… that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. [Utilitarianism, Chapter 2]
That these are the only things desirable says both too much and too little. In the sense in which it is true, it is trivially so. It amounts to saying that desire for anything not pleasurable is simply not desire. It amounts to defining desire as such. Any claim that one might desire something whose attainment’s pleasure is beside the point to the desirer is incoherent. It would quite literally place someone with such aims outside the purview of moral judgment. The dispute is about whether a thing-in-itself or a certain relation between things might be rational objects of desire in complete indifference to any attained pleasure or avoided pain attending them: Whether, for example, a woman may sacrifice her personal happiness, not in anticipation of any deferred greater happiness either for herself or for anyone else, but for the creation or preservation of certain relations subtending among people quite apart from its utility, real or imagined, for the individuals involved or the collection of them all. Whether, again, a man might not find suffering or enjoyment laboring under the rule of principle while at the same time considering that suffering or enjoyment incidental to the justification of his act. The question is: can pleasure and pain ever be morally epiphenomenal? Mill says no. We think it otherwise.