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+UTILITARIANISM
+
+BY
+
+JOHN STUART MILL
+
+REPRINTED FROM 'FRASER'S MAGAZINE'
+
+SEVENTH EDITION
+
+LONDON
+
+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+
+1879
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER I. GENERAL REMARKS
+
+CHAPTER II. WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS
+
+CHAPTER III. OF THE ULTIMATE SANCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
+
+CHAPTER IV. OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS
+SUSCEPTIBLE
+
+CHAPTER V. OF THE CONNEXION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY
+
+UTILITARIANISM.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+GENERAL REMARKS.
+
+There are few circumstances among those which make up the present
+condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected,
+or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the
+most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which
+has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the
+criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question
+concerning the _summum bonum_, or, what is the same thing, concerning
+the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in
+speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and
+divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare
+against one another. And after more than two thousand years the same
+discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same
+contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem
+nearer to being unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrates
+listened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's dialogue be
+grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against
+the popular morality of the so-called sophist.
+
+It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in some cases
+similar discordance, exist respecting the first principles of all the
+sciences, not excepting that which is deemed the most certain of them,
+mathematics; without much impairing, generally indeed without impairing
+at all, the trustworthiness of the conclusions of those sciences. An
+apparent anomaly, the explanation of which is, that the detailed
+doctrines of a science are not usually deduced from, nor depend for
+their evidence upon, what are called its first principles. Were it not
+so, there would be no science more precarious, or whose conclusions were
+more insufficiently made out, than algebra; which derives none of its
+certainty from what are commonly taught to learners as its elements,
+since these, as laid down by some of its most eminent teachers, are as
+full of fictions as English law, and of mysteries as theology. The
+truths which are ultimately accepted as the first principles of a
+science, are really the last results of metaphysical analysis, practised
+on the elementary notions with which the science is conversant; and
+their relation to the science is not that of foundations to an edifice,
+but of roots to a tree, which may perform their office equally well
+though they be never dug down to and exposed to light. But though in
+science the particular truths precede the general theory, the contrary
+might be expected to be the case with a practical art, such as morals or
+legislation. All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of
+action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character
+and colour from the end to which they are subservient. When we engage in
+a pursuit, a clear and precise conception of what we are pursuing would
+seem to be the first thing we need, instead of the last we are to look
+forward to. A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would
+think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a consequence of
+having already ascertained it.
+
+The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to the popular theory
+of a natural faculty, a sense or instinct, informing us of right and
+wrong. For--besides that the existence of such a moral instinct is
+itself one of the matters in dispute--those believers in it who have any
+pretensions to philosophy, have been obliged to abandon the idea that it
+discerns what is right or wrong in the particular case in hand, as our
+other senses discern the sight or sound actually present. Our moral
+faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to
+the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of
+moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitive
+faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality,
+not for perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive, no less than
+what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists on the
+necessity of general laws. They both agree that the morality of an
+individual action is not a question of direct perception, but of the
+application of a law to an individual case. They recognise also, to a
+great extent, the same moral laws; but differ as to their evidence, and
+the source from which they derive their authority. According to the one
+opinion, the principles of morals are evident _à priori_, requiring
+nothing to command assent, except that the meaning of the terms be
+understood. According to the other doctrine, right and wrong, as well as
+truth and falsehood, are questions of observation and experience. But
+both hold equally that morality must be deduced from principles; and the
+intuitive school affirm as strongly as the inductive, that there is a
+science of morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a list of the _à
+priori_ principles which are to serve as the premises of the science;
+still more rarely do they make any effort to reduce those various
+principles to one first principle, or common ground of obligation. They
+either assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of _à priori_
+authority, or they lay down as the common groundwork of those maxims,
+some generality much less obviously authoritative than the maxims
+themselves, and which has never succeeded in gaining popular acceptance.
+Yet to support their pretensions there ought either to be some one
+fundamental principle or law, at the root of all morality, or if there
+be several, there should be a determinate order of precedence among
+them; and the one principle, or the rule for deciding between the
+various principles when they conflict, ought to be self-evident.
+
+To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency have been
+mitigated in practice, or to what extent the moral beliefs of mankind
+have been vitiated or made uncertain by the absence of any distinct
+recognition of an ultimate standard, would imply a complete survey and
+criticism of past and present ethical doctrine. It would, however, be
+easy to show that whatever steadiness or consistency these moral beliefs
+have attained, has been mainly due to the tacit influence of a standard
+not recognised. Although the non-existence of an acknowledged first
+principle has made ethics not so much a guide as a consecration of men's
+actual sentiments, still, as men's sentiments, both of favour and of
+aversion, are greatly influenced by what they suppose to be the effects
+of things upon their happiness, the principle of utility, or as Bentham
+latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle, has had a large
+share in forming the moral doctrines even of those who most scornfully
+reject its authority. Nor is there any school of thought which refuses
+to admit that the influence of actions on happiness is a most material
+and even predominant consideration in many of the details of morals,
+however unwilling to acknowledge it as the fundamental principle of
+morality, and the source of moral obligation. I might go much further,
+and say that to all those _à priori_ moralists who deem it necessary to
+argue at all, utilitarian arguments are indispensable. It is not my
+present purpose to criticise these thinkers; but I cannot help
+referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of the most
+illustrious of them, the _Metaphysics of Ethics_, by Kant. This
+remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of the
+landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the
+treatise in question, lay down an universal first principle as the
+origin and ground of moral obligation; it is this:--'So act, that the
+rule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by all
+rational beings.' But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of
+the actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to show
+that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say
+physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the
+most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All he shows is that the
+_consequences_ of their universal adoption would be such as no one would
+choose to incur.
+
+On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion of the
+other theories, attempt to contribute something towards the
+understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory,
+and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that this
+cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term.
+Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever
+can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to
+something admitted to be good without proof. The medical art is proved
+to be good, by its conducing to health; but how is it possible to prove
+that health is good? The art of music is good, for the reason, among
+others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give
+that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a
+comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves
+good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a
+mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of
+what is commonly understood by proof. We are not, however, to infer that
+its acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse, or arbitrary
+choice. There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which this
+question is as amenable to it as any other of the disputed questions of
+philosophy. The subject is within the cognizance of the rational
+faculty; and neither does that faculty deal with it solely in the way
+of intuition. Considerations may be presented capable of determining the
+intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; and
+this is equivalent to proof.
+
+We shall examine presently of what nature are these considerations; in
+what manner they apply to the case, and what rational grounds,
+therefore, can be given for accepting or rejecting the utilitarian
+formula. But it is a preliminary condition of rational acceptance or
+rejection, that the formula should be correctly understood. I believe
+that the very imperfect notion ordinarily formed of its meaning, is the
+chief obstacle which impedes its reception; and that could it be
+cleared, even from only the grosser misconceptions, the question would
+be greatly simplified, and a large proportion of its difficulties
+removed. Before, therefore, I attempt to enter into the philosophical
+grounds which can be given for assenting to the utilitarian standard, I
+shall offer some illustrations of the doctrine itself; with the view of
+showing more clearly what it is, distinguishing it from what it is not,
+and disposing of such of the practical objections to it as either
+originate in, or are closely connected with, mistaken interpretations of
+its meaning. Having thus prepared the ground, I shall afterwards
+endeavour to throw such light as I can upon the question, considered as
+one of philosophical theory.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS.
+
+A passing remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of
+supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and
+wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in
+which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the
+philosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentary
+appearance of confounding them with any one capable of so absurd a
+misconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the contrary
+accusation, of referring everything to pleasure, and that too in its
+grossest form, is another of the common charges against utilitarianism:
+and, as has been pointedly remarked by an able writer, the same sort of
+persons, and often the very same persons, denounce the theory "as
+impracticably dry when the word utility precedes the word pleasure, and
+as too practicably voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the word
+utility." Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every
+writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility,
+meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but
+pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of
+opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always
+declared that the useful means these, among other things. Yet the
+common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers and
+periodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are perpetually
+falling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the word
+utilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they
+habitually express by it the rejection, or the neglect, of pleasure in
+some of its forms; of beauty, of ornament, or of amusement. Nor is the
+term thus ignorantly misapplied solely in disparagement, but
+occasionally in compliment; as though it implied superiority to
+frivolity and the mere pleasures of the moment. And this perverted use
+is the only one in which the word is popularly known, and the one from
+which the new generation are acquiring their sole notion of its meaning.
+Those who introduced the word, but who had for many years discontinued
+it as a distinctive appellation, may well feel themselves called upon to
+resume it, if by doing so they can hope to contribute anything towards
+rescuing it from this utter degradation.[A]
+
+The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the
+Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion
+as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the
+reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the
+absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To
+give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more
+requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas
+of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question.
+But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on
+which this theory of morality is grounded--namely, 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.
+
+Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some
+of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To
+suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than
+pleasure--no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit--they
+designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of
+swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period,
+contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine are
+occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its
+German, French, and English assailants.
+
+When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not
+they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading
+light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no
+pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition
+were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no
+longer an imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the
+same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough
+for the one would be good enough for the other. The comparison of the
+Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because
+a beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human being's conceptions of
+happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal
+appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything
+as happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not,
+indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in
+drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle.
+To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian
+elements require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theory
+of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect; of the
+feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher
+value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted,
+however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority
+of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency,
+safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former--that is, in their
+circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on
+all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they
+might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground,
+with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of
+utility to recognise the fact, that some _kinds_ of pleasure are more
+desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while,
+in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as
+quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on
+quantity alone.
+
+If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or
+what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a
+pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible
+answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who
+have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any
+feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable
+pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted
+with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even
+though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent,
+and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which
+their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the
+preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing
+quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.
+
+Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted
+with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a
+most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their
+higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into
+any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a
+beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a
+fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling
+and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be
+persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied
+with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they
+possess more than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all the
+desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they
+would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape
+from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however
+undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more
+to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and is
+certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type;
+but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into
+what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what
+explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to
+pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to
+some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we
+may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal
+to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the
+inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement,
+both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its most
+appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings
+possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact,
+proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part
+of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which
+conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of
+desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a
+sacrifice of happiness-that the superior being, in anything like equal
+circumstances, is not happier than the inferior-confounds the two very
+different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable that the
+being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of
+having them fully satisfied; and a highly-endowed being will always feel
+that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted,
+is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at
+all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed
+unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all
+the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human
+being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates
+dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a
+different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the
+question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
+
+It may be objected, that many who are capable of the higher pleasures,
+occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone them to the
+lower. But this is quite compatible with a full appreciation of the
+intrinsic superiority of the higher. Men often, from infirmity of
+character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it
+to be the less valuable; and this no less when the choice is between two
+bodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily and mental. They pursue
+sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware that
+health is the greater good. It may be further objected, that many who
+begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in
+years sink into indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe that
+those who undergo this very common change, voluntarily choose the lower
+description of pleasures in preference to the higher. I believe that
+before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have already
+become incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in
+most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile
+influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young
+persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position
+in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them,
+are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose
+their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because
+they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict
+themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer
+them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have
+access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.
+It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally
+susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly
+preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an
+ineffectual attempt to combine both.
+
+From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be
+no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two
+pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to
+the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences,
+the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if
+they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final.
+And there needs be the less hesitation to accept this judgment
+respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to
+be referred to even on the question of quantity. What means are there of
+determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two
+pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are
+familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and
+pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide
+whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a
+particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced?
+When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the pleasures
+derived from the higher faculties to be preferable _in kind_, apart from
+the question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature,
+disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitled
+on this subject to the same regard.
+
+I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly
+just conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive
+rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable condition
+to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not
+the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness
+altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character
+is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it
+makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a
+gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by
+the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each
+individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own,
+so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the
+benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last,
+renders refutation superfluous.
+
+According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the
+ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other
+things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of
+other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and
+as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and
+quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against
+quantity, being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities
+of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness
+and self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison.
+This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human
+action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may
+accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the
+observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to
+the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them
+only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient
+creation.
+
+Against this doctrine, however, arises another class of objectors, who
+say that happiness, in any form, cannot be the rational purpose of human
+life and action; because, in the first place, it is unattainable: and
+they contemptuously ask, What right hast thou to be happy? a question
+which Mr. Carlyle clenches by the addition, What right, a short time
+ago, hadst thou even _to be_? Next, they say, that men can do _without_
+happiness; that all noble human beings have felt this, and could not
+have become noble but by learning the lesson of Entsagen, or
+renunciation; which lesson, thoroughly learnt and submitted to, they
+affirm to be the beginning and necessary condition of all virtue.
+
+The first of these objections would go to the root of the matter were it
+well founded; for if no happiness is to be had at all by human beings,
+the attainment of it cannot be the end of morality, or of any rational
+conduct. Though, even in that case, something might still be said for
+the utilitarian theory; since utility includes not solely the pursuit of
+happiness, but the prevention or mitigation of unhappiness; and if the
+former aim be chimerical, there will be all the greater scope and more
+imperative need for the latter, so long at least as mankind think fit to
+live, and do not take refuge in the simultaneous act of suicide
+recommended under certain conditions by Novalis. When, however, it is
+thus positively asserted to be impossible that human life should be
+happy, the assertion, if not something like a verbal quibble, is at
+least an exaggeration. If by happiness be meant a continuity of highly
+pleasurable excitement, it is evident enough that this is impossible. A
+state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases, and with
+some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash
+of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this the
+philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life were as
+fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness which they meant was
+not a life of rapture, but moments of such, in an existence made up of
+few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided
+predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the
+foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable
+of bestowing. A life thus composed, to those who have been fortunate
+enough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy of the name of
+happiness. And such an existence is even now the lot of many, during
+some considerable portion of their lives. The present wretched
+education, and wretched social arrangements, are the only real hindrance
+to its being attainable by almost all.
+
+The objectors perhaps may doubt whether human beings, if taught to
+consider happiness as the end of life, would be satisfied with such a
+moderate share of it. But great numbers of mankind have been satisfied
+with much less. The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be
+two, either of which by itself is often found sufficient for the
+purpose: tranquillity, and excitement. With much tranquillity, many find
+that they can be content with very little pleasure: with much
+excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of
+pain. There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even the
+mass of mankind to unite both; since the two are so far from being
+incompatible that they are in natural alliance, the prolongation of
+either being a preparation for, and exciting a wish for, the other. It
+is only those in whom indolence amounts to a vice, that do not desire
+excitement after an interval of repose; it is only those in whom the
+need of excitement is a disease, that feel the tranquillity which
+follows excitement dull and insipid, instead of pleasurable in direct
+proportion to the excitement which preceded it. When people who are
+tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient
+enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring
+for nobody but themselves. To those who have neither public nor private
+affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case
+dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must
+be terminated by death: while those who leave after them objects of
+personal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a
+fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as
+lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth
+and health. Next to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life
+unsatisfactory, is want of mental cultivation. A cultivated mind--I do
+not mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains of
+knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable
+degree, to exercise its faculties--finds sources of inexhaustible
+interest in all that surrounds it; in the objects of nature, the
+achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of
+history, the ways of mankind past and present, and their prospects in
+the future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to all this,
+and that too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it; but only
+when one has had from the beginning no moral or human interest in these
+things, and has sought in them only the gratification of curiosity.
+
+Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an amount
+of mental culture sufficient to give an intelligent interest in these
+objects of contemplation, should not be the inheritance of every one
+born in a civilized country. As little is there an inherent necessity
+that any human being should be a selfish egotist, devoid of every
+feeling or care but those which centre in his own miserable
+individuality. Something far superior to this is sufficiently common
+even now, to give ample earnest of what the human species may be made.
+Genuine private affections, and a sincere interest in the public good,
+are possible, though in unequal degrees, to every rightly brought-up
+human being. In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much
+to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who has
+this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of
+an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person,
+through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the
+liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not
+fail to find this enviable existence, if he escape the positive evils of
+life, the great sources of physical and mental suffering--such as
+indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss
+of objects of affection. The main stress of the problem lies, therefore,
+in the contest with these calamities, from which it is a rare good
+fortune entirely to escape; which, as things now are, cannot be
+obviated, and often cannot be in any material degree mitigated. Yet no
+one whose opinion deserves a moment's consideration can doubt that most
+of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable,
+and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced
+within narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying suffering, may be
+completely extinguished by the wisdom of society, combined with the good
+sense and providence of individuals. Even that most intractable of
+enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by good
+physical and moral education, and proper control of noxious influences;
+while the progress of science holds out a promise for the future of
+still more direct conquests over this detestable foe. And every advance
+in that direction relieves us from some, not only of the chances which
+cut short our own lives, but, what concerns us still more, which deprive
+us of those in whom our happiness is wrapt up. As for vicissitudes of
+fortune, and other disappointments connected with worldly circumstances,
+these are principally the effect either of gross imprudence, of
+ill-regulated desires, or of bad or imperfect social institutions. All
+the grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great degree,
+many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort; and
+though their removal is grievously slow--though a long succession of
+generations will perish in the breach before the conquest is completed,
+and this world becomes all that, if will and knowledge were not wanting,
+it might easily be made--yet every mind sufficiently intelligent and
+generous to bear a part, however small and unconspicuous, in the
+endeavour, will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself, which he
+would not for any bribe in the form of selfish indulgence consent to be
+without.
+
+And this leads to the true estimation of what is said by the objectors
+concerning the possibility, and the obligation, of learning to do
+without happiness. Unquestionably it is possible to do without
+happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind,
+even in those parts of our present world which are least deep in
+barbarism; and it often has to be done voluntarily by the hero or the
+martyr, for the sake of something which he prizes more than his
+individual happiness. But this something, what is it, unless the
+happiness of others, or some of the requisites of happiness? It is noble
+to be capable of resigning entirely one's own portion of happiness, or
+chances of it: but, after all, this self-sacrifice must be for some end;
+it is not its own end; and if we are told that its end is not happiness,
+but virtue, which is better than happiness, I ask, would the sacrifice
+be made if the hero or martyr did not believe that it would earn for
+others immunity from similar sacrifices? Would it be made, if he thought
+that his renunciation of happiness for himself would produce no fruit
+for any of his fellow creatures, but to make their lot like his, and
+place them also in the condition of persons who have renounced
+happiness? All honour to those who can abnegate for themselves the
+personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute
+worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who
+does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more
+deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He may
+be an inspiriting proof of what men _can_ do, but assuredly not an
+example of what they _should_.
+
+Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements
+that any one can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute
+sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in that imperfect
+state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice
+is the highest virtue which can be found in man. I will add, that in
+this condition of the world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, the
+conscious ability to do without happiness gives the best prospect of
+realizing such happiness as is attainable. For nothing except that
+consciousness can raise a person above the chances of life, by making
+him feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they have not power
+to subdue him: which, once felt, frees him from excess of anxiety
+concerning the evils of life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in the
+worst times of the Roman Empire, to cultivate in tranquillity the
+sources of satisfaction accessible to him, without concerning himself
+about the uncertainty of their duration, any more than about their
+inevitable end.
+
+Meanwhile, let utilitarians never cease to claim the morality of
+self-devotion as a possession which belongs by as good a right to them,
+as either to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist. The utilitarian
+morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their
+own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that
+the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or
+tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.
+The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the
+happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others; either of
+mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits imposed by the
+collective interests of mankind.
+
+I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have
+the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the
+utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own
+happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and
+that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial
+as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus
+of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To
+do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself,
+constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of
+making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first,
+that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as
+speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every
+individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the
+whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a
+power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in
+the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own
+happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own
+happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and
+positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes: so that not
+only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to
+himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also
+that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every
+individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments
+connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human
+being's sentient existence. If the impugners of the utilitarian morality
+represented it to their own minds in this its true character, I know not
+what recommendation possessed by any other morality they could possibly
+affirm to be wanting to it: what more beautiful or more exalted
+developments of human nature any other ethical system can be supposed to
+foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian,
+such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates.
+
+The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with
+representing it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those among
+them who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterested
+character, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high for
+humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall
+always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of
+society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of
+morals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is
+the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test
+we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive
+of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine
+hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly
+so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them. It is the more
+unjust to utilitarianism that this particular misapprehension should be
+made a ground of objection to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moralists have
+gone beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive has nothing
+to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the
+agent. He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally
+right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his
+trouble: he who betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of a
+crime, even if his object be to serve another friend to whom he is under
+greater obligations.[B] But to speak only of actions done from the
+motive of duty, and in direct obedience to principle: it is a
+misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it as
+implying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as
+the world, or society at large. The great majority of good actions are
+intended, not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals,
+of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most
+virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular
+persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that
+in benefiting them he is not violating the rights--that is, the
+legitimate and authorized expectations--of any one else. The
+multiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics, the
+object of virtue: the occasions on which any person (except one in a
+thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other
+words, to be a public benefactor, are but exceptional; and on these
+occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every
+other case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some few
+persons, is all he has to attend to. Those alone the influence of whose
+actions extends to society in general, need concern themselves
+habitually about so large an object. In the case of abstinences
+indeed--of things which people forbear to do, from moral considerations,
+though the consequences in the particular case might be beneficial--it
+would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously aware
+that the action is of a class which, if practised generally, would be
+generally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation to
+abstain from it. The amount of regard for the public interest implied in
+this recognition, is no greater than is demanded by every system of
+morals; for they all enjoin to abstain from whatever is manifestly
+pernicious to society.
+
+The same considerations dispose of another reproach against the doctrine
+of utility, founded on a still grosser misconception of the purpose of a
+standard of morality, and of the very meaning of the words right and
+wrong. It is often affirmed that utilitarianism renders men cold and
+unsympathizing; that it chills their moral feelings towards
+individuals; that it makes them regard only the dry and hard
+consideration of the consequences of actions, not taking into their
+moral estimate the qualities from which those actions emanate. If the
+assertion means that they do not allow their judgment respecting the
+rightness or wrongness of an action to be influenced by their opinion of
+the qualities of the person who does it, this is a complaint not against
+utilitarianism, but against having any standard of morality at all; for
+certainly no known ethical standard decides an action to be good or bad
+because it is done by a good or a bad man, still less because done by an
+amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man or the contrary. These
+considerations are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but of
+persons; and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent
+with the fact that there are other things which interest us in persons
+besides the rightness and wrongness of their actions. The Stoics,
+indeed, with the paradoxical misuse of language which was part of their
+system, and by which they strove to raise themselves above all concern
+about anything but virtue, were fond of saying that he who has that has
+everything; that he, and only he, is rich, is beautiful, is a king. But
+no claim of this description is made for the virtuous man by the
+utilitarian doctrine. Utilitarians are quite aware that there are other
+desirable possessions and qualities besides virtue, and are perfectly
+willing to allow to all of them their full worth. They are also aware
+that a right action does not necessarily indicate a virtuous character,
+and that actions which are blameable often proceed from qualities
+entitled to praise. When this is apparent in any particular case, it
+modifies their estimation, not certainly of the act, but of the agent.
+I grant that they are, notwithstanding, of opinion, that in the long run
+the best proof of a good character is good actions; and resolutely
+refuse to consider any mental disposition as good, of which the
+predominant tendency is to produce bad conduct. This makes them
+unpopular with many people; but it is an unpopularity which they must
+share with every one who regards the distinction between right and wrong
+in a serious light; and the reproach is not one which a conscientious
+utilitarian need be anxious to repel.
+
+If no more be meant by the objection than that many utilitarians look on
+the morality of actions, as measured by the utilitarian standard, with
+too exclusive a regard, and do not lay sufficient stress upon the other
+beauties of character which go towards making a human being loveable or
+admirable, this may be admitted. Utilitarians who have cultivated their
+moral feelings, but not their sympathies nor their artistic perceptions,
+do fall into this mistake; and so do all other moralists under the same
+conditions. What can be said in excuse for other moralists is equally
+available for them, namely, that if there is to be any error, it is
+better that it should be on that side. As a matter of fact, we may
+affirm that among utilitarians as among adherents of other systems,
+there is every imaginable degree of rigidity and of laxity in the
+application of their standard: some are even puritanically rigorous,
+while others are as indulgent as can possibly be desired by sinner or by
+sentimentalist. But on the whole, a doctrine which brings prominently
+forward the interest that mankind have in the repression and prevention
+of conduct which violates the moral law, is likely to be inferior to no
+other in turning the sanctions of opinion against such violations. It is
+true, the question, What does violate the moral law? is one on which
+those who recognise different standards of morality are likely now and
+then to differ. But difference of opinion on moral questions was not
+first introduced into the world by utilitarianism, while that doctrine
+does supply, if not always an easy, at all events a tangible and
+intelligible mode of deciding such differences.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It may not be superfluous to notice a few more of the common
+misapprehensions of utilitarian ethics, even those which are so obvious
+and gross that it might appear impossible for any person of candour and
+intelligence to fall into them: since persons, even of considerable
+mental endowments, often give themselves so little trouble to understand
+the bearings of any opinion against which they entertain a prejudice,
+and men are in general so little conscious of this voluntary ignorance
+as a defect, that the vulgarest misunderstandings of ethical doctrines
+are continually met with in the deliberate writings of persons of the
+greatest pretensions both to high principle and to philosophy. We not
+uncommonly hear the doctrine of utility inveighed against as a _godless_
+doctrine. If it be necessary to say anything at all against so mere an
+assumption, we may say that the question depends upon what idea we have
+formed of the moral character of the Deity. If it be a true belief that
+God desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and that
+this was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a
+godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other. If it be
+meant that utilitarianism does not recognise the revealed will of God as
+the supreme law of morals, I answer, that an utilitarian who believes in
+the perfect goodness and wisdom of God, necessarily believes that
+whatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject of morals, must
+fulfil the requirements of utility in a supreme degree. But others
+besides utilitarians have been of opinion that the Christian revelation
+was intended, and is fitted, to inform the hearts and minds of mankind
+with a spirit which should enable them to find for themselves what is
+right, and incline them to do it when found, rather than to tell them,
+except in a very general way, what it is: and that we need a doctrine of
+ethics, carefully followed out, to _interpret_ to us the will of God.
+Whether this opinion is correct or not, it is superfluous here to
+discuss; since whatever aid religion, either natural or revealed, can
+afford to ethical investigation, is as open to the utilitarian moralist
+as to any other. He can use it as the testimony of God to the usefulness
+or hurtfulness of any given course of action, by as good a right as
+others can use it for the indication of a transcendental law, having no
+connexion with usefulness or with happiness.
+
+Again, Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an immoral doctrine by
+giving it the name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the popular
+use of that term to contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, in
+the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that
+which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself: as
+when a minister sacrifices the interest of his country to keep himself
+in place. When it means anything better than this, it means that which
+is expedient for some immediate object, some temporary purpose, but
+which violates a rule whose observance is expedient in a much higher
+degree. The Expedient, in this sense, instead of being the same thing
+with the useful, is a branch of the hurtful. Thus, it would often be
+expedient, for the purpose of getting over some momentary embarrassment,
+or attaining some object immediately useful to ourselves or others, to
+tell a lie. But inasmuch as the cultivation in ourselves of a sensitive
+feeling on the subject of veracity, is one of the most useful, and the
+enfeeblement of that feeling one of the most hurtful, things to which
+our conduct can be instrumental; and inasmuch as any, even
+unintentional, deviation from truth, does that much towards weakening
+the trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only the principal
+support of all present social well-being, but the insufficiency of which
+does more than any one thing that can be named to keep back
+civilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness on the largest
+scale depends; we feel that the violation, for a present advantage, of a
+rule of such transcendent expediency, is not expedient, and that he who,
+for the sake of a convenience to himself or to some other individual,
+does what depends on him to deprive mankind of the good, and inflict
+upon them the evil, involved in the greater or less reliance which they
+can place in each other's word, acts the part of one of their worst
+enemies. Yet that even this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possible
+exceptions, is acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is when
+the withholding of some fact (as of information from a male-factor, or
+of bad news from a person dangerously ill) would preserve some one
+(especially a person other than oneself) from great and unmerited evil,
+and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in order
+that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have
+the least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to
+be recognized, and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the
+principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighing
+these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out the
+region within which one or the other preponderates.
+
+Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply
+to such objections as this--that there is not time, previous to action,
+for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the
+general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is
+impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not
+time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read
+through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that
+there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human
+species. During all that time mankind have been learning by experience
+the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well
+as all the morality of life, is dependent. People talk as if the
+commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and
+as if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the
+property or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first
+time whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness. Even
+then I do not think that he would find the question very puzzling; but,
+at all events, the matter is now done to his hand. It is truly a
+whimsical supposition, that if mankind were agreed in considering
+utility to be the test of morality, they would remain without any
+agreement as to what is useful, and would take no measures for having
+their notions on the subject taught to the young, and enforced by law
+and opinion. There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard
+whatever to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined
+with it, but on any hypothesis short of that, mankind must by this time
+have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on
+their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules
+of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has
+succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this,
+even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no
+means of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to
+the effects of actions on the general happiness, I admit, or rather,
+earnestly maintain. The corollaries from the principle of utility, like
+the precepts of every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement,
+and, in a progressive state of the human mind, their improvement is
+perpetually going on. But to consider the rules of morality as
+improvable, is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generalizations
+entirely, and endeavour to test each individual action directly by the
+first principle, is another. It is a strange notion that the
+acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission
+of secondary ones. To inform a traveller respecting the place of his
+ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of landmarks and
+direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end
+and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to
+that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take
+one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking
+a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor
+listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that
+the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors
+cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational
+creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational
+creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the
+common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more
+difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight
+is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do.
+Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require
+subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing
+without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument
+against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such
+secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till
+now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions
+from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as
+absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.
+
+The remainder of the stock arguments against utilitarianism mostly
+consist in laying to its charge the common infirmities of human nature,
+and the general difficulties which embarrass conscientious persons in
+shaping their course through life. We are told that an utilitarian will
+be apt to make his own particular case an exception to moral rules, and,
+when under temptation, will see an utility in the breach of a rule,
+greater than he will see in its observance. But is utility the only
+creed which is able to furnish us with excuses for evil doing, and means
+of cheating our own conscience? They are afforded in abundance by all
+doctrines which recognise as a fact in morals the existence of
+conflicting considerations; which all doctrines do, that have been
+believed by sane persons. It is not the fault of any creed, but of the
+complicated nature of human affairs, that rules of conduct cannot be so
+framed as to require no exceptions, and that hardly any kind of action
+can safely be laid down as either always obligatory or always
+condemnable. There is no ethical creed which does not temper the
+rigidity of its laws, by giving a certain latitude, under the moral
+responsibility of the agent, for accommodation to peculiarities of
+circumstances; and under every creed, at the opening thus made,
+self-deception and dishonest casuistry get in. There exists no moral
+system under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of conflicting
+obligation. These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both in
+the theory of ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of personal
+conduct. They are overcome practically with greater or with less success
+according to the intellect and virtue of the individual; but it can
+hardly be pretended that any one will be the less qualified for dealing
+with them, from possessing an ultimate standard to which conflicting
+rights and duties can be referred. If utility is the ultimate source of
+moral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when
+their demands are incompatible. Though the application of the standard
+may be difficult, it is better than none at all: while in other systems,
+the moral laws all claiming independent authority, there is no common
+umpire entitled to interfere between them; their claims to precedence
+one over another rest on little better than sophistry, and unless
+determined, as they generally are, by the unacknowledged influence of
+considerations of utility, afford a free scope for the action of
+personal desires and partialities. We must remember that only in these
+cases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite that
+first principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moral
+obligation in which some secondary principle is not involved; and if
+only one, there can seldom be any real doubt which one it is, in the
+mind of any person by whom the principle itself is recognized.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote A: The author of this essay has reason for believing himself
+to be the first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did
+not invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt's
+_Annals of the Parish_. After using it as a designation for several
+years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything
+resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name
+for one single opinion, not a set of opinions--to denote the recognition
+of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it--the
+term supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, a
+convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution.]
+
+[Footnote B: An opponent, whose intellectual and moral fairness it is a
+pleasure to acknowledge (the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davis), has objected to
+this passage, saying, "Surely the rightness or wrongness of saving a man
+from drowning does depend very much upon the motive with which it is
+done. Suppose that a tyrant, when his enemy jumped into the sea to
+escape from him, saved him from drowning simply in order that he might
+inflict upon him more exquisite tortures, would it tend to clearness to
+speak of that rescue as 'a morally right action?' Or suppose again,
+according to one of the stock illustrations of ethical inquiries, that a
+man betrayed a trust received from a friend, because the discharge of it
+would fatally injure that friend himself or some one belonging to him,
+would utilitarianism compel one to call the betrayal 'a crime' as much
+as if it had been done from the meanest motive?"
+
+I submit, that he who saves another from drowning in order to kill him
+by torture afterwards, does not differ only in motive from him who does
+the same thing from duty or benevolence; the act itself is different.
+The rescue of the man is, in the case supposed, only the necessary first
+step of an act far more atrocious than leaving him to drown would have
+been. Had Mr. Davis said, "The rightness or wrongness of saving a man
+from drowning does depend very much"--not upon the motive, but--"upon
+the _intention_" no utilitarian would have differed from him. Mr. Davis,
+by an oversight too common not to be quite venial, has in this case
+confounded the very different ideas of Motive and Intention. There is no
+point which utilitarian thinkers (and Bentham pre-eminently) have taken
+more pains to illustrate than this. The morality of the action depends
+entirely upon the intention--that is, upon what the agent _wills to do_.
+But the motive, that is, the feeling which makes him will so to do, when
+it makes no difference in the act, makes none in the morality: though it
+makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent,
+especially if it indicates a good or a bad habitual _disposition_--a
+bent of character from which useful, or from which hurtful actions are
+likely to arise.]
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+OF THE ULTIMATE SANCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY.
+
+The question is often asked, and properly so, in regard to any supposed
+moral standard--What is its sanction? what are the motives to obey it?
+or more specifically, what is the source of its obligation? whence does
+it derive its binding force? It is a necessary part of moral philosophy
+to provide the answer to this question; which, though frequently
+assuming the shape of an objection to the utilitarian morality, as if it
+had some special applicability to that above others, really arises in
+regard to all standards. It arises, in fact, whenever a person is called
+on to adopt a standard or refer morality to any basis on which he has
+not been accustomed to rest it. For the customary morality, that which
+education and opinion have consecrated, is the only one which presents
+itself to the mind with the feeling of being _in itself_ obligatory; and
+when a person is asked to believe that this morality _derives_ its
+obligation from some general principle round which custom has not thrown
+the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox; the supposed
+corollaries seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem;
+the superstructure seems to stand better without, than with, what is
+represented as its foundation. He says to himself, I feel that I am
+bound not to rob or murder, betray or deceive; but why am I bound to
+promote the general happiness? If my own happiness lies in something
+else, why may I not give that the preference?
+
+If the view adopted by the utilitarian philosophy of the nature of the
+moral sense be correct, this difficulty will always present itself,
+until the influences which form moral character have taken the same hold
+of the principle which they have taken of some of the
+consequences--until, by the improvement of education, the feeling of
+unity with our fellow creatures shall be (what it cannot be doubted that
+Christ intended it to be) as deeply rooted in our character, and to our
+own consciousness as completely a part of our nature, as the horror of
+crime is in an ordinarily well-brought-up young person. In the mean
+time, however, the difficulty has no peculiar application to the
+doctrine of utility, but is inherent in every attempt to analyse
+morality and reduce it to principles; which, unless the principle is
+already in men's minds invested with as much sacredness as any of its
+applications, always seems to divest them of a part of their sanctity.
+
+The principle of utility either has, or there is no reason why it might
+not have, all the sanctions which belong to any other system of morals.
+Those sanctions are either external or internal. Of the external
+sanctions it is not necessary to speak at any length. They are, the hope
+of favour and the fear of displeasure from our fellow creatures or from
+the Ruler of the Universe, along with whatever we may have of sympathy
+or affection for them or of love and awe of Him, inclining us to do His
+will independently of selfish consequences. There is evidently no
+reason why all these motives for observance should not attach themselves
+to the utilitarian morality, as completely and as powerfully as to any
+other. Indeed, those of them which refer to our fellow creatures are
+sure to do so, in proportion to the amount of general intelligence; for
+whether there be any other ground of moral obligation than the general
+happiness or not, men do desire happiness; and however imperfect may be
+their own practice, they desire and commend all conduct in others
+towards themselves, by which they think their happiness is promoted.
+With regard to the religious motive, if men believe, as most profess to
+do, in the goodness of God, those who think that conduciveness to the
+general happiness is the essence, or even only the criterion, of good,
+must necessarily believe that it is also that which God approves. The
+whole force therefore of external reward and punishment, whether
+physical or moral, and whether proceeding from God or from our fellow
+men, together with all that the capacities of human nature admit, of
+disinterested devotion to either, become available to enforce the
+utilitarian morality, in proportion as that morality is recognized; and
+the more powerfully, the more the appliances of education and general
+cultivation are bent to the purpose.
+
+So far as to external sanctions. The internal sanction of duty, whatever
+our standard of duty may be, is one and the same--a feeling in our own
+mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty,
+which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in the more serious
+cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility. This feeling, when
+disinterested, and connecting itself with the pure idea of duty, and
+not with some particular form of it, or with any of the merely accessory
+circumstances, is the essence of Conscience; though in that complex
+phenomenon as it actually exists, the simple fact is in general all
+encrusted over with collateral associations, derived from sympathy, from
+love, and still more from fear; from all the forms of religious feeling;
+from the recollections of childhood and of all our past life; from
+self-esteem, desire of the esteem of others, and occasionally even
+self-abasement. This extreme complication is, I apprehend, the origin of
+the sort of mystical character which, by a tendency of the human mind of
+which there are many other examples, is apt to be attributed to the idea
+of moral obligation, and which leads people to believe that the idea
+cannot possibly attach itself to any other objects than those which, by
+a supposed mysterious law, are found in our present experience to excite
+it. Its binding force, however, consists in the existence of a mass of
+feeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates our
+standard of right, and which, if we do nevertheless violate that
+standard, will probably have to be encountered afterwards in the form of
+remorse. Whatever theory we have of the nature or origin of conscience,
+this is what essentially constitutes it.
+
+The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (external motives
+apart) being a subjective feeling in our own minds, I see nothing
+embarrassing to those whose standard is utility, in the question, what
+is the sanction of that particular standard? We may answer, the same as
+of all other moral standards--the conscientious feelings of mankind.
+Undoubtedly this sanction has no binding efficacy on those who do not
+possess the feelings it appeals to; but neither will these persons be
+more obedient to any other moral principle than to the utilitarian one.
+On them morality of any kind has no hold but through the external
+sanctions. Meanwhile the feelings exist, a feet in human nature, the
+reality of which, and the great power with which they are capable of
+acting on those in whom they have been duly cultivated, are proved by
+experience. No reason has ever been shown why they may not be cultivated
+to as great intensity in connection with the utilitarian, as with any
+other rule of morals.
+
+There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that a person who sees in
+moral obligation a transcendental fact, an objective reality belonging
+to the province of "Things in themselves," is likely to be more obedient
+to it than one who believes it to be entirely subjective, having its
+seat in human consciousness only. But whatever a person's opinion may be
+on this point of Ontology, the force he is really urged by is his own
+subjective feeling, and is exactly measured by its strength. No one's
+belief that Duty is an objective reality is stronger than the belief
+that God is so; yet the belief in God, apart from the expectation of
+actual reward and punishment, only operates on conduct through, and in
+proportion to, the subjective religious feeling. The sanction, so far as
+it is disinterested, is always in the mind itself; and the notion,
+therefore, of the transcendental moralists must be, that this sanction
+will not exist _in_ the mind unless it is believed to have its root out
+of the mind; and that if a person is able to say to himself, That which
+is restraining me, and which is called my conscience, is only a feeling
+in my own mind, he may possibly draw the conclusion that when the
+feeling ceases the obligation ceases, and that if he find the feeling
+inconvenient, he may disregard it, and endeavour to get rid of it. But
+is this danger confined to the utilitarian morality? Does the belief
+that moral obligation has its seat outside the mind make the feeling of
+it too strong to be got rid of? The fact is so far otherwise, that all
+moralists admit and lament the ease with which, in the generality of
+minds, conscience can be silenced or stifled. The question, Need I obey
+my conscience? is quite as often put to themselves by persons who never
+heard of the principle of utility, as by its adherents. Those whose
+conscientious feelings are so weak as to allow of their asking this
+question, if they answer it affirmatively, will not do so because they
+believe in the transcendental theory, but because of the external
+sanctions.
+
+It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to decide whether the
+feeling of duty is innate or implanted. Assuming it to be innate, it is
+an open question to what objects it naturally attaches itself; for the
+philosophic supporters of that theory are now agreed that the intuitive
+perception is of principles of morality, and not of the details. If
+there be anything innate in the matter, I see no reason why the feeling
+which is innate should not be that of regard to the pleasures and pains
+of others. If there is any principle of morals which is intuitively
+obligatory, I should say it must be that. If so, the intuitive ethics
+would coincide with the utilitarian, and there would be no further
+quarrel between them. Even as it is, the intuitive moralists, though
+they believe that there are other intuitive moral obligations, do
+already believe this to be one; for they unanimously hold that a large
+portion of morality turns upon the consideration due to the interests of
+our fellow creatures. Therefore, if the belief in the transcendental
+origin of moral obligation gives any additional efficacy to the internal
+sanction, it appears to me that the utilitarian principle has already
+the benefit of it.
+
+On the other hand, if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not
+innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason the less natural. It
+is natural to man to speak, to reason, to build cities, to cultivate the
+ground, though these are acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not
+indeed a part of our nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible
+degree present in all of us; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted by
+those who believe the most strenuously in their transcendental origin.
+Like the other acquired capacities above referred to, the moral faculty,
+if not a part of our nature, is a natural outgrowth from it; capable,
+like them, in a certain small degree, of springing up spontaneously; and
+susceptible of being brought by cultivation to a high degree of
+development. Unhappily it is also susceptible, by a sufficient use of
+the external sanctions and of the force of early impressions, of being
+cultivated in almost any direction: so that there is hardly anything so
+absurd or so mischievous that it may not, by means of these influences,
+be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience.
+To doubt that the same potency might be given by the same means to the
+principle of utility, even if it had no foundation in human nature,
+would be flying in the face of all experience.
+
+But moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation, when
+intellectual culture goes on, yield by degrees to the dissolving force
+of analysis: and if the feeling of duty, when associated with utility,
+would appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading department of
+our nature, no powerful class of sentiments, with which that association
+would harmonize, which would make us feel it congenial, and incline us
+not only to foster it in others (for which we have abundant interested
+motives), but also to cherish it in ourselves; if there were not, in
+short, a natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality, it might
+well happen that this association also, even after it had been implanted
+by education, might be analysed away.
+
+But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment; and this it is
+which, when once the general happiness is recognized as the ethical
+standard, will constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality. This
+firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to
+be in unity with our fellow creatures, which is already a powerful
+principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become
+stronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences of
+advancing civilization. The social state is at once so natural, so
+necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusual
+circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never
+conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and this
+association is riveted more and more, as mankind are further removed
+from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which
+is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparable
+part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is
+born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. Now, society
+between human beings, except in the relation of master and slave, is
+manifestly impossible on any other footing than that the interests of
+all are to be consulted. Society between equals can only exist on the
+understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally. And
+since in all states of civilization, every person, except an absolute
+monarch, has equals, every one is obliged to live on these terms with
+somebody; and in every age some advance is made towards a state in which
+it will be impossible to live permanently on other terms with anybody.
+In this way people grow up unable to conceive as possible to them a
+state of total disregard of other people's interests. They are under a
+necessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from all the
+grosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection.) living in a
+state of constant protest against them. They are also familiar with the
+fact of co-operating with others, and proposing to themselves a
+collective, not an individual, interest, as the aim (at least for the
+time being) of their actions. So long as they are co-operating, their
+ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary
+feeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only
+does all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of
+society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in
+practically consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to
+identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with
+an ever greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as
+though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who _of
+course_ pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing
+naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical
+conditions of our existence. Now, whatever amount of this feeling a
+person has, he is urged by the strongest motives both of interest and of
+sympathy to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of his power encourage it
+in others; and even if he has none of it himself, he is as greatly
+interested as any one else that others should have it. Consequently, the
+smallest germs of the feeling are laid hold of and nourished by the
+contagion of sympathy and the influences of education; and a complete
+web of corroborative association is woven round it, by the powerful
+agency of the external sanctions. This mode of conceiving ourselves and
+human life, as civilization goes on, is felt to be more and more
+natural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so, by
+removing the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling those
+inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing to
+which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still
+practicable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the
+influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in
+each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if
+perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial
+condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included.
+If we now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and
+the whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion,
+directed, as it once was in the case of religion, to make every person
+grow up from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession and
+by the practice of it, I think that no one, who can realize this
+conception, will feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the
+ultimate sanction for the Happiness morality. To any ethical student who
+finds the realization difficult, I recommend, as a means of facilitating
+it, the second of M. Comte's two principal works, the _Système de
+Politique Positive_. I entertain the strongest objections to the system
+of politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I think it has
+superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of
+humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the
+physical power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it take
+hold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling, and action, in a
+manner of which the greatest ascendency ever exercised by any religion
+may be but a type and foretaste; and of which the danger is, not that it
+should be insufficient, but that it should be so excessive as to
+interfere unduly with human freedom and individuality.
+
+Neither is it necessary to the feeling which constitutes the binding
+force of the utilitarian morality on those who recognize it, to wait for
+those social influences which would make its obligation felt by mankind
+at large. In the comparatively early state of human advancement in which
+we now live, a person cannot indeed feel that entireness of sympathy
+with all others, which would make any real discordance in the general
+direction of their conduct in life impossible; but already a person in
+whom the social feeling is at all developed, cannot bring himself to
+think of the rest of his fellow creatures as struggling rivals with him
+for the means of happiness, whom he must desire to see defeated in their
+object in order that he may succeed in his. The deeply-rooted conception
+which every individual even now has of himself as a social being, tends
+to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be
+harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures.
+If differences of opinion and of mental culture make it impossible for
+him to share many of their actual feelings-perhaps make him denounce and
+defy those feelings-he still needs to be conscious that his real aim and
+theirs do not conflict; that he is not opposing himself to what they
+really wish for, namely, their own good, but is, on the contrary,
+promoting it. This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in
+strength to their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But
+to those who have it, it possesses all the characters of a natural
+feeling. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition of
+education, or a law despotically imposed by the power of society, but as
+an attribute which it would not be well for them to be without. This
+conviction is the ultimate sanction of the greatest-happiness morality.
+This it is which makes any mind, of well-developed feelings, work with,
+and not against, the outward motives to care for others, afforded by
+what I have called the external sanctions; and when those sanctions are
+wanting, or act in an opposite direction, constitutes in itself a
+powerful internal binding force, in proportion to the sensitiveness and
+thoughtfulness of the character; since few but those whose mind is a
+moral blank, could bear to lay out their course of life on the plan of
+paying no regard to others except so far as their own private interest
+compels.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS SUSCEPTIBLE.
+
+It has already been remarked, that questions of ultimate ends do not
+admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be incapable
+of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles; to the first
+premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But the
+former, being matters of fact, may be the subject of a direct appeal to
+the faculties which judge of fact--namely, our senses, and our internal
+consciousness. Can an appeal be made to the same faculties on questions
+of practical ends? Or by what other faculty is cognizance taken of them?
+
+Questions about ends are, in other words, questions what things are
+desirable. The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and
+the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only
+desirable as means to that end. What ought to be required of this
+doctrine--what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should
+fulfil--to make good its claim to be believed?
+
+The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that
+people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that
+people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like
+manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that
+anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end
+which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory
+and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince
+any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general
+happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes
+it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a
+fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all
+which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each
+person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness,
+therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made
+out its title as _one_ of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of
+the criteria of morality.
+
+But it has not, by this alone, proved itself to be the sole criterion.
+To do that, it would seem, by the same rule, necessary to show, not only
+that people desire happiness, but that they never desire anything else.
+Now it is palpable that they do desire things which, in common language,
+are decidedly distinguished from happiness. They desire, for example,
+virtue, and the absence of vice, no less really than pleasure and the
+absence of pain. The desire of virtue is not as universal, but it is as
+authentic a fact, as the desire of happiness. And hence the opponents of
+the utilitarian standard deem that they have a right to infer that there
+are other ends of human action besides happiness, and that happiness is
+not the standard of approbation and disapprobation.
+
+But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or
+maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It
+maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be
+desired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of
+utilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is
+made virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that actions and
+dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than
+virtue; yet this being granted, and it having been decided, from
+considerations of this description, what _is_ virtuous, they not only
+place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to
+the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact the
+possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without
+looking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a right
+state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most
+conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love virtue in this
+manner--as a thing desirable in itself, even although, in the individual
+instance, it should not produce those other desirable consequences which
+it tends to produce, and on account of which it is held to be virtue.
+This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from the
+Happiness principle. The ingredients of happiness are very various, and
+each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as
+swelling an aggregate. The principle of utility does not mean that any
+given pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given exemption from
+pain, as for example health, are to be looked upon as means to a
+collective something termed happiness, and to be desired on that
+account. They are desired and desirable in and for themselves; besides
+being means, they are a part of the end. Virtue, according to the
+utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end,
+but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it
+disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a
+means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.
+
+To illustrate this farther, we may remember that virtue is not the only
+thing, originally a means, and which if it were not a means to anything
+else, would be and remain indifferent, but which by association with
+what it is a means to, comes to be desired for itself, and that too with
+the utmost intensity. What, for example, shall we say of the love of
+money? There is nothing originally more desirable about money than about
+any heap of glittering pebbles. Its worth is solely that of the things
+which it will buy; the desires for other things than itself, which it is
+a means of gratifying. Yet the love of money is not only one of the
+strongest moving forces of human life, but money is, in many cases,
+desired in and for itself; the desire to possess it is often stronger
+than the desire to use it, and goes on increasing when all the desires
+which point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling off.
+It may be then said truly, that money is desired not for the sake of an
+end, but as part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it has
+come to be itself a principal ingredient of the individual's conception
+of happiness. The same may be said of the majority of the great objects
+of human life--power, for example, or fame; except that to each of these
+there is a certain amount of immediate pleasure annexed, which has at
+least the semblance of being naturally inherent in them; a thing which
+cannot be said of money. Still, however, the strongest natural
+attraction, both of power and of fame, is the immense aid they give to
+the attainment of our other wishes; and it is the strong association
+thus generated between them and all our objects of desire, which gives
+to the direct desire of them the intensity it often assumes, so as in
+some characters to surpass in strength all other desires. In these cases
+the means have become a part of the end, and a more important part of it
+than any of the things which they are means to. What was once desired as
+an instrument for the attainment of happiness, has come to be desired
+for its own sake. In being desired for its own sake it is, however,
+desired as part of happiness. The person is made, or thinks he would be
+made, happy by its mere possession; and is made unhappy by failure to
+obtain it. The desire of it is not a different thing from the desire of
+happiness, any more than the love of music, or the desire of health.
+They are included in happiness. They are some of the elements of which
+the desire of happiness is made up. Happiness is not an abstract idea,
+but a concrete whole; and these are some of its parts. And the
+utilitarian standard sanctions and approves their being so. 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. Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is a
+good of this description. There was no original desire of it, or motive
+to it, save its conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to protection
+from pain. But through the association thus formed, it may be felt a
+good in itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as any other
+good; and with this difference between it and the love of money, of
+power, or of fame, that all of these may, and often do, render the
+individual noxious to the other members of the society to which he
+belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so much a blessing to
+them as the cultivation of the disinterested, love of virtue. And
+consequently, the utilitarian standard, while it tolerates and approves
+those other acquired desires, up to the point beyond which they would be
+more injurious to the general happiness than promotive of it, enjoins
+and requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest
+strength possible, as being above all things important to the general
+happiness.
+
+It results from the preceding considerations, that there is in reality
+nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise than as
+a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is
+desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself
+until it has become so. Those who desire virtue for its own sake, desire
+it either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the
+consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both reasons united;
+as in truth the pleasure and pain seldom exist separately, but almost
+always together, the same person feeling pleasure in the degree of
+virtue attained, and pain in not having attained more. If one of these
+gave him no pleasure, and the other no pain, he would not love or desire
+virtue, or would desire it only for the other benefits which it might
+produce to himself or to persons whom he cared for.
+
+We have now, then, an answer to the question, of what sort of proof the
+principle of utility is susceptible. If the opinion which I have now
+stated is psychologically true--if human nature is so constituted as to
+desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means of
+happiness, we can have no other proof, and we require no other, that
+these are the only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end of
+human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all
+human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the
+criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole.
+
+And now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind do desire
+nothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to them, or of which the
+absence is a pain; we have evidently arrived at a question of fact and
+experience, dependent, like all similar questions, upon evidence. It can
+only be determined by practised self-consciousness and self-observation,
+assisted by observation of others. I believe that these sources of
+evidence, impartially consulted, will declare that desiring a thing and
+finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are
+phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same
+phenomenon; in strictness of language, two different modes of naming the
+same psychological fact: that to think of an object as desirable (unless
+for the sake of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are
+one and the same thing; and that to desire anything, except in
+proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical
+impossibility.
+
+So obvious does this appear to me, that I expect it will hardly be
+disputed: and the objection made will be, not that desire can possibly
+be directed to anything ultimately except pleasure and exemption from
+pain, but that the will is a different thing from desire; that a person
+of confirmed virtue, or any other person whose purposes are fixed,
+carries out his purposes without any thought of the pleasure he has in
+contemplating them, or expects to derive from their fulfilment; and
+persists in acting on them, even though these pleasures are much
+diminished, by changes in his character or decay of his passive
+sensibilities, or are outweighed by the pains which the pursuit of the
+purposes may bring upon him. All this I fully admit, and have stated it
+elsewhere, as positively and emphatically as any one. Will, the active
+phenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of passive
+sensibility, and though originally an offshoot from it, may in time take
+root and detach itself from the parent stock; so much so, that in the
+case of an habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because we
+desire it, we often desire it only because we will it. This, however, is
+but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise
+confined to the case of virtuous actions. Many indifferent things, which
+men originally did from a motive of some sort, they continue to do from
+habit. Sometimes this is done unconsciously, the consciousness coming
+only after the action: at other times with conscious volition, but
+volition which has become habitual, and is put into operation by the
+force of habit, in opposition perhaps to the deliberate preference, as
+often happens with those who have contracted habits of vicious or
+hurtful indulgence. Third and last comes the case in which the habitual
+act of will in the individual instance is not in contradiction to the
+general intention prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; as
+in the case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all who pursue
+deliberately and consistently any determinate end. The distinction
+between will and desire thus understood, is an authentic and highly
+important psychological fact; but the fact consists solely in this--that
+will, like all other parts of our constitution, is amenable to habit,
+and that we may will from habit what we no longer desire for itself, or
+desire only because we will it. It is not the less true that will, in
+the beginning, is entirely produced by desire; including in that term
+the repelling influence of pain as well as the attractive one of
+pleasure. Let us take into consideration, no longer the person who has a
+confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous will is still
+feeble, conquerable by temptation, and not to be fully relied on; by
+what means can it be strengthened? How can the will to be virtuous,
+where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened?
+Only by making the person _desire_ virtue--by making him think of it in
+a pleasurable light, or of its absence in a painful one. It is by
+associating the doing right with pleasure, or the doing wrong with pain,
+or by eliciting and impressing and bringing home to the person's
+experience the pleasure naturally involved in the one or the pain in the
+other, that it is possible to call forth that will to be virtuous,
+which, when confirmed, acts without any thought of either pleasure or
+pain. Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its
+parent only to come under that of habit. That which is the result of
+habit affords no presumption of being intrinsically good; and there
+would be no reason for wishing that the purpose of virtue should become
+independent of pleasure and pain, were it not that the influence of the
+pleasurable and painful associations which prompt to virtue is not
+sufficiently to be depended on for unerring constancy of action until it
+has acquired the support of habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habit
+is the only thing which imparts certainty; and it is because of the
+importance to others of being able to rely absolutely on one's feelings
+and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's own, that the
+will to do right ought to be cultivated into this habitual independence.
+In other words, this state of the will is a means to good, not
+intrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine that nothing
+is a good to human beings but in so far as it is either itself
+pleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting pain.
+
+But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility is proved.
+Whether it is so or not, must now be left to the consideration of the
+thoughtful reader.
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY.
+
+In all ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to the
+reception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the criterion of
+right and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of Justice, The powerful
+sentiment, and apparently clear perception, which that word recalls with
+a rapidity and certainty resembling an instinct, have seemed to the
+majority of thinkers to point to an inherent quality in things; to show
+that the Just must have an existence in Nature as something
+absolute-generically distinct from every variety of the Expedient, and,
+in idea, opposed to it, though (as is commonly acknowledged) never, in
+the long run, disjoined from it in fact.
+
+In the case of this, as of our other moral sentiments, there is no
+necessary connexion between the question of its origin, and that of its
+binding force. That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does not
+necessarily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling of justice might
+be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other instincts,
+to be controlled and enlightened by a higher reason. If we have
+intellectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular way, as well
+as animal instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way, there is
+no necessity that the former should be more infallible in their sphere
+than the latter in theirs: it may as well happen that wrong judgments
+are occasionally suggested by those, as wrong actions by these. But
+though it is one thing to believe that we have natural feelings of
+justice, and another to acknowledge them as an ultimate criterion of
+conduct, these two opinions are very closely connected in point of fact.
+Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling,
+not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality.
+Our present object is to determine whether the reality, to which the
+feeling of justice corresponds, is one which needs any such special
+revelation; whether the justice or injustice of an action is a thing
+intrinsically peculiar, and distinct from all its other qualities, or
+only a combination of certain of those qualities, presented under a
+peculiar aspect. For the purpose of this inquiry, it is practically
+important to consider whether the feeling itself, of justice and
+injustice, is _sui generis_ like our sensations of colour and taste, or
+a derivative feeling, formed by a combination of others. And this it is
+the more essential to examine, as people are in general willing enough
+to allow, that objectively the dictates of justice coincide with a part
+of the field of General Expediency; but inasmuch as the subjective
+mental feeling of Justice is different from that which commonly attaches
+to simple expediency, and, except in extreme cases of the latter, is far
+more imperative in its demands, people find it difficult to see, in
+Justice, only a particular kind or branch of general utility, and think
+that its superior binding force requires a totally different origin.
+
+To throw light upon this question, it is necessary to attempt to
+ascertain what is the distinguishing character of justice, or of
+injustice: what is the quality, or whether there is any quality,
+attributed in common to all modes of conduct designated as unjust (for
+justice, like many other moral attributes, is best defined by its
+opposite), and distinguishing them from such modes of conduct as are
+disapproved, but without having that particular epithet of
+disapprobation applied to them. If, in everything which men are
+accustomed to characterize as just or unjust, some one common attribute
+or collection of attributes is always present, we may judge whether this
+particular attribute or combination of attributes would be capable of
+gathering round it a sentiment of that peculiar character and intensity
+by virtue of the general laws of our emotional constitution, or whether
+the sentiment is inexplicable, and requires to be regarded as a special
+provision of Nature. If we find the former to be the case, we shall, in
+resolving this question, have resolved also the main problem: if the
+latter, we shall have to seek for some other mode of investigating it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To find the common attributes of a variety of objects, it is necessary
+to begin, by surveying the objects themselves in the concrete. Let us
+therefore advert successively to the various modes of action, and
+arrangements of human affairs, which are classed, by universal or widely
+spread opinion, as Just or as Unjust. The things well known to excite
+the sentiments associated with those names, are of a very multifarious
+character. I shall pass them rapidly in review, without studying any
+particular arrangement.
+
+In the first place, it is mostly considered unjust to deprive any one
+of his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing which belongs
+to him by law. Here, therefore, is one instance of the application of
+the terms just and unjust in a perfectly definite sense, namely, that it
+is just to respect, unjust to violate, the _legal rights_ of any one.
+But this judgment admits of several exceptions, arising from the other
+forms in which the notions of justice and injustice present themselves.
+For example, the person who suffers the deprivation may (as the phrase
+is) have _forfeited_ the rights which he is so deprived of: a case to
+which we shall return presently. But also,
+
+Secondly; the legal rights of which he is deprived, may be rights which
+_ought_ not to have belonged to him; in other words, the law which
+confers on him these rights, may be a bad law. When it is so, or when
+(which is the same thing for our purpose) it is supposed to be so,
+opinions will differ as to the justice or injustice of infringing it.
+Some maintain that no law, however bad, ought to be disobeyed by an
+individual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all, should
+only be shown in endeavouring to get it altered by competent authority.
+This opinion (which condemns many of the most illustrious benefactors of
+mankind, and would often protect pernicious institutions against the
+only weapons which, in the state of things existing at the time, have
+any chance of succeeding against them) is defended, by those who hold
+it, on grounds of expediency; principally on that of the importance, to
+the common interest of mankind, of maintaining inviolate the sentiment
+of submission to law. Other persons, again, hold the directly contrary
+opinion, that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed,
+even though it be not judged to be unjust, but only inexpedient; while
+others would confine the licence of disobedience to the case of unjust
+laws: but again, some say, that all laws which are inexpedient are
+unjust; since every law imposes some restriction on the natural liberty
+of mankind, which restriction is an injustice, unless legitimated by
+tending to their good. Among these diversities of opinion, it seems to
+be universally admitted that there may be unjust laws, and that law,
+consequently, is not the ultimate criterion of justice, but may give to
+one person a benefit, or impose on another an evil, which justice
+condemns. When, however, a law is thought to be unjust, it seems always
+to be regarded as being so in the same way in which a breach of law is
+unjust, namely, by infringing somebody's right; which, as it cannot in
+this case be a legal right, receives a different appellation, and is
+called a moral right. We may say, therefore, that a second case of
+injustice consists in taking or withholding from any person that to
+which he has a _moral right_.
+
+Thirdly, it is universally considered just that each person should
+obtain that (whether good or evil) which he _deserves_; and unjust that
+he should obtain a good, or be made to undergo an evil, which he does
+not deserve. This is, perhaps, the clearest and most emphatic form in
+which the idea of justice is conceived by the general mind. As it
+involves the notion of desert, the question arises, what constitutes
+desert? Speaking in a general way, a person is understood to deserve
+good if he does right, evil if he does wrong; and in a more particular
+sense, to deserve good from those to whom he does or has done good, and
+evil from those to whom he does or has done evil. The precept of
+returning good for evil has never been regarded as a case of the
+fulfilment of justice, but as one in which the claims of justice are
+waived, in obedience to other considerations.
+
+Fourthly, it is confessedly unjust to _break faith_ with any one: to
+violate an engagement, either express or implied, or disappoint
+expectations raised by our own conduct, at least if we have raised those
+expectations knowingly and voluntarily. Like the other obligations of
+justice already spoken of, this one is not regarded as absolute, but as
+capable of being overruled by a stronger obligation of justice on the
+other side; or by such conduct on the part of the person concerned as is
+deemed to absolve us from our obligation to him, and to constitute a
+_forfeiture_ of the benefit which he has been led to expect.
+
+Fifthly, it is, by universal admission, inconsistent with justice to be
+_partial_; to show favour or preference to one person over another, in
+matters to which favour and preference do not properly apply.
+Impartiality, however, does not seem to be regarded as a duty in itself,
+but rather as instrumental to some other duty; for it is admitted that
+favour and preference are not always censurable, and indeed the cases in
+which they are condemned are rather the exception than the rule. A
+person would be more likely to be blamed than applauded for giving his
+family or friends no superiority in good offices over strangers, when he
+could do so without violating any other duty; and no one thinks it
+unjust to seek one person in preference to another as a friend,
+connexion, or companion. Impartiality where rights are concerned is of
+course obligatory, but this is involved in the more general obligation
+of giving to every one his right. A tribunal, for example, must be
+impartial, because it is bound to award, without regard to any other
+consideration, a disputed object to the one of two parties who has the
+right to it. There are other cases in which impartiality means, being
+solely influenced by desert; as with those who, in the capacity of
+judges, preceptors, or parents, administer reward and punishment as
+such. There are cases, again, in which it means, being solely influenced
+by consideration for the public interest; as in making a selection among
+candidates for a Government employment. Impartiality, in short, as an
+obligation of justice, may be said to mean, being exclusively influenced
+by the considerations which it is supposed ought to influence the
+particular case in hand; and resisting the solicitation of any motives
+which prompt to conduct different from what those considerations would
+dictate.
+
+Nearly allied to the idea of impartiality, is that of _equality_; which
+often enters as a component part both into the conception of justice and
+into the practice of it, and, in the eyes of many persons, constitutes
+its essence. But in this, still more than in any other case, the notion
+of justice varies in different persons, and always conforms in its
+variations to their notion of utility. Each person maintains that
+equality is the dictate of justice, except where he thinks that
+expediency requires inequality. The justice of giving equal protection
+to the rights of all, is maintained by those who support the most
+outrageous inequality in the rights themselves. Even in slave countries
+it is theoretically admitted that the rights of the slave, such as they
+are, ought to be as sacred as those of the master; and that a tribunal
+which fails to enforce them with equal strictness is wanting in justice;
+while, at the same time, institutions which leave to the slave scarcely
+any rights to enforce, are not deemed unjust, because they are not
+deemed inexpedient. Those who think that utility requires distinctions
+of rank, do not consider it unjust that riches and social privileges
+should be unequally dispensed; but those who think this inequality
+inexpedient, think it unjust also. Whoever thinks that government is
+necessary, sees no injustice in as much inequality as is constituted by
+giving to the magistrate powers not granted to other people. Even among
+those who hold levelling doctrines, there are as many questions of
+justice as there are differences of opinion about expediency. Some
+Communists consider it unjust that the produce of the labour of the
+community should be shared on any other principle than that of exact
+equality; others think it just that those should receive most whose
+needs are greatest; while others hold that those who work harder, or who
+produce more, or whose services are more valuable to the community, may
+justly claim a larger quota in the division of the produce. And the
+sense of natural justice may be plausibly appealed to in behalf of every
+one of these opinions.
+
+Among so many diverse applications of the term Justice, which yet is not
+regarded as ambiguous, it is a matter of some difficulty to seize the
+mental link which holds them together, and on which the moral sentiment
+adhering to the term essentially depends. Perhaps, in this
+embarrassment, some help may be derived from the history of the word, as
+indicated by its etymology.
+
+In most, if not in all languages, the etymology of the word which
+corresponds to Just, points to an origin connected either with positive
+law, or with that which was in most cases the primitive form of
+law-authoritative custom. _Justum_ is a form of _jussum_, that which has
+been ordered. _Jus_ is of the same origin. _Dichanou_ comes from
+_dichae_, of which the principal meaning, at least in the historical
+ages of Greece, was a suit at law. Originally, indeed, it meant only the
+mode or _manner_ of doing things, but it early came to mean the
+_prescribed_ manner; that which the recognized authorities, patriarchal,
+judicial, or political, would enforce. _Recht_, from which came _right_
+and _righteous_, is synonymous with law. The original meaning, indeed,
+of _recht_ did not point to law, but to physical straightness; as
+_wrong_ and its Latin equivalents meant twisted or tortuous; and from
+this it is argued that right did not originally mean law, but on the
+contrary law meant right. But however this may be, the fact that _recht_
+and _droit_ became restricted in their meaning to positive law, although
+much which is not required by law is equally necessary to moral
+straightness or rectitude, is as significant of the original character
+of moral ideas as if the derivation had been the reverse way. The courts
+of justice, the administration of justice, are the courts and the
+administration of law. _La justice_, in French, is the established term
+for judicature. There can, I think, be no doubt that the _idée mère_,
+the primitive element, in the formation of the notion of justice, was
+conformity to law. It constituted the entire idea among the Hebrews, up
+to the birth of Christianity; as might be expected in the case of a
+people whose laws attempted to embrace all subjects on which precepts
+were required, and who believed those laws to be a direct emanation from
+the Supreme Being. But other nations, and in particular the Greeks and
+Romans, who knew that their laws had been made originally, and still
+continued to be made, by men, were not afraid to admit that those men
+might make bad laws; might do, by law, the same things, and from the
+same motives, which, if done by individuals without the sanction of law,
+would be called unjust. And hence the sentiment of injustice came to be
+attached, not to all violations of law, but only to violations of such
+laws as _ought_ to exist, including such as ought to exist but do not;
+and to laws themselves, if supposed to be contrary to what ought to be
+law. In this manner the idea of law and of its injunctions was still
+predominant in the notion of justice, even when the laws actually in
+force ceased to be accepted as the standard of it.
+
+It is true that mankind consider the idea of justice and its obligations
+as applicable to many things which neither are, nor is it desired that
+they should be, regulated by law. Nobody desires that laws should
+interfere with the whole detail of private life; yet every one allows
+that in all daily conduct a person may and does show himself to be
+either just or unjust. But even here, the idea of the breach of what
+ought to be law, still lingers in a modified shape. It would always give
+us pleasure, and chime in with our feelings of fitness, that acts which
+we deem unjust should be punished, though we do not always think it
+expedient that this should be done by the tribunals. We forego that
+gratification on account of incidental inconveniences. We should be glad
+to see just conduct enforced and injustice repressed, even in the
+minutest details, if we were not, with reason, afraid of trusting the
+magistrate with so unlimited an amount of power over individuals. When
+we think that a person is bound in justice to do a thing, it is an
+ordinary form of language to say, that he ought to be compelled to do
+it. We should be gratified to see the obligation enforced by anybody who
+had the power. If we see that its enforcement by law would be
+inexpedient, we lament the impossibility, we consider the impunity given
+to injustice as an evil, and strive to make amends for it by bringing a
+strong expression of our own and the public disapprobation to bear upon
+the offender. Thus the idea of legal constraint is still the generating
+idea of the notion of justice, though undergoing several transformations
+before that notion, as it exists in an advanced state of society,
+becomes complete.
+
+The above is, I think, a true account, as far as it goes, of the origin
+and progressive growth of the idea of justice. But we must observe, that
+it contains, as yet, nothing to distinguish that obligation from moral
+obligation in general. For the truth is, that the idea of penal
+sanction, which is the essence of law, enters not only into the
+conception of injustice, but into that of any kind of wrong. We do not
+call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be
+punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the
+opinion of his fellow creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of
+his own conscience. This seems the real turning point of the distinction
+between morality and simple expediency. It is a part of the notion of
+Duty in every one of its forms, that a person may rightfully be
+compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be _exacted_ from a
+person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it might be exacted
+from him, we do not call it his duty. Reasons of prudence, or the
+interest of other people, may militate against actually exacting it; but
+the person himself, it is clearly understood, would not be entitled to
+complain. There are other things, on the contrary, which we wish that
+people should do, which we like or admire them for doing, perhaps
+dislike or despise them for not doing, but yet admit that they are not
+bound to do; it is not a case of moral obligation; we do not blame them,
+that is, we do not think that they are proper objects of punishment. How
+we come by these ideas of deserving and not deserving punishment, will
+appear, perhaps, in the sequel; but I think there is no doubt that this
+distinction lies at the bottom of the notions of right and wrong; that
+we call any conduct wrong, or employ instead, some other term of dislike
+or disparagement, according as we think that the person ought, or ought
+not, to be punished for it; and we say that it would be right to do so
+and so, or merely that it would be desirable or laudable, according as
+we would wish to see the person whom it concerns, compelled or only
+persuaded and exhorted, to act in that manner.[C]
+
+This, therefore, being the characteristic difference which marks off,
+not justice, but morality in general, from the remaining provinces of
+Expediency and Worthiness; the character is still to be sought which
+distinguishes justice from other branches of morality. Now it is known
+that ethical writers divide moral duties into two classes, denoted by
+the ill-chosen expressions, duties of perfect and of imperfect
+obligation; the latter being those in which, though the act is
+obligatory, the particular occasions of performing it are left to our
+choice; as in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are indeed
+bound to practise, but not towards any definite person, nor at any
+prescribed time. In the more precise language of philosophic jurists,
+duties of perfect obligation are those duties in virtue of which a
+correlative right resides in some person or persons; duties of imperfect
+obligation are those moral obligations which do not give birth to any
+right. I think it will be found that this distinction exactly coincides
+with that which exists between justice and the other obligations of
+morality. In our survey of the various popular acceptations of justice,
+the term appeared generally to involve the idea of a personal right--a
+claim on the part of one or more individuals, like that which the law
+gives when it confers a proprietary or other legal right. Whether the
+injustice consists in depriving a person of a possession, or in breaking
+faith with him, or in treating him worse than he deserves, or worse than
+other people who have no greater claims, in each case the supposition
+implies two things--a wrong done, and some assignable person who is
+wronged. Injustice may also be done by treating a person better than
+others; but the wrong in this case is to his competitors, who are also
+assignable persons. It seems to me that this feature in the case--a
+right in some person, correlative to the moral obligation--constitutes
+the specific difference between justice, and generosity or beneficence.
+Justice implies something which it is not only right to do, and wrong
+not to do, but which some individual person can claim from us as his
+moral right. No one has a moral right to our generosity or beneficence,
+because we are not morally bound to practise those virtues towards any
+given individual. And it will be found, with respect to this as with
+respect to every correct definition, that the instances which seem to
+conflict with it are those which most confirm it. For if a moralist
+attempts, as some have done, to make out that mankind generally, though
+not any given individual, have a right to all the good we can do them,
+he at once, by that thesis, includes generosity and beneficence within
+the category of justice. He is obliged to say, that our utmost exertions
+are due to our fellow creatures, thus assimilating them to a debt; or
+that nothing less can be a sufficient _return_ for what society does for
+us, thus classing the case as one of gratitude; both of which are
+acknowledged cases of justice. Wherever there is a right, the case is
+one of justice, and not of the virtue of beneficence: and whoever does
+not place the distinction between justice and morality in general where
+we have now placed it, will be found to make no distinction between them
+at all, but to merge all morality in justice.
+
+Having thus endeavoured to determine the distinctive elements which
+enter into the composition of the idea of justice, we are ready to enter
+on the inquiry, whether the feeling, which accompanies the idea, is
+attached to it by a special dispensation of nature, or whether it could
+have grown up, by any known laws, out of the idea itself; and in
+particular, whether it can have originated in considerations of general
+expediency.
+
+I conceive that the sentiment itself does not arise from anything which
+would commonly, or correctly, be termed an idea of expediency; but that,
+though the sentiment does not, whatever is moral in it does.
+
+We have seen that the two essential ingredients in the sentiment of
+justice are, the desire to punish a person who has done harm, and the
+knowledge or belief that there is some definite individual or
+individuals to whom harm has been done.
+
+Now it appears to me, that the desire to punish a person who has done
+harm to some individual, is a spontaneous outgrowth from two sentiments,
+both in the highest degree natural, and which either are or resemble
+instincts; the impulse of self-defence, and the feeling of sympathy.
+
+It is natural to resent, and to repel or retaliate, any harm done or
+attempted against ourselves, or against those with whom we sympathize.
+The origin of this sentiment it is not necessary here to discuss.
+Whether it be an instinct or a result of intelligence, it is, we know,
+common to all animal nature; for every animal tries to hurt those who
+have hurt, or who it thinks are about to hurt, itself or its young.
+Human beings, on this point, only differ from other animals in two
+particulars. First, in being capable of sympathizing, not solely with
+their offspring, or, like some of the more noble animals, with some
+superior animal who is kind to them, but with all human, and even with
+all sentient beings. Secondly, in having a more developed intelligence,
+which gives a wider range to the whole of their sentiments, whether
+self-regarding or sympathetic. By virtue of his superior intelligence,
+even apart from his superior range of sympathy, a human being is capable
+of apprehending a community of interest between himself and the human
+society of which he forms a part, such that any conduct which threatens
+the security of the society generally, is threatening to his own, and
+calls forth his instinct (if instinct it be) of self-defence. The same
+superiority of intelligence, joined to the power of sympathizing with
+human beings generally, enables him to attach himself to the collective
+idea of his tribe, his country, or mankind, in such a manner that any
+act hurtful to them rouses his instinct of sympathy, and urges him to
+resistance.
+
+The sentiment of justice, in that one of its elements which consists of
+the desire to punish, is thus, I conceive, the natural feeling of
+retaliation or vengeance, rendered by intellect and sympathy applicable
+to those injuries, that is, to those hurts, which wound us through, or
+in common with, society at large. This sentiment, in itself, has nothing
+moral in it; what is moral is, the exclusive subordination of it to the
+social sympathies, so as to wait on and obey their call. For the natural
+feeling tends to make us resent indiscriminately whatever any one does
+that is disagreeable to us; but when moralized by the social feeling, it
+only acts in the directions conformable to the general good; just
+persons resenting a hurt to society, though not otherwise a hurt to
+themselves, and not resenting a hurt to themselves, however painful,
+unless it be of the kind which society has a common interest with them
+in the repression of.
+
+It is no objection against this doctrine to say, that when we feel our
+sentiment of justice outraged, we are not thinking of society at large,
+or of any collective interest, but only of the individual case. It is
+common enough certainly, though the reverse of commendable, to feel
+resentment merely because we have suffered pain; but a person whose
+resentment is really a moral feeling, that is, who considers whether an
+act is blameable before he allows himself to resent it--such a person,
+though he may not say expressly to himself that he is standing up for
+the interest of society, certainly does feel that he is asserting a rule
+which is for the benefit of others as well as for his own. If he is not
+feeling this--if he is regarding the act solely as it affects him
+individually--he is not consciously just; he is not concerning himself
+about the justice of his actions. This is admitted even by
+anti-utilitarian moralists. When Kant (as before remarked) propounds as
+the fundamental principle of morals, 'So act, that thy rule of conduct
+might be adopted as a law by all rational beings,' he virtually
+acknowledges that the interest of mankind collectively, or at least of
+mankind indiscriminately, must be in the mind of the agent when
+conscientiously deciding on the morality of the act. Otherwise he uses
+words without a meaning: for, that a rule even of utter selfishness
+could not _possibly_ be adopted by all rational beings--that there is
+any insuperable obstacle in the nature of things to its adoption--cannot
+be even plausibly maintained. To give any meaning to Kant's principle,
+the sense put upon it must be, that we ought to shape our conduct by a
+rule which all rational beings might adopt _with benefit to their
+collective interest_.
+
+To recapitulate: the idea of justice supposes two things; a rule of
+conduct, and a sentiment which sanctions the rule. The first must be
+supposed common to all mankind, and intended for their good. The other
+(the sentiment) is a desire that punishment may be suffered by those who
+infringe the rule. There is involved, in addition, the conception of
+some definite person who suffers by the infringement; whose rights (to
+use the expression appropriated to the case) are violated by it. And the
+sentiment of justice appears to me to be, the animal desire to repel or
+retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one
+sympathizes, widened so as to include all persons, by the human capacity
+of enlarged sympathy, and the human conception of intelligent
+self-interest. From the latter elements, the feeling derives its
+morality; from the former, its peculiar impressiveness, and energy of
+self-assertion.
+
+I have, throughout, treated the idea of a _right_ residing in the
+injured person, and violated by the injury, not as a separate element in
+the composition of the idea and sentiment, but as one of the forms in
+which the other two elements clothe themselves. These elements are, a
+hurt to some assignable person or persons on the one hand, and a demand
+for punishment on the other. An examination of our own minds, I think,
+will show, that these two things include all that we mean when we speak
+of violation of a right. When we call anything a person's right, we mean
+that he has a valid claim on society to protect him in the possession
+of it, either by the force of law, or by that of education and opinion.
+If he has what we consider a sufficient claim, on whatever account, to
+have something guaranteed to him by society, we say that he has a right
+to it. If we desire to prove that anything does not belong to him by
+right, we think this done as soon as it is admitted that society ought
+not to take measures for securing it to him, but should leave it to
+chance, or to his own exertions. Thus, a person is said to have a right
+to what he can earn in fair professional competition; because society
+ought not to allow any other person to hinder him from endeavouring to
+earn in that manner as much as he can. But he has not a right to three
+hundred a-year, though he may happen to be earning it; because society
+is not called on to provide that he shall earn that sum. On the
+contrary, if he owns ten thousand pounds three per cent. stock, he _has_
+a right to three hundred a-year; because society has come under an
+obligation to provide him with an income of that amount.
+
+To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society
+ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask
+why it ought, I can give him no other reason than general utility. If
+that expression does not seem to convey a sufficient feeling of the
+strength of the obligation, nor to account for the peculiar energy of
+the feeling, it is because there goes to the composition of the
+sentiment, not a rational only but also an animal element, the thirst
+for retaliation; and this thirst derives its intensity, as well as its
+moral justification, from the extraordinarily important and impressive
+kind of utility which is concerned. The interest involved is that of
+security, to every one's feelings the most vital of all interests.
+Nearly all other earthly benefits are needed by one person, not needed
+by another; and many of them can, if necessary, be cheerfully foregone,
+or replaced by something else; but security no human being can possibly
+do without; on it we depend for all our immunity from evil, and for the
+whole value of all and every good, beyond the passing moment; since
+nothing but the gratification of the instant could be of any worth to
+us, if we could be deprived of everything the next instant by whoever
+was momentarily stronger than ourselves. Now this most indispensable of
+all necessaries, after physical nutriment, cannot be had, unless the
+machinery for providing it is kept unintermittedly in active play. Our
+notion, therefore, of the claim we have on our fellow creatures to join
+in making safe for us the very groundwork of our existence, gathers
+feelings round it so much more intense than those concerned in any of
+the more common cases of utility, that the difference in degree (as is
+often the case in psychology) becomes a real difference in kind. The
+claim assumes that character of absoluteness, that apparent infinity,
+and incommensurability with all other considerations, which constitute
+the distinction between the feeling of right and wrong and that of
+ordinary expediency and inexpediency. The feelings concerned are so
+powerful, and we count so positively on finding a responsive feeling in
+others (all being alike interested), that _ought_ and _should_ grow into
+_must_, and recognized indispensability becomes a moral necessity,
+analogous to physical, and often not inferior to it in binding force.
+
+If the preceding analysis, or something resembling it, be not the
+correct account of the notion of justice; if justice be totally
+independent of utility, and be a standard _per se_, which the mind can
+recognize by simple introspection of itself; it is hard to understand
+why that internal oracle is so ambiguous, and why so many things appear
+either just or unjust, according to the light in which they are
+regarded. We are continually informed that Utility is an uncertain
+standard, which every different person interprets differently, and that
+there is no safety but in the immutable, ineffaceable, and unmistakeable
+dictates of Justice, which carry their evidence in themselves, and are
+independent of the fluctuations of opinion. One would suppose from this
+that on questions of justice there could be no controversy; that if we
+take that for our rule, its application to any given case could leave us
+in as little doubt as a mathematical demonstration. So far is this from
+being the fact, that there is as much difference of opinion, and as
+fierce discussion, about what is just, as about what is useful to
+society. Not only have different nations and individuals different
+notions of justice, but, in the mind of one and the same individual,
+justice is not some one rule, principle, or maxim, but many, which do
+not always coincide in their dictates, and in choosing between which, he
+is guided either by some extraneous standard, or by his own personal
+predilections.
+
+For instance, there are some who say, that it is unjust to punish any
+one for the sake of example to others; that punishment is just, only
+when intended for the good of the sufferer himself. Others maintain the
+extreme reverse, contending that to punish persons who have attained
+years of discretion, for their own benefit, is despotism and injustice,
+since if the matter at issue is solely their own good, no one has a
+right to control their own judgment of it; but that they may justly be
+punished to prevent evil to others, this being an exercise of the
+legitimate right of self-defence. Mr. Owen, again, affirms that it is
+unjust to punish at all; for the criminal did not make his own
+character; his education, and the circumstances which surround him, have
+made him a criminal, and for these he is not responsible. All these
+opinions are extremely plausible; and so long as the question is argued
+as one of justice simply, without going down to the principles which lie
+under justice and are the source of its authority, I am unable to see
+how any of these reasoners can be refuted. For, in truth, every one of
+the three builds upon rules of justice confessedly true. The first
+appeals to the acknowledged injustice of singling out an individual, and
+making him a sacrifice, without his consent, for other people's benefit.
+The second relies on the acknowledged justice of self-defence, and the
+admitted injustice of forcing one person to conform to another's notions
+of what constitutes his good. The Owenite invokes the admitted
+principle, that it is unjust to punish any one for what he cannot help.
+Each is triumphant so long as he is not compelled to take into
+consideration any other maxims of justice than the one he has selected;
+but as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each
+disputant seems to have exactly as much to say for himself as the
+others. No one of them can carry out his own notion of justice without
+trampling upon another equally binding. These are difficulties; they
+have always been felt to be such; and many devices have been invented to
+turn rather than to overcome them. As a refuge from the last of the
+three, men imagined what they called the freedom of the will; fancying
+that they could not justify punishing a man whose will is in a
+thoroughly hateful state, unless it be supposed to have come into that
+state through no influence of anterior circumstances. To escape from the
+other difficulties, a favourite contrivance has been the fiction of a
+contract, whereby at some unknown period all the members of society
+engaged to obey the laws, and consented to be punished for any
+disobedience to them; thereby giving to their legislators the right,
+which it is assumed they would not otherwise have had, of punishing
+them, either for their own good or for that of society. This happy
+thought was considered to get rid of the whole difficulty, and to
+legitimate the infliction of punishment, in virtue of another received
+maxim of justice, _volenti non fit injuria_; that is not unjust which is
+done with the consent of the person who is supposed to be hurt by it. I
+need hardly remark, that even if the consent were not a mere fiction,
+this maxim is not superior in authority to the others which it is
+brought in to supersede. It is, on the contrary, an instructive specimen
+of the loose and irregular manner in which supposed principles of
+justice grow up. This particular one evidently came into use as a help
+to the coarse exigencies of courts of law, which are sometimes obliged
+to be content with very uncertain presumptions, on account of the
+greater evils which would often arise from any attempt on their part to
+cut finer. But even courts of law are not able to adhere consistently to
+the maxim, for they allow voluntary engagements to be set aside on the
+ground of fraud, and sometimes on that of mere mistake or
+misinformation.
+
+Again, when the legitimacy of inflicting punishment is admitted, how
+many conflicting conceptions of justice come to light in discussing the
+proper apportionment of punishment to offences. No rule on this subject
+recommends itself so strongly to the primitive and spontaneous sentiment
+of justice, as the _lex talionis_, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
+tooth. Though this principle of the Jewish and of the Mahomedan law has
+been generally abandoned in Europe as a practical maxim, there is, I
+suspect, in most minds, a secret hankering after it; and when
+retribution accidentally falls on an offender in that precise shape, the
+general feeling of satisfaction evinced, bears witness how natural is
+the sentiment to which this repayment in kind is acceptable. With many
+the test of justice in penal infliction is that the punishment should be
+proportioned to the offence; meaning that it should be exactly measured
+by the moral guilt of the culprit (whatever be their standard for
+measuring moral guilt): the consideration, what amount of punishment is
+necessary to deter from the offence, having nothing to do with the
+question of justice, in their estimation: while there are others to whom
+that consideration is all in all; who maintain that it is not just, at
+least for man, to inflict on a fellow creature, whatever may be his
+offences, any amount of suffering beyond the least that will suffice to
+prevent him from repeating, and others from imitating, his misconduct.
+
+To take another example from a subject already once referred to. In a
+co-operative industrial association, is it just or not that talent or
+skill should give a title to superior remuneration? On the negative side
+of the question it is argued, that whoever does the best he can,
+deserves equally well, and ought not in justice to be put in a position
+of inferiority for no fault of his own; that superior abilities have
+already advantages more than enough, in the admiration they excite, the
+personal influence they command, and the internal sources of
+satisfaction attending them, without adding to these a superior share of
+the world's goods; and that society is bound in justice rather to make
+compensation to the less favoured, for this unmerited inequality of
+advantages, than to aggravate it. On the contrary side it is contended,
+that society receives more from the more efficient labourer; that his
+services being more useful, society owes him a larger return for them;
+that a greater share of the joint result is actually his work, and not
+to allow his claim to it is a kind of robbery; that if he is only to
+receive as much as others, he can only be justly required to produce as
+much, and to give a smaller amount of time and exertion, proportioned to
+his superior efficiency. Who shall decide between these appeals to
+conflicting principles of justice? Justice has in this case two sides to
+it, which it is impossible to bring into harmony, and the two disputants
+have chosen opposite sides; the one looks to what it is just that the
+individual should receive, the other to what it is just that the
+community should give. Each, from his own point of view, is
+unanswerable; and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must
+be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference.
+
+How many, again, and how irreconcileable, are the standards of justice
+to which reference is made in discussing the repartition of taxation.
+One opinion is, that payment to the State should be in numerical
+proportion to pecuniary means. Others think that justice dictates what
+they term graduated taxation; taking a higher percentage from those who
+have more to spare. In point of natural justice a strong case might be
+made for disregarding means altogether, and taking the same absolute sum
+(whenever it could be got) from every one: as the subscribers to a mess,
+or to a club, all pay the same sum for the same privileges, whether they
+can all equally afford it or not. Since the protection (it might be
+said) of law and government is afforded to, and is equally required by,
+all, there is no injustice in making all buy it at the same price. It is
+reckoned justice, not injustice, that a dealer should charge to all
+customers the same price for the same article, not a price varying
+according to their means of payment. This doctrine, as applied to
+taxation, finds no advocates, because it conflicts strongly with men's
+feelings of humanity and perceptions of social expediency; but the
+principle of justice which it invokes is as true and as binding as those
+which can be appealed to against it. Accordingly, it exerts a tacit
+influence on the line of defence employed for other modes of assessing
+taxation. People feel obliged to argue that the State does more for the
+rich than for the poor, as a justification for its taking more from
+them: though this is in reality not true, for the rich would be far
+better able to protect themselves, in the absence of law or government,
+than the poor, and indeed would probably be successful in converting the
+poor into their slaves. Others, again, so far defer to the same
+conception of justice, as to maintain that all should pay an equal
+capitation tax for the protection of their persons (these being of equal
+value to all), and an unequal tax for the protection of their property,
+which is unequal. To this others reply, that the all of one man is as
+valuable to him as the all of another. From these confusions there is no
+other mode of extrication than the utilitarian.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is, then, the difference between the Just and the Expedient a merely
+imaginary distinction? Have mankind been under a delusion in thinking
+that justice is a more sacred thing than policy, and that the latter
+ought only to be listened to after the former has been satisfied? By no
+means. The exposition we have given of the nature and origin of the
+sentiment, recognises a real distinction; and no one of those who
+profess the most sublime contempt for the consequences of actions as an
+element in their morality, attaches more importance to the distinction
+than I do. While I dispute the pretensions of any theory which sets up
+an imaginary standard of justice not grounded on utility, I account the
+justice which is grounded on utility to be the chief part, and
+incomparably the most sacred and binding part, of all morality. Justice
+is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern the
+essentials of human well-being more nearly, and are therefore of more
+absolute obligation, than any other rules for the guidance of life; and
+the notion which we have found to be of the essence of the idea of
+justice, that of a right residing in an individual, implies and
+testifies to this more binding obligation.
+
+The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another (in which we
+must never forget to include wrongful interference with each other's
+freedom) are more vital to human well-being than any maxims, however
+important, which only point out the best mode of managing some
+department of human affairs. They have also the peculiarity, that they
+are the main element in determining the whole of the social feelings of
+mankind. It is their observance which alone preserves peace among human
+beings: if obedience to them were not the rule, and disobedience the
+exception, every one would see in every one else a probable enemy,
+against whom he must be perpetually guarding himself. What is hardly
+less important, these are the precepts which mankind have the strongest
+and the most direct inducements for impressing upon one another. By
+merely giving to each other prudential instruction or exhortation, they
+may gain, or think they gain, nothing: in inculcating on each other the
+duty of positive beneficence they have an unmistakeable interest, but
+far less in degree: a person may possibly not need the benefits of
+others; but he always needs that they should not do him hurt. Thus the
+moralities which protect every individual from being harmed by others,
+either directly or by being hindered in his freedom of pursuing his own
+good, are at once those which he himself has most at heart, and those
+which he has the strongest interest in publishing and enforcing by word
+and deed. It is by a person's observance of these, that his fitness to
+exist as one of the fellowship of human beings, is tested and decided;
+for on that depends his being a nuisance or not to those with whom he is
+in contact. Now it is these moralities primarily, which compose the
+obligations of justice. The most marked cases of injustice, and those
+which give the tone to the feeling of repugnance which characterizes the
+sentiment, are acts of wrongful aggression, or wrongful exercise of
+power over some one; the next are those which consist in wrongfully
+withholding from him something which is his due; in both cases,
+inflicting on him a positive hurt, either in the form of direct
+suffering, or of the privation of some good which he had reasonable
+ground, either of a physical or of a social kind, for counting upon.
+
+The same powerful motives which command the observance of these primary
+moralities, enjoin the punishment of those who violate them; and as the
+impulses of self-defence, of defence of others, and of vengeance, are
+all called forth against such persons, retribution, or evil for evil,
+becomes closely connected with the sentiment of justice, and is
+universally included in the idea. Good for good is also one of the
+dictates of justice; and this, though its social utility is evident, and
+though it carries with it a natural human feeling, has not at first
+sight that obvious connexion with hurt or injury, which, existing in the
+most elementary cases of just and unjust, is the source of the
+characteristic intensity of the sentiment. But the connexion, though
+less obvious, is not less real. He who accepts benefits, and denies a
+return of them when needed, inflicts a real hurt, by disappointing one
+of the most natural and reasonable of expectations, and one which he
+must at least tacitly have encouraged, otherwise the benefits would
+seldom have been conferred. The important rank, among human evils and
+wrongs, of the disappointment of expectation, is shown in the fact that
+it constitutes the principal criminality of two such highly immoral acts
+as a breach of friendship and a breach of promise. Few hurts which human
+beings can sustain are greater, and none wound more, than when that on
+which they habitually and with full assurance relied, fails them in the
+hour of need; and few wrongs are greater than this mere withholding of
+good; none excite more resentment, either in the person suffering, or in
+a sympathizing spectator. The principle, therefore, of giving to each
+what they deserve, that is, good for good as well as evil for evil, is
+not only included within the idea of Justice as we have defined it, but
+is a proper object of that intensity of sentiment, which places the
+Just, in human estimation, above the simply Expedient.
+
+Most of the maxims of justice current in the world, and commonly
+appealed to in its transactions, are simply instrumental to carrying
+into effect the principles of justice which we have now spoken of. That
+a person is only responsible for what he has done voluntarily, or could
+voluntarily have avoided; that it is unjust to condemn any person
+unheard; that the punishment ought to be proportioned to the offence,
+and the like, are maxims intended to prevent the just principle of evil
+for evil from being perverted to the infliction of evil without that
+justification. The greater part of these common maxims have come into
+use from the practice of courts of justice, which have been naturally
+led to a more complete recognition and elaboration than was likely to
+suggest itself to others, of the rules necessary to enable them to
+fulfil their double function, of inflicting punishment when due, and of
+awarding to each person his right.
+
+That first of judicial virtues, impartiality, is an obligation of
+justice, partly for the reason last mentioned; as being a necessary
+condition of the fulfilment of the other obligations of justice. But
+this is not the only source of the exalted rank, among human
+obligations, of those maxims of equality and impartiality, which, both
+in popular estimation and in that of the most enlightened, are included
+among the precepts of justice. In one point of view, they may be
+considered as corollaries from the principles already laid down. If it
+is a duty to do to each according to his deserts, returning good for
+good as well as repressing evil by evil, it necessarily follows that we
+should treat all equally well (when no higher duty forbids) who have
+deserved equally well of us, and that society should treat all equally
+well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved
+equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social
+and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the
+efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost possible
+degree to converge. But this great moral duty rests upon a still deeper
+foundation, being a direct emanation from the first principle of morals,
+and not a mere logical corollary from secondary or derivative doctrines.
+It is involved in the very meaning of Utility, or the
+Greatest-Happiness Principle. That principle is a mere form of words
+without rational signification, unless one person's happiness, supposed
+equal in degree (with the proper allowance made for kind), is counted
+for exactly as much as another's. Those conditions being supplied,
+Bentham's dictum, 'everybody to count for one, nobody for more than
+one,' might be written under the principle of utility as an explanatory
+commentary.[D] The equal claim of everybody to happiness in the
+estimation of the moralist and the legislator, involves an equal claim
+to all the means of happiness, except in so far as the inevitable
+conditions of human life, and the general interest, in which that of
+every individual is included, set limits to the maxim; and those limits
+ought to be strictly construed. As every other maxim of justice, so
+this, is by no means applied or held applicable universally; on the
+contrary, as I have already remarked, it bends to every person's ideas
+of social expediency. But in whatever case it is deemed applicable at
+all, it is held to be the dictate of justice. All persons are deemed to
+have a _right_ to equality of treatment, except when some recognised
+social expediency requires the reverse. And hence all social
+inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the
+character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so
+tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have been
+tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other
+inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the
+correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as
+monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn. The entire
+history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which
+one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary
+necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of an
+universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the
+distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and
+plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the
+aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.
+
+It appears from what has been said, that justice is a name for certain
+moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the
+scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation,
+than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other
+social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general
+maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable,
+but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine,
+or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical
+practitioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything justice which is
+not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to some
+other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by
+reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By this
+useful accommodation of language, the character of indefeasibility
+attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity of
+maintaining that there can be laudable injustice.
+
+The considerations which have now been adduced resolve, I conceive, the
+only real difficulty in the utilitarian theory of morals. It has always
+been evident that all cases of justice are also cases of expediency: the
+difference is in the peculiar sentiment which attaches to the former, as
+contradistinguished from the latter. If this characteristic sentiment
+has been sufficiently accounted for; if there is no necessity to assume
+for it any peculiarity of origin; if it is simply the natural feeling of
+resentment, moralized by being made coextensive with the demands of
+social good; and if this feeling not only does but ought to exist in all
+the classes of cases to which the idea of justice corresponds; that idea
+no longer presents itself as a stumbling-block to the utilitarian
+ethics. Justice remains the appropriate name for certain social
+utilities which are vastly more important, and therefore more absolute
+and imperative, than any others are as a class (though not more so than
+others may be in particular cases); and which, therefore, ought to be,
+as well as naturally are, guarded by a sentiment not only different in
+degree, but also in kind; distinguished from the milder feeling which
+attaches to the mere idea of promoting human pleasure or convenience, at
+once by the more definite nature of its commands, and by the sterner
+character of its sanctions.
+
+THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote C: See this point enforced and illustrated by Professor Bain,
+in an admirable chapter (entitled "The Ethical Emotions, or the Moral
+Sense") of the second of the two treatises composing his elaborate and
+profound work on the Mind.]
+
+[Footnote D: This implication, in the first principle of the utilitarian
+scheme, of perfect impartiality between persons, is regarded by Mr.
+Herbert Spencer (in his _Social Statics_) as a disproof of the
+pretentions of utility to be a sufficient guide to right; since (he
+says) the principle of utility presupposes the anterior principle, that
+everybody has an equal right to happiness. It may be more correctly
+described as supposing that equal amounts of happiness are equally
+desirable, whether felt by the same or by different persons. This,
+however, is not a pre-supposition; not a premise needful to support the
+principle of utility, but the very principle itself; for what is the
+principle of utility, if it be not that 'happiness' and 'desirable' are
+synonymous terms? If there is any anterior principle implied, it can be
+no other than this, that the truths of arithmetic are applicable to the
+valuation of happiness, as of all other measurable quantities.
+
+[Mr. Herbert Spencer, in a private communication on the subject of the
+preceding Note, objects to being considered an opponent of
+Utilitarianism; and states that he regards happiness as the ultimate end
+of morality; but deems that end only partially attainable by empirical
+generalizations from the observed results of conduct, and completely
+attainable only by deducing, from the laws of life and the conditions of
+existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness,
+and what kinds to produce unhappiness. With the exception of the word
+"necessarily," I have no dissent to express from this doctrine; and
+(omitting that word) I am not aware that any modern advocate of
+utilitarianism is of a different opinion. Bentham, certainly, to whom in
+the _Social Statics_ Mr. Spencer particularly referred, is, least of all
+writers, chargeable with unwillingness to deduce the effect of actions
+on happiness from the laws of human nature and the universal conditions
+of human life. The common charge against him is of relying too
+exclusively upon such deductions, and declining altogether to be bound
+by the generalizations from specific experience which Mr. Spencer thinks
+that utilitarians generally confine themselves to. My own opinion (and,
+as I collect, Mr. Spencer's) is, that in ethics, as in all other
+branches of scientific study, the consilience of the results of both
+these processes, each corroborating and verifying the other, is
+requisite to give to any general proposition the kind and degree of
+evidence which constitutes scientific proof.]]
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