Vexed Questions in Ethics. 87 



euub radically distinct ideas, is self-condemned. We all know 

 that the least pleasant duties are commonly the most obliga- 

 tory. The great mystery of life is that true happiness never 

 comes to those who seek nothing higher. The attempt to make 

 happiness the supreme end defeats itself 



Still another objection to utilitarianism has been powerfully 

 stated by Lecky and Herbert Spencer, namely, that there is so 

 great difference of opmion about the real nature and condi- 

 tions of happiness, that no firm standard of morality can be 

 erected on such an unstable foundation. 



Serious as are the defects of the greatest happiness theory, 

 however, no moralist can hope to displace it, unless he suc- 

 ceeds as least as well in recognizing the supreme end in his 

 moral standard. Most anti-utilitarians and semi-utilitarians 

 make no attempt to reconcile these two ideas, but separate 

 them so plainly as to make their systems self-contradictory. 

 This is especially the case with the intuitionalists, or believers 

 in the supreme authority, if not infallibility, of conscience, 

 which theory is further proved to be defective by the exist- 

 ence, not only of such great differences of opinion among its 

 followers about many practical questions, like non-resistance, 

 prohibition and free-love, as to demonstrate its inability to 

 supply a moral standard which can be used with suflBeiently 

 uniform results to make it valuable, but also of so irrecon- 

 cilable a controversy between leading philosophers, about the 

 very fact of our possessing any independent and original in- 

 tuitions, that to assert them as the foundation of a moral sys- 

 tem is too much like building a house on a lot of land, about 

 the title to which there is a law suit. The true system of mo- 

 rality must recognize supreme good higher than happiness, and 

 plain enough to be its own self evident authority, independent 

 of all metaphysical and theological disputes, so that the moral 

 standard shall be fully demonstrated by its connection with 

 the supreme end. It is also necessary that the true moral 

 standard should not be liable to be disturbed by individual 



