ABSTRACT
The reader is introduced to the topic of ethics in the first two books of the Essay very much in the context of the doctrine that all our ideas are derived from experience. The derivation of value proposed is not roundabout. Its fundamental sources are pleasure and pain, simple ideas which accompany sense-perception and thought. The argument in effect assumes that all pleasure (or all pain) is the same in kind whatever its object, differing intrinsically only in degree. Bodily pleasures differ from pleasures of the mind only in their objects or causes, and in general that is how the various 'passions' (which Locke called 'modes of pleasure and pain') are distinguished from one another. Things are good for the individual in so far as they promote his pleasure and diminish his pain (i.e. promote his happiness), and evil as they do the reverse.106
