Evidently the more particular comparison must be between Gay and Cumberland, for these authors alone, up to this time, had really stated the 'greatest happiness' principle. Cumberland, as we have just seen, defined the Good, now in terms of 'happiness,' now in terms of 'perfection,' though the emphasis, on the whole, seems clearly enough to be on the hedonistic aspect of the system. Gay, on the other hand, consistently defined the Good as Happiness, and Happiness as "the sum of pleasures." Moreover, though he does not discuss the question of possible 'qualitative distinctions' between pleasures, it is evident that for him such distinctions would have no meaning. This, again, is an advance upon Cumberland, for though the latter author by no means commits himself to the doctrine of 'qualitative distinctions,' and seems on the whole to hold the opposite view, there is a certain ambiguity in his treatment which was almost inevitable, considering that he practically carries through Happiness and Perfection as coördinate principles.
As regards the motive of the moral agent, there is in Gay no trace whatever of the confusion which is so striking in Cumberland. To be sure, Cumberland had felt, what Shaftesbury later made evident, that man is essentially a social being and that the true Good must be a common good. His actual treatment, however, is quite confusing; generally, the agent's motive in moral action seems to be regarded as altruistic, but sometimes the language used seems to imply at least a very considerable admixture of egoism. In Gay, on the contrary, we find even a fictitious simplicity. All the phenomena of moral action,
superior to Gay, both as a thinker and as a writer, he did not happen to state the Utilitarian doctrine in the form which was destined first to be developed. Indeed, it may be doubted if this was a matter of chance. Hume's system, much more complex than Gay's, and, one may add, on a distinctly higher plane, was not calculated to appeal to writers like Tucker, Paley, and Bentham, whose single aim appears to have been simplicity of theory. All the writers just named form a perfectly definite school (Bentham and even the historians of Ethics to the ontrary, notwithstanding), while the phase of Utilitarianism which Hume represents was not further developed until comparatively recent times. Historically, then, Hume stands outside of the direct line of development, though he doubtless represents the Utilitarian position, as we now understand it, much more adequately than any one else who wrote in his own, or even the succeeding, generation.
