘’unnecessary’’, and ultimately supersede it in all parts of the earth. That principle is THE HAPPINESS OF SELF CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD AND UNIFORMLY PRACTICED; WHICH CAN ONLY BE ATTAINED BY CONDUCT THAT MUST PROMOTE THE HAPPINESS OF THE COMMUNITY.

Although my own position is, I believe, clearly enough implied in the text, I may perhaps briefly formulate what seems to me the most important principles of humanitarian and equalitarian ethics. (1) Tolerance towards all who are not intolerant and who do not propagate intolerance. ... This implies, especially, that the moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance. (2) The recognition that all moral urgency has its basis in the urgency of suffering or pain. I suggest, for this reason, to replace the utilitarian formula 'Aim at the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number', or briefly, 'Maximize happiness' by the formula 'The least amount of avoidable suffering for all', or briefly, 'Minimize suffering'. Such a simple formula can, I believe, be made one of the fundamental principles (admittedly not the only one) of public policy. (The principle 'Maximize happiness', in contrast, seems to be apt to produce a benevolent dictatorship.) We should realize that from the moral point of view suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer, and the attempt to prevent suffering. (The latter task has little to do with 'matters of taste', the former much.)

The end of Government has been described in a great variety of expressions. By Locke it was said to be "the public good;" by others it has been described as being " the greatest happiness of the greatest number." These, and equivalent expressions, are just ; they are only defective, inasmuch as the particular ideas which they embrace are indistinctly announced; and different combinations are by means of them raised indifferent minds, and even in the same mind on different occasions. It is immediately obvious, that a wide and difficult field is opened, and that the whole science of human nature must be explored to lay a foundation for the science of Government. To understand what is included in the happiness of the greatest number, we must understand what is included in the happiness of the individuals of whom it ii composed. That dissection of human nature which would be necessary to show, on proper evidence, the primary elements into which human happiness may be resolved, it is not compatible with the present design to undertake. We must content ourselves with assuming certain results. We may allow, for example, in general terms, that the lot of every human being is determined by his pains and pleasures; and that his happiness corresponds with the degree in which his pleasures are great, and his pains are small. Human pains and pleasures are derived from two sources :—They are produced, either by our fellow-men, or by causes independent of other men. We may assume it as another principle, that the concern of Government is with the former of these two sources; and that its business is to increase to the utmost the pleasures, and diminish to the utmost the pains which men derive from one another.

What we should be concerned about is the happiness of individuals. Applying rights may be a rough and ready rule of thumb for doing this, but painism would be a far more accurate approach. It might require more detailed research into the consequences of policies on individuals but that, in principle, could be done. Indeed, to base public policy upon scientific findings would be a considerable step forward.

Is it total or average happiness that we seek to make a maximum?...we foresee as possible that an increase in [population] numbers will be accompanied by a decrease in average happiness...if we take Utilitarianism to prescribe, as the ultimate end of action, happiness on the whole...it would follow that, if the additional population enjoy on the whole positive happiness, we ought to weigh the amount of happiness gained by the extra number against the amount lost by the remainder. So that, strictly conceived, the point up to which, on Utilitarian principles, population ought to be encouraged to increase, is not that at which average happiness is the greatest possible...but that at which the product formed by multiplying the number of persons living into the amount of average happiness reaches its maximum.

The best social philosophies do not claim any greater objective than that the individual human beings living under such a regime shall have happy individual lives. If there are social philosophies which deny the happiness of the individual life as the final goal and aim of civilization, those philosophies are the product of a sick and unbalanced mind.

And whatever you make of the country-by-country surveys of national happiness that are now published with some regularity, it's striking that the 'happiest' countries are never those where self-help books sell the most, nor indeed where professional psychotherapists are most widely consulted. The existence of a thriving 'happiness industry' clearly isn't sufficient to engender national happiness, and it's not unreasonable to suspect that it might make matters worse. Yet the ineffectiveness of modern strategies for happiness is really just a small part of the problem. There are good reasons to believe that the whole notion of 'seeking happiness' is flawed to begin with. For one thing, who says happiness is a valid goal in the first place? Religions have never placed much explicit emphasis on it, at least as far as this world is concerned; philosophers have certainly not been unanimous in endorsing it, either. And any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that evolution has little interest in your being happy, beyond trying to make sure that you're not so listless or miserable that you lose the will to reproduce. Even assuming happiness to be a worthy target, though, a worse pitfall awaits, which is that aiming for it seems to reduce your chances of ever attaining it. 'Ask yourself whether you are happy,' observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill, 'and you cease to be so.' At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly.

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

The principle of private happiness, however, is the most objectionable, not merely because it is false, and experience contradicts the supposition that prosperity is always proportioned to good conduct, nor yet merely because it contributes nothing to the establishment of morality - since it is quite a different thing to make a prosperous man and a good man, or to make one prudent and sharp-sighted for his own interests, and to make him virtuous - but because the springs it provides for morality are such as rather undermine it and destroy its sublimity, since they put the motives to virtue and to vice in the same class, and only teach us to make a better calculation, the specific difference between virtue and vice being entirely extinguished. On the other hand, as to moral being, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws; and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has anyone a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings...

The greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing.

[What, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness?]