to all the three points yet considered, except for the doubt as to the precise sense in which the words “can do” are to be understood in this proposition. But obviously on any theory which maintains, as this one does, that right and wrong depend on the intrinsic value of the consequences of our actions, it is extremely important to decide rightly what kinds of consequences are intrinsically better or worse than others. And it is on this important point that the theory in question seems to me to take an utterly wrong view. It maintains, as we saw in Chapter II, that any whole which contains more pleasure is always intrinsically better than one which contains less, and that none can be intrinsically better, unless it contains more pleasure; it being remembered that the phrase “more pleasure,” in this statement, is not to be understood as meaning strictly what it says, but as standing for any one of five different alternatives, the nature of which was fully explained in our first two chapters. And the last question we have to raise, is, therefore: Is this proposition true or not? and if not, what is the right answer to the question:
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