How virtue got to be a desirable thing…
Life would be a poor thing, very ill provided with sources of happiness, if there were not this provision of nature, by which things originally indifferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associated with, the satisfaction of our primitive desires, become in themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the space of human existence that they are capable of covering, and even in intensity. [Utilitarianism, Chapter 4]
Yes, it would be poor, indeed, if our capacity for consciousness could be content within the bounds of material possibility. Mill is right as far as he goes. He just doesn’t go far enough to be convincing, to give confidence that he has not just given up exploring the implications of an intrepid, ever intensifying consciousness, for which consummate material happiness would still be wanting, so much so that happiness and its pursuit becomes a dubious goal.